Taming Banksy
Alittle girl looms over Toronto’s Sterling Road, a heart-shaped balloon slipping her grasp. If that little branding exercise somehow slid by you, fear not: A slathering of text along the full length of the industrial-building-turned-condo-showroom hosting it makes it clear. “THE ART OF Banksy,” it reads, never mind the nuance. It’s a sign, if you’ll pardon the pun, of things to come. This exhibition of the obnoxiously famous British street artist, a North American premiere hyped by concert promoter Live Nation, is nothing if not obvious. Inside, a slow meander along the timeline of his early career — it mostly stops in 2006, for reasons soon to become equally obvious — puts on view a mouldering selection of his greatest hits.
That’s not to say Banksy’s provocations of bygone days feel somehow passé — at his best, his stinging critiques of crass consumerism and uptight social mores made him one of the most sharply relevant artists of his moment — but as an exhibition, there is nothing new to see here, or be said, about an undeniably fertile moment, now more than a decade past.
Still, at $35 a head and more than 50,000 tickets sold before Wednesday’s opening, the show’s promotional blitz has clearly worked — and it’s clear Banksy’s fame has made this blockbuster show an undeniable draw.
But there’s something missing here. I’m one who thinks some of Banksy’s best work has been in recent years, around such things as the refugee crisis in Europe, not to mention epicscale recent installations like Dismaland, a bleak amusement park skewering a culture obsessed with distraction, from 2015, or last year’s Walled Off Hotel in the West Bank, a dark satire of a tourist attraction snuggled up to Israel’s infamous security wall. By contrast, “The Art of Banksy” is the static entombment of a practice that has relied on boldness and surprise for much of its impact.
There’s a reason for that. The artist himself has disowned the show, saying it’s not representative of him in any real way. If that isn’t an alarm bell, what is?
That it’s all happening right here, in a building that, not so long ago, provided a haven for a community of local artists before a surge in property value squeezed them out, makes for an unintended irony the artist might appreciate. If “The Art of Banksy” is the apex of the bland commercialization of an artist’s work against his will, then 213 Sterling Rd., once a hub for a generation of local independent creatives, is an appropriate tomb. The show’s hucksterish sheen slips into its cavernous space, once a sports arena for locals, now a flashpoint of real estate speculation run amok, like a hand in a glove. (“You’ll love the neighbourhood!” the show’s website effuses). It’s an enthusiastically glib dance on a very fresh grave.
Banksy, you probably don’t need to be told, made his name as a guerrilla street artist in his home town of Bristol, England. Using stencils for the most part, he’d surreptitiously spray works on walls around town, and the reaction was part of the piece. His signature image of two British bobbies locked in a lusty embrace, one of his first, set the tone: Here was a street artist not content to simply tag or craft abstractions in anodyne gestures of self-declaration. This was someone willing to take on the structures of uptight British society with a radically acidic glee.
Anonymity was a practical stance, not wanting to be arrested, but it swiftly became his brand. As his reputation and prominence grew, so did those wanting to out him (so far, no good). It helped fuel a jet-powered rise to fame. From the street, Banksy’s work migrated quickly into the homes of the very rich and famous, oblivious, it seemed, to his overt sendups of consumerism, the art market, and fame itself.
Outwardly, it allowed Banksy to maintain his street cred, raking in millions while laughing at his customers’ expense. One thing “The Art of Banksy” does help to reveal, though maybe not on purpose, is how much of an industry Banksy really was. Forget the street actions and guerrilla stencils, though there are photos of those; the show is filled with prints — his “rude coppers,” flipping the bird, his rats, and of course, the pervasive balloon girl, most of them in editions of 600. It makes Banksy, renegade street provocateur, one of the most production-focused artists of his generation.
“Yeah, that’s something he’s hidden quite well,” chuckled Steve Lazarides, the former Banksy confidante who’s shepherded the show here and to several other venues around the world (Lazarides is acting as curator; Live Nation is footing the bill).
“He was the kind of person who was always working towards a show, painting for a show. And why not? He’s the top guy at what he does, why shouldn’t he get paid for it?”
Lazarides waxes nostalgic about the studio’s early days.
“We wanted to make cheap art for the masses — that was the plan,” he laughs. “Of course, that backfired spectacularly within two or three years.”
He walks towards a print of the ultra-famous “balloon girl,” used as the show’s billboard from the wall outside. “When we started making them, we’d sell a signed copy for 150 quid,” he says in his Bristolian burr (he and the artist met in their mutual hometown in the ’90s). “Now, you’d be lucky, and I mean lucky, to find one for 80,000 pounds.”
It’s hard to begrudge Banksy his success. Few artists with his reach can claim so unwavering a commitment to a guiding credo.
It’s telling, though, that Banksy himself has disowned this politely glib travelling carnival, and Lazarides along with it. (He confirms that he hasn’t spoken to the artist in more than a decade; “it’s been the most peaceful 10 years of my life,” he laughs.)
A master satirist, Banksy’s mark is stamped indelibly on the culture. But I don’t see how a display like this situates the significance of his efforts in a broader swim, likely because it doesn’t even try. It leaves me to wonder what a proper museum effort might do with the artist’s public actions and trenchant themes — some of which are touched on here, but left unexplored.
The artist’s long career is entwined with rough takes on big ideas such as anti-consumerism, poverty, disenfranchisement, state control, Imperialism, freedom of speech and the very system of mass culture itself. Over time, we might come to see Banksy as a Warhol, with his sharp consumer critique, or a Goya, with his darkly biting social wit.
Too much? I don’t think so, but only time will tell. Will you see anything but the faintest glimmer of that here? Of course not, because that’s neither the intention nor the point. In this place and moment, “The Art of Banksy” is right at home amid our own city’s blithe makeover of a neighbourhood once brimming with difference and texture, now being smoothed for easy consumption. As a pair of total disconnects from their own contexts, they were made for each other.
The artist himself disowned the show, saying it’s not representative of him in any real way