Banksy, Banksy who the fuck is Banksy?

You should know by now...

via Art News Blog
Who is Banksy?
Banksy, Banksy, Banksy.. this guy seems to be everywhere. The mainstream media love publishing stuff on this guy. Andy Warhol would be proud of the inches published on Banksy over the past 18 months.

He has an official website, where I stole the image to the left of this post (it's a detail of a larger work). There's no links on his homepage, but he does have more pages to his site. I'm not sure how you are meant to find more pages of his site if you don't know about them, but here's some outdoor works, indoor works, and a Banksy manifesto.

"The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit." Banksy Quote

Coxsoft has a few Banksy posts on his art blog. He points to a piece on the BBC website where they say that the notoriously secretive artist is the thirty-something year old Robert Banks of Bristol in the UK. They also say that Banksy has no formal art education, started painting grafitti at 14, he used to bootleg rock memorobilia, and has spent time in detention for petty crimes.

His name and art may be familiar to millions of people of worldwide, but there are very few photos or details known about the actual artist. Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian has been one of the few journalists to interview the artist. Hattenstone says..
"Banksy is Britain's most celebrated graffiti artist, but anonymity is vital to him because graffiti is illegal. The day he goes public is the day the graffiti ends." Guardian Interview with Banksy

See a video below of Banksy at work in Palenstine, where the artist has this to say about the "segregation wall" seperating Palenstine and Israel..
"The segregation wall is a disgrace.. The possibility I find exciting is you could turn the world's most invasive and degrading structure into the world's longest gallery of free speech and bad art." Banksy




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