The whole "high-art = big money" mindset is what ruins everything. Just let it be. It's an image that people enjoy looking at, and it's right there for everyone to see - touchable, fragile, transient. Giving it a monetary value defeats the whole purpose of it. It's not meant to be preserved, it's just a curio that livens up the outdoor scene.<p>Stop <i>valuing</i> it so much - it's meant to be weathered and destroyed. Enjoy the art for what it is and let urban nature take its course.
Mayor Bloomberg's reaction is interesting - I'm curious to know when a person transitions from vandal to artist. I don't think anyone could argue that Banksy hasn't cemented a place in the 'history of art' and the books our children read that cover this period will feature his work.<p>In the UK a lot of people are genuinely gutted when a Banksy gets removed or covered - like something (a gift?) has been removed from the community. People who have their buildings 'vandalised' are often incredibly proud. But at the end of the day, it's still graffiti, still vandalism and I can understand Bloomberg's zero tolerance attitude. I wonder how he'd feel if it was on a building he privately owned (not that he needs the money...)?
That's terribly comical, considering it's just a graffiti piece. Banksy will find the fuzz it creates hilarious, I'm certain.
Actually, the reactions it creates could be seen as the much grander art performance, compared to his previous 'art sale' [1]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX54DIpacNE" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX54DIpacNE</a>
It took ten minutes of reading articles and comments to convince myself this was real and not a joke. You can't make this stuff up:<p>"A scuffle broke out at the scene of Banksy's latest piece in Williamsburg as a building manager and bystanders manhandled a vandal who tagged over the piece [of graffiti]."<p>"The building manager grabbed him and threw him down and was calling the cops, but the guy bolted"
I tried to find out the owner of a commercial building that was Banksied in order to buy a cut out of the wall from him, but by the time I had gotten anywhere the work had been overtagged :(
The whole Banksy craze tells me how much of the value in art is things being famous for their own sake. It isn't that it's art (or graffiti) that causes the problem (or value) it's that it's someone famous.<p>There is a story in NYC about the French embassy finding they had a Michelangelo in the lobby of their building. (It was there when they bought the building) Once they realized what they had (years later) then they had a problem. They couldn't sell, it, and it required security, so ultimately they gave it to a museum.<p><a href="http://www.thearttribune.com/The-Cupid-attributed-to.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.thearttribune.com/The-Cupid-attributed-to.html</a>
<a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/a-statue-for-a-statue-sort-of/?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/a-statue-for-a-...</a>
"Will it make us money?" and describing this as "our plight" are wrong-headed and hilarious, but par for the course in a city where the mayor doesn't see the beauty in such art.
I think my favorite one so far was his "art stand" where he was selling his original Banksy stencils for $60 -- I'm assuming these will likely start popping up in auction for quite a bit more.<p>I would have likely walked by a stand like that and assumed it was a scam. But if you had told me it was real and I could have bought one for $60 bucks, I would have tried to immediately buy them all.<p><a href="http://instagram.com/p/fa_ndFq-3W/" rel="nofollow">http://instagram.com/p/fa_ndFq-3W/</a>
It's not graffiti, it's disrupting the entrenched fine art distribution incumbent oligopoly.<p>hacking is just like painting and all that - <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html</a>
In my opinion, graffiti is a very temporal, fleeting art form. Enjoy it while it lasts, but it's impossible to preserve graffiti, especially from an infamous artist..
If the mayor was serious about catching Banksy then he would go to the phone companies and get all of the phones that were within a 200 metre radius on the night that the artwork went up for each and every piece. Then he could put them in a database, get his 'SQL for Dummies' book out and select just the phone records that are common to all incidents.<p>He can then go back to the phone companies and get the billing details for Banksy and his entourage. He could also ask them to let him know exactly where they are, follow them and catch them red handed doing their next piece.<p>Personally I see Banksy as a cartoonist rather than as a graffiti artist. He does not have a formal arrangement with the papers to syndicate his work, he does not even have to churn something out every day. Instead he gets his work prominently shown in all of the British papers, reaching an audience that no other cartoonist can. He has Robin Hood grade street cred. due to this audience reach.<p>Whereas other cartoonists use pen and paper, Banksy uses the side of some house or another wall as the medium. It is an intermediate form much like the conventional cartoonist's paper is. Although of value to the crazies that go mad for such things it is of no value to Banksy if his aim is to get his work into the paper, to reach a mass audience.<p>As for the people who have inherited the work, they could just let the boring 'tag' graffiti artists vandalise the Banksy masterpiece as quickly as possible, whilst there is still the media interest. It will then be known that it has been destroyed and the troublesome visitors will cease to turn up. They can then paint it over, to restore their property back to normal and get on with life.<p>Getting back to the mayor, if the trick works for catching Banksy then it will probably work for all of the inane tagging losers out there. So long as citizens report new tag-vandalisms in a timely fashion then the police should be able to get a reasonable sized list of phone numbers to work with.<p>I have known and known of 'tag' graffiti artists in my time. I still don't see why they are so determined to do what they do and for so late into adult life. I feel sorry for them not having any meaning to their 'art'. The strangest thing to me are the 'tags' put up in some foreign town. Imagine going to another country, a place you do not live, just to paint your tag up on some walls that you are not going to see again.<p>With a Banksy it cannot be said to truly exist until the papers report the new birth. With small time tedious tagging types they get Facebook instead of the media to show off their efforts. Invariably those that tag post their tags online somewhere. The phones can lead the authorities to where this is and get the evidence needed for prosecution.