Is Banksy’s Anti-Commercialism Commercial?
The guerrilla artist who qualified for the art A-League
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Last October, Sotheby’s Paris-to-London remote auction of Modernités saw Banksy’s ‘Show Me The Monet’ net over £7.5 million and secure its future in the hands of an Asian collector.
Banksy’s contemporary take on the impressionist masterpiece revolves around dumping a traffic cone and two shopping trolleys in what should be the infamous lily pond in the artist’s Giverny mansion.
The less-than-graceful additions to the impressionist painting aspire to polemicise over the indifference of consumeristic society in front of waste and environmental degradation.
It’s not the first time Banksy’s works cash dizzying digits at auction. Last year, ‘Devolved Parliament’ reached the highest amount ever hammered for the artist, sold for nearly £10M.
Ten million GBP sounds like a tolerable amount to be associated with someone who reportedly defined commercial success as a mark of failure for a graffiti artist.
Is the art market delegitimising Banksy’s work?
Avid collectors seem to be adamant about getting their hands on the mysterious artist’s gems. Regardless, I am not sure if hanging above some hedgefund manager's fireplace is the purpose for which those pieces were conceived. But, above all, it’s impossible not to speculate on the reasons why Banksy transitioned from physiologically temporary graffiti to commodifiable forms of art, such as paintings.
it’s impossible not to speculate on the reasons why Banksy transitioned from physiologically temporary graffiti to commodifiable forms of art, such as paintings
Bansky’s work may be delegitimised by an insatiable art market, but he doesn’t quite abstain from deliberately exploiting the commercial potential of his brand.
Prankster or Philanthropist
Last summer the British artist sponsored a 31-meter lifeboat to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. What undoubtedly is a good deed could potentially resemble a social responsibility PR stunt — assuming our coffee was bad and we woke up distrustful.
One thing is sure when it comes to Banksy: he doesn’t lend himself to ready simplification or classification.
His graffiti is poignant; the political critique is stinging and irreverent.
Pieces like ‘Show Me The Monet’ though, make it terribly hard for us not to call into question that same person who produced a self-destroying painting (Sotheby’s, 2018) to slap the commodification of art right in the face.
What ultimately comes to mind, is that Banksy’s tradables are hardly visual art in their three dimensions, as much as performance art in the act of fooling us all. Exquisitely I might add.
A Marketing Genius in disguise
If we were for a moment to abandon the idea of the performance art above, we would be left with the visual part only. I see art as intimately intertwined with creation, being a means to the end of ultimately communicating something. What Banksy delivers is a great deal of communication, but never really shaped a language of his own. The stencil graffiti style he adopts is rather borrowed from the French Blek le Rat in the 1980s.
What Banksy does is, ultimately, great marketing. His product is closer to a — still very much brilliant — advertising campaign, rather than art.
IKEA’s 2017 bright advert is itself a revisitation of a classic. I am not sure, however, if it will ever be considered else than a marketing team’s touch of genius. Never mind being sold at Sotheby’s for £10M.
Banksy is a very rich creative director, and foremost a brand. ‘Show Me The Monet’ is his environmental sensibility campaign. A very loud one!
