Exiting Through the Gift Shop
January 6, 2011 Art 1 Comment
Banksy on the West Bank Barrier, Palestine
“I don’t believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.”
“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.”
– Pablo Picasso
Banksy is one of my favorite artists for a number of reasons. I dig good street art (graffiti!), but Banksy has always impressed me with his skill in creating a mixture of pop culture references, political messaging and dark humor in his work. I remember the first time flipping through a book of Banksy pieces and thinking “Who does political graffiti of this size and scale on the West Bank barrier of all places? The balls on this guy!”
I know a few self-proclaimed stencil graffiti artists, and they just quickly spray on a side walk or wall. That’s it. But actually trying to post it somewhere, in public, highly trafficked areas, in extremely dangerous places, in broad daylight- I always wondered how someone did that. On top of it all, Banksy stays anonymous. Very few people know who he really is. Banksy is some sort of subversive genius street artist millionaire man of mystery.