Who sprays the paint?
In order to create a couple of Banksy-esque final pieces, I decided to study not just the artist himself, but also his relation to the graffiti scene. This would help me to find my rhythm with the project, sparking the generation of ideas and keeping the artistic process fresh, exciting and interesting.
I had visited the Bristol museum as part of a casual family trip and was able to pick up a couple of books on Banksy in order to fulfill these two research aims. I began with a book which describes Banksy's relation to graffiti culture, and also into the inner workings of the movement itself. Banksy: The Bristol Legacy (edited by Paul Gough and published in 2012) delved into this in great detail, comprising the viewpoints of a range of people (including art critics and university researchers) on Banksy and graffiti, as well as a very informative history of graffiti in Bristol.
I've learned that Bristol has been attached to the graffiti movement for far longer than I had originally thought - Banksy is not the "pioneer" of the street art style that I had long believed. Instead, graffiti in Bristol can be traced back before the 18th century, when people wishing to speak out about social and political issues used chalks as their medium of choice. Chalk provides a direct, no-nonsense drawing medium, is easy to conceal from authority figures and the general public, and is quick to use. Starting small, the use of chalk on buildings and pavements quickly grew from the 1800s into the 1900s - and not just in Bristol. Suffragette Emma Sproson was fined five shillings in 1907 for scrawling "Votes for Women" on a pavement in London, which prompted the British government to introduce a "London Various Powers Act", which increased the penalty for chalk graffiti from five shillings to two pounds (approximately equal to £220 in 2016). However, seventy years earlier in Bristol itself (where graffiti was heavily concentrated), "chalking" had been effectively criminalised by the introduction of a local "Encroachment Act", which created 286 new categories of "street offender" - and the ≈£200 fine was already in force.
This information blew me away in how similar the state of the graffiti scene is to today, in 2016. It's crazy to think that a pretty hefty fine and even a criminal record could be incurred for simply chalking a pavement - especially when I think of young children using it to draw hopscotch grids on the ground.
I was also very interested to read that adverts in the 1800s were regarded in almost exactly the same way as they are in 2016. The average person witnesses over 3 million advertisements every day (source: The Age of Stupid, 2009). When I think about every single logo I look at on a high street each day (chain shops, supermarkets, those on flyers, banners, buildings, and another 2,999,995 examples), John Orlando Parry's painting "Street Scene with Posters " (painted in 1835) makes a lot of sense.
I had visited the Bristol museum as part of a casual family trip and was able to pick up a couple of books on Banksy in order to fulfill these two research aims. I began with a book which describes Banksy's relation to graffiti culture, and also into the inner workings of the movement itself. Banksy: The Bristol Legacy (edited by Paul Gough and published in 2012) delved into this in great detail, comprising the viewpoints of a range of people (including art critics and university researchers) on Banksy and graffiti, as well as a very informative history of graffiti in Bristol.
I've learned that Bristol has been attached to the graffiti movement for far longer than I had originally thought - Banksy is not the "pioneer" of the street art style that I had long believed. Instead, graffiti in Bristol can be traced back before the 18th century, when people wishing to speak out about social and political issues used chalks as their medium of choice. Chalk provides a direct, no-nonsense drawing medium, is easy to conceal from authority figures and the general public, and is quick to use. Starting small, the use of chalk on buildings and pavements quickly grew from the 1800s into the 1900s - and not just in Bristol. Suffragette Emma Sproson was fined five shillings in 1907 for scrawling "Votes for Women" on a pavement in London, which prompted the British government to introduce a "London Various Powers Act", which increased the penalty for chalk graffiti from five shillings to two pounds (approximately equal to £220 in 2016). However, seventy years earlier in Bristol itself (where graffiti was heavily concentrated), "chalking" had been effectively criminalised by the introduction of a local "Encroachment Act", which created 286 new categories of "street offender" - and the ≈£200 fine was already in force.
This information blew me away in how similar the state of the graffiti scene is to today, in 2016. It's crazy to think that a pretty hefty fine and even a criminal record could be incurred for simply chalking a pavement - especially when I think of young children using it to draw hopscotch grids on the ground.
I was also very interested to read that adverts in the 1800s were regarded in almost exactly the same way as they are in 2016. The average person witnesses over 3 million advertisements every day (source: The Age of Stupid, 2009). When I think about every single logo I look at on a high street each day (chain shops, supermarkets, those on flyers, banners, buildings, and another 2,999,995 examples), John Orlando Parry's painting "Street Scene with Posters " (painted in 1835) makes a lot of sense.
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| Taken from Banksy: The Bristol Legacy (2012).
Banksy: The Bristol Legacy co-author Steve Poole talks about how the "crowding of vacant walls and fences with legions of gaudy and shabbily executed paper advertisements" meant that an ironic juxtaposition was produced - attempts to clean up cities across England to preserve the Victorian values of high-status cleanliness were being flouted by seemingly-endless waves of consumerism. Poole also notes that many "social elites" thought that these hundreds of adverts gave rise to the "vulgarity and vice" of lower class citizens, which apparently resulted in graffiti.
Yet another 1800s/1900s irony comes to my mind: massive waves of totally legal adverts are a far more potent factor in the defacing of England's cities than the chalking of pavements with statements that, in my view, should be given much more notice.
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| Suffragettes chalking London pavements, 12th August 1913. Source: Topical Press Agency. |
Nothing has changed. We could sort out racism, gender equality, the environment and poverty - but we'd rather have that new TV. And you know you've got a problem when even speaking out against the lack of attention to the proper problems is illegal, and force-feeding the public Earth-shattering adverts (telling them that they must keep up and must fit in) is totally the right way to go!
Anyway, it's far better to create some art that rants for you rather than rant yourself (if you ask me). With that in mind, I turned my attention to Banksy himself and investigated what makes him tick as an artist.
Okay, I say "him" - Banksy's been rumoured to be a group of people, a single artist, and a plethora of other beings over time. Paul Gould from Banksy: The Bristol Legacy has stated that he thinks Banksy is indeed a man working alone to produce his artwork (as is noted from investigations into his show "Banksy vs. Bristol Museum" in 2009) - he has found that Banksy works with a small team of PR workers, though all documents passed between this "Banksy team" and Bristol Museum themselves are kept very secret, and any leaked e-mails have been heavily redacted in many areas.
Gould himself believes, however, that it really isn't that important who exactly Banksy is (indeed, he writes that one can pretty much find that out by reading the first few lines of Banksy's Wikipedia page). It's more about the art than the artist, a notion with which I tend to agree. Putting my own artist's hat on, I would like people to remember me for my artwork and the effect that it may have on people, rather than all of the ins-and-outs of how I made it, and basically my life story - so there!
With this in mind, I turned to my second book, entitled Planet Banksy, which is quite akin to a photobook of Banksy's works. It was "compiled and introduced" by KET, a fellow street artist who has also piled some street art from other graffiti artists from around the world into the book. While nowhere near as text-heavy as The Bristol Legacy, its photographs of enigmatic street art make the way that Banksy has influenced graffiti culture (and by extension, the work of other artists) very prevalent via visuals rather than words.
I really like this approach that KET has taken, as it's also let me explore the work of some other street artists which share Banksy's signature style of deep, satirical, stencil-based artwork. I particularly like the image used as the back cover of the book - a piece created by French-born, London-based street artist Zabou and entitled "Surveillance".
Anyway, it's far better to create some art that rants for you rather than rant yourself (if you ask me). With that in mind, I turned my attention to Banksy himself and investigated what makes him tick as an artist.
Okay, I say "him" - Banksy's been rumoured to be a group of people, a single artist, and a plethora of other beings over time. Paul Gould from Banksy: The Bristol Legacy has stated that he thinks Banksy is indeed a man working alone to produce his artwork (as is noted from investigations into his show "Banksy vs. Bristol Museum" in 2009) - he has found that Banksy works with a small team of PR workers, though all documents passed between this "Banksy team" and Bristol Museum themselves are kept very secret, and any leaked e-mails have been heavily redacted in many areas.
Gould himself believes, however, that it really isn't that important who exactly Banksy is (indeed, he writes that one can pretty much find that out by reading the first few lines of Banksy's Wikipedia page). It's more about the art than the artist, a notion with which I tend to agree. Putting my own artist's hat on, I would like people to remember me for my artwork and the effect that it may have on people, rather than all of the ins-and-outs of how I made it, and basically my life story - so there!
With this in mind, I turned to my second book, entitled Planet Banksy, which is quite akin to a photobook of Banksy's works. It was "compiled and introduced" by KET, a fellow street artist who has also piled some street art from other graffiti artists from around the world into the book. While nowhere near as text-heavy as The Bristol Legacy, its photographs of enigmatic street art make the way that Banksy has influenced graffiti culture (and by extension, the work of other artists) very prevalent via visuals rather than words.
I really like this approach that KET has taken, as it's also let me explore the work of some other street artists which share Banksy's signature style of deep, satirical, stencil-based artwork. I particularly like the image used as the back cover of the book - a piece created by French-born, London-based street artist Zabou and entitled "Surveillance".
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| Source: www.zabou.me |
This definitely has Banksy's satirical, poignant nature right at its heart. The use of textures and layers is fantastic, especially in the sharp lines on the "camera-heads" themselves which give a very mechanical feel, which contrasts well with the empty, ghostly feel created by the streaks of paint below each character, as they fade into their surroundings. This alludes to the thought that there are always high-profile parties behind every security camera, and whilst the cameras themselves are generally strong, obvious protrusions from the sides of buildings and along streets, the people viewing the footage that they record are almost entirely unknown to the subject being surveyed.
My research into Banksy and graffiti culture has added to the foundations of my work. Gathering extra opinions on Banksy as an artist has strengthened my personal beliefs in the value of poignant, message-sending artwork, and looking into the evolution of the graffiti scene has made it very apparent to me that graffiti/street art is still an extremely effective method of getting your point across to a wide audience - if not for the presence of the artwork itself, for the drama which its mere presence causes!
My research into Banksy and graffiti culture has added to the foundations of my work. Gathering extra opinions on Banksy as an artist has strengthened my personal beliefs in the value of poignant, message-sending artwork, and looking into the evolution of the graffiti scene has made it very apparent to me that graffiti/street art is still an extremely effective method of getting your point across to a wide audience - if not for the presence of the artwork itself, for the drama which its mere presence causes!
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