"I'm going to speak my mind , so this won't take very long. Graffiti is not the lowest for of art. Despite having to creep about at night and lie to your mum it's actually the most honest art form available. There is no elitism hype, it exhibits on some of the best walls a town has to offer, and nobody is put off by the price of admission. A wall has always been the best place to publish your work. The people who run our cities don't understand graffiti because they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit. But if you just value money then your opinion is worthless. They say graffiti frightens people and is symbolic of the decline in society, but graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers. The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl their giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you're not allowed to answer back. Well, they started this fight and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back. Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place." (Bansky 8)
-Banksy
-Banksy
Who is Banksy?
Banksy is a European Graffiti Artist. He is known for his work, but famous for his identity. Because this man has never showed his face, many have wondered who he actually is, and have tried to find him. Born in a small city in Southern Europe, Banksy began painting Graffiti as a child, after a friend of his, "3D", introduced him to it. (Fairey) Shepard Fairey states, "His works, whether he puts them on the streets, sells them in galleries, or hangs them in museums on the sly, are filled with imagery tweaked into metaphors that cross all language barriers. The images are brilliant and funny, yet so simple and accessible that even children can find the meaning in them". (Fairey) He started off with more traditional graffiti, and today is known to be the most brutally and politically honest Street Art Graffiti artist in the world. He has conquered the walls, and streets of Europe with stencils and stickers. He has even taken on Disneyland in California with his Guantanamo Bay Prisoner at Thunder Mountain. But, one of his most controversial pieces today have been on the Palestinian Wall. Though he has done a few commercial agreements, Banksy keeps them to a bare minimum in order to pay off some bills. They include an Album, some books, and a poster for an ice cream company in Hawaii. Recently, he has produced the movie "Exit Through the Gift Shop". His art shows are as free to enter as the art on the streets are to see although he doesn't attend them.Today people have made assumptions that he is a "team" of people who run around putting up work as one person. To other, he is one man, and remains untouchable. So who is Banksy? To the world, he's a graffiti artist who taken over countries with his brilliant pieces, but to himself, he's just an artist trying to "make the right piece at the right time in the right place."(Fairey)
