Englisch · 2024 · B Text-based Task

Banksy - when graffiti becomes art

Banksy - when graffiti becomes art
Many people picture messy, pointless tags on walls
when they hear the word 'graffiti.'
Since the law treats graffiti as vandalism,
anyone caught spraying can face a heavy fine.
Yet even though some graffiti started out illegal,
it has gone on to achieve worldwide fame.
Some of it is even regarded as art -
Banksy's 'Girl with Balloon' is one such example.

Banksy, who has kept his real identity a secret,
is now the world's best-known street artist.
He goes to great lengths to remain unknown, for instance
replying by e-mail or disguising his voice in rare interviews.
Some speculate he is a Bristol man called Robin Gunningham, though this has never been confirmed.

Speaking about his youth, Banksy describes himself as an unhappy schoolboy
who expressed himself through freehand graffiti.
At eighteen, he narrowly escaped arrest while spraying public buildings with his graffiti crew.
His friends managed to run off, but Banksy had to hide behind a rubbish truck.
There he spotted some stencilled letters on the vehicle, and it inspired him.
Realising that freehand spraying was not his greatest skill,
he changed direction and became a stencil graffiti artist.

By the early 2000s, Banksy had moved to London.
At first he simply imitated his idol, the French artist Blek le Rat,
who also used stencils for his graffiti.
But Banksy soon developed his own style, using it to voice public concerns
in a provocative, often humorous way, carefully choosing
each location so his political messages would reach large crowds.
In 2004, one of his most impressive stencil pieces, 'Kissing Coppers,'
appeared on the wall of a pub in Brighton.
It caught people's attention by showing two male police officers kissing,
a way for Banksy to show solidarity with the city's LGBTQ+ community.
In 2011, Bruton Street, in the heart of Mayfair, one of London's wealthiest districts,
became home to one of Banksy's most popular works, 'Falling Shopper.'
The piece shows a woman with a shopping trolley falling from a building.
Many believe this graffiti criticises the uncontrolled shopping habits
found in Western capitalist societies.

Nowadays, Banksy's output has spread into sculpture, prints, paintings and film,
work that wealthy celebrities often collect.
Yet Banksy has always felt conflicted about earning large sums from his art.
In 2020, he donated a series of paintings to be auctioned
to raise money for various social causes.
Two years before that, the auction of his print 'Girl with Balloon'
revealed exactly what Banksy thought about buying and selling art:
everyone in the room was stunned when, just as the print sold for £1.1 million,
it began sliding through a shredder.
"I wanted to destroy the print completely," Banksy later admitted,
"but the shredder, hidden inside the frame, stopped working."
In September 2021, the partly shredded piece was renamed 'Love is in the Bin' and sold for £18.58 million.

Banksy's rise to fame has also created certain problems.
What should happen to the increasing number of his artworks
sprayed illegally in public places?
Now that these works are worth enormous sums of money,
city councils face the dilemma of whether to protect, sell or remove them.

Adapted from: 'Spotlight' 2/2022, Spotlight Verlag GmbH, München; https://www.streetartbio.com/artists/banksy/ (20. 04.2023); https://www.theartstory.org/artist/banksy/ (20. 04.2023); https://www.britannica.com/ biography/Banksy (21. 04. 2023); https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/blogs/life-around-world/graffiti-crime-or-culture (21.04. 2023); https://www.gwr.com/stations-and-destinations/travel-inspiration/blogs/banksy-street-art-london (27. 10. 2023); https://banksyexplained.com/issue/graffiti-consumerism-and-capitalism/ (27. 10.2023); https://magazine.artland.com/banksy-street-art-best-graffiti-essential-city-guide/ (27.10.2023)