Artwork "Pulp Fiction Banana Guns" by Banksy, seen at the Banksy exhibition at the Moco Museum, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland (North Holland), Netherlands
Some background information:
Banksy is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksy's artwork grew out of the Bristol underground scene. He also created a documentary film named "Exit Through the Gift Shop", billed as "the world's first street art disaster movie". In January 2011, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Banksy’s career as a freehand graffiti artist started in 1990. During his early years he met Bristol photographer Steve Lazarides, who later became his agent. Banksy's first known large wall mural was "The Mild Mild West" painted in 1997 to cover advertising of a former solicitors' office on Stokes Croft in Bristol. It depicts a teddy bear lobbing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police. By 2000 he had turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a work. He claims that he changed to stencilling while hiding from the police under a rubbish lorry, when they noticed the stencilled serial number. By employing this technique, he soon became more widely noticed for his art around Bristol and London.
Banksy's stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment. Subjects often include rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly.
In the early 2000s Banksy’s reputation took off. After Christina Aguilera had bought an original of Queen Victoria as a lesbian and two prints for 25,000 £, in October 2006, a set of Kate Moss paintings was sold at Sotheby's London for 50,400 £, setting an auction record for Banksy's work. In December 2006, journalist Max Foster coined the phrase, "the Banksy effect", to illustrate how interest in other street artists was growing on the back of Banksy's success. In April 2007, a new record high for the sale of Banksy's work was set with the auction of the work "Space Girl and Bird" fetching £288,000 (about 576,000 US$) at Bonhams of London. In 2008, a couple from Norfolk, UK, made headlines in Britain when they decided to sell their mobile home that contains a 30-foot mural, entitled "Fragile Silence", done by Banksy a decade prior to his rise to fame. The mobile home purchased by the couple eleven years ago for 1,000 £, was sold for 500,000 £.
In 2010, the US-American "Time Magazine" classed Banksy as one of the 100 most influential people of the world. As of 2014, Banksy was regarded as a British cultural icon, with young adults from abroad naming the artist among a group of people that they most associated with UK culture, which included William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth II, David Beckham, The Beatles, Charlie Chaplin, J. K. Rowling, Elton John and Adele.
In August 2015, Banksy opened Dismaland, a temporary art project and large scale group show lampooning Disneyland. It was permanently closed at the end of September 2015. The "theme park" was located in the seaside resort town Weston-super-Mare, UK. High demand for tickets to the exhibition caused the Dismaland website to crash repeatedly. Some wondered whether or not this was deliberately contrived by Banksy as part of the irony of the Dismaland experience. Even many celebrities were attracted to the venue, such as Brad Pitt, Jack Black, Nicholas Hoult, Russell Brand and Daddy G.
In March 2017, Banksy opened "The Walled Off Hotel”, designed by himself, in the Israeli city of Bethlehem. The hotel is located directly next to the Israeli West Bank barrier, converting this locational disadvantage into an advantage. The ugly barrier can be seen from many hotel rooms. According to the website, the hotel’s aim is to break even and put any profits back into local projects then. The "The Walled Off Hotel” offers rooms for both low-budget and high-end tourists as well as for all people in between. A night in a mass accommodation bunk bed costs 30 US$, while the presidential suite can be booked for 965 US$ per night. But whatever you book, it’s always an artistic and rather surreal experience.
Despite all his different projects, Banksy has never ceased creating street art as well as indoor art. One of his newest works is a giant Brexit mural painted on a house in the city of Dover in May 2017. The Banksy exhibition at the Moco Museum Amsterdam, that was already extended several times, gives a great review of his artwork. The Moco (Modern Contemporary) Museum Amsterdam is located in the Villa Alsberg, which is set in the middle of the Amsterdam Museumplein, on the opposite site of the famous Rijksmuseum. The museum is a private initiative of gallery owners Lionel and Kim Logchies, who worked with renowned artists like Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. But both have also developed a big interest in the up and coming street art movement and they keep themselves up to date about all novelties within the underground scene.
Some more words about Banksy’s identity:
Banksy's name and identity remain unknown and it has been stated that the reason for this secrecy is that graffiti is still a crime. A commonly cited 2008 "Mail on Sunday" investigation of several former schoolmates and associates stated that the artist is believed to be Robin Gunningham, a former pupil at the public Bristol Cathedral School. This suggestion was corroborated in 2016 by a study of the locations in which Banksy's art has been found, which showed that the incidence of Banksy's works correlated with the known movements of Gunningham.
In August 2016, Scottish journalist Craig Williams published an investigative piece in which he connected the timing of Banksy's murals with the touring schedule of the trip hop band Massive Attack. Williams put forward the suggestion that Banksy's work could be the work of a collective, and that Banksy himself may be Massive Attack's frontman, Robert Del Naja. Del Naja had been a graffiti artist during the 1980s prior to forming the band and had previously been identified as a personal friend of Banksy. In June 2017, English musician Goldie referred to Banksy as Rob (or Robert), during an interview with the hip hop recording artist Scroobius Pip. It has been argued that Goldie could have been referring to either Robert Del Naja or Robin Gunningham, or even neither of them.
