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Jonathan Jones on Banksy
Jul. 5th, 2007 07:42 pmJonathon Jones writes on Banksy in the Guardian, and totally misses the point.
Background artist? Nonsense. What Jones is missing is that Banksy's work isn't about paint on walls, it's about the walls. It's not portable art, it plays with its context. Subversive, if you really want buzzwords.
So yes, if you only look at the designs themselves, if you only look at a particular graffito, it's not particularly interesting or profound. The same goes for most modern art, without its historical and stylistic context. This just has something more concrete to react against.
It's all about colonizing public space (where, of course, "public" is used in the same sense as "the public interest", ie. something quite different from "us"), repurposing it, validating individual experience. I suspect that part of J.J.'s problem with Banksy is that as an established critic, he's firmly entrenched in the Public rather than the masses, and wants to react to art as Art, rather than letting art grab his sense of social space and tango with it across the city.
Probably the rise of Banksy means that moment is coming to an end; people care more about other things. He is a background artist, as in background music: like all graffiti, his is essentially an accompaniment to other activities. Chunky sprayed-letter graffiti is a background to skateboarding. Banksy is a background to hating New Labour. The reason to admire Damien Hirst is that he makes art as if art mattered. In Banksy, the philistines are getting their revenge.
Background artist? Nonsense. What Jones is missing is that Banksy's work isn't about paint on walls, it's about the walls. It's not portable art, it plays with its context. Subversive, if you really want buzzwords.
So yes, if you only look at the designs themselves, if you only look at a particular graffito, it's not particularly interesting or profound. The same goes for most modern art, without its historical and stylistic context. This just has something more concrete to react against.
It's all about colonizing public space (where, of course, "public" is used in the same sense as "the public interest", ie. something quite different from "us"), repurposing it, validating individual experience. I suspect that part of J.J.'s problem with Banksy is that as an established critic, he's firmly entrenched in the Public rather than the masses, and wants to react to art as Art, rather than letting art grab his sense of social space and tango with it across the city.
