Banksy
| April 29, 2008

I've been looking at the work of Bansky for a while now, but of the work I saw, I was never aware that it was actually his work. This is partly due to the fact that I saw most of his work at Wooster Collective (which is a fantastic source for street-art) and it kinded melded into a lot of the other work that is documented there. Not until I actually researched Banksy did it occur to me that specific work of his (such as the one I've used for the main image of this post) was actually the work that stood out a lot from everything else I saw on Wooster. His work with street-art is not only extensive and meticulous, but informed, calculated, intelligent and humorous. I love the way that he works pseudonymously, and rejects the idea of galleries, obviously preferring to work in an environment that is more akin to the general public. As argued by another artist I admire, Richard Serra (who I’ll touch on in a later post), art in public spaces invites response from not only a wider audience, but from those who wouldn’t even enter an art gallery. In this way, Banksy’s work is effectively communicated to a wide portion of society, to whom he is commenting on pressing social issues.


Beyond his work with street-art, I also admire his wonderful parodies of classical paintings. Usually I find this kind of post-modern approach a bit annoying, but here it's done really well, and (typical of Banksy) they make great use of humor.

Link:  Official Bansky Home Page

Tags:  painting, parody, satire, street-art

Topic: Painting