Banksy: Art in the shadows

Few weeks ago, during a trip around Spain, I casually found my self in Barcellona where ,talking with people in my hostel, I discovered about a Banksy exhibition.

How is it possible? Banksy the great revolutionary artist with no identity who fights against the many inequalities of a society increasingly enslaved by a capitalist and irrational system... now I should pay to see his works? I collected interesting points of view and I went the same.

So the following day (with 9 euros) I found my self at one of the most beautiful art exhibition I ever visited. Two large corridors with exhibitions recreated directly on the walls, to be honest with the English artist, and two others spacious rooms with paintings and screens projecting in loop videos of the greatest extravagances that distinguish him.

In particular I want to bring back two shots to which I’m attached, cause both are banal and childish ways of making fun of an entire society and in particular their admirers, leaving everyone speechless:

The first one is the simple display of a ramshackle banquet between one of the busiest streets of San Francisco, where dozens of his works were for sale at bargain prices; not being signed and with an elderly bearded to sell the canvases there were just few lucky people to bring home those who at auction would have been worth hundreds and perhaps thousands of euros.

The game is simple and fun, but if you stop for a second to reflect, one of the workhorses in Banksy’s career immediately comes to the surface: the fight against homologation. A banal joke that immediately slams a philosophical question about human nature in our face. Cause if a piece of art attracts worldwide auctions and make huge numbers everyone wants it, while if the same piece it’s sold in the street no one cares? It is not beautiful what is beautiful but what pleases; and after this I don’t believe it anymore.

The second video instead shows a complicated mechanical tick that concerns a

paper grinder inserted in a frame of a painting, donated year before by the artist, to who we must recognise the great foresight imagining what would have happening, so when the painting was sold at auction for the modest sum of 1.18 million euros the mechanism is been activated. You can imagine the faces of those present seeing the shredded painting fluttering on the ground. A few hours later Banksy limited himself to commenting on the fact quoting Picasso

“every desire for destruction is also a desire for creation"

Leaving everyone stunned and giving a little hope to human humility.

The exhibition keep going with the most recognized works of the english artist, from the little girl with the red balloon to a couple of policemen kissing in an embrace to envy every Parisian film. I let myself be carried away by the beauty of those images, the irony of the contexts and the anger for the indifference that exudes from each work.

His main style is the stencil, an art that concerns in cutting silhouettes the placed on top of the others, apparently simpler than freehand drawing, but still able to give a strong and clear message, undisputed strength of his works. Funny and also full of humility the statement of Banksy in one of the very rare interviews he gave, in which he says he started with stencil because with the freehand was really bad, unable to draw a straight line.

In addiction to the immediate visual impact that his drawings transit, his hate towards the imposed order stands out in particular, a subtle and continuous mockery that make funny, but a weak and passable fun, cause immediately after the underlying message is powerful, never too hidden, never indirect.

That often brings heavy and disturbing issues, passing from the exploitation of the poorest countries to the scheduling of wars and conflicts just for profit, or even the alarming toxic expansions of media, ready at any time to fill our heads of news, hiding the truth under a thin veil of pity.

There are countless works and as already mentioned each as the incredible strength to bring the observer-straight to the message, but the characteristic that in particular distinguishes the english artist, giving him all his credibility, is in my opinion his identity still hidden. Even after years of international success Banksy does not have a face, we don’t know for sure even his natural country or his age. Could this be the secret behind his impredictability? We don’t know, but what we are sure of is that Banksy didn’t betray himself.

Think.. a man who live by his art and fight with his bare hands against a society that he has recognised rotten from inside. A man who denounces the enrichment of a few to the detriment of many, always on the side of weakest; how could such a man ever sell himself to this cruel world, printing his face on the covers of every magazine. Banksy is not afraid to show himself to the publiche hides his identity to protect the veracity of his works, to let them speak for him. He understood that to fight against a system a way bigger than him you have to know how to sacrifice everything.

Two hours after entering I still hadn’t walked half of it. Wrapped in the messages left by the painting, flooded with tragedy and infamy from all over the worldall enclosed by the banksyian cuts, and immediatly after the clear awareness of a population who stand by and then laugh at it with a glass of champagne.

Mice and champagne are recurring images in the salon. Climbing the stairs of a mezzanine you are flanked by a mouse that happily flies on the cap uncorkedby an icy bottle, everything reunites us with our present, fast and carefree, increasingly fleeting, with the image of you taking possession of what you are. Mice and champagne

In the end the war. Theme obviously very reported in the works of Banksy. Among the many I find essential to bring back his trip to Jerusalem where he was able to paint on a wall a little more special than others: it is the great wall built around the city to divide the jewish population from the Palestinian one, obviously it is not even to comment on the absurdity of the gesture that seems to be able to perfectly materialize the mental closure of jewish’s, even after all the atrocious example that the past gives to us, about how differences, once again, should be appreciated and used for collective growth instead of, as still too often happens, hidden and even threatened.

So what could be better than a couple of battle helicopters flying menacingly and painted of black on the high concrete wall, but with a pretty pink or red bow on the cockpit, to distort any feeling felt in admiring it. Once again the message is simple, direct and ironic. As if to beg in every way for the attention of a mass that observes, is unworthy, maybe buys and then forgets.

I leave the exhibition after hours and only then I realize that I have undertaken a long reflection totally unconscious. Banksy struck deep inside me leaving a bitter taste in my mouth and a strong determination to fight everything we are becoming in favour of a simpler world. More direct as his paintings.

Images taken at 'The World of Banksy' exhibition dedicated to the artist in Barcelona - 18 Nov 2020 - 31 Dec 2022