Banksy amusement park..?

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Biscuit

Native Creative
Jul 8, 2003
22,325
Brighton
If you listen really quietly, you can hear all the anti-Banksy snobs heading this way. The intellectuals that have all the books but none of the time to read them. Their three-quarter lengths rustling in the breeze. A slim-line tonic resting on their beer gut.. jealousy really is an ugly trait.
 


hans kraay fan club

The voice of reason.
Helpful Moderator
Mar 16, 2005
62,771
Chandlers Ford
But Banksy's jokes are free at the point of use. They're only expensive if you want to buy the original. And that's part of the joke.

True of Hallmark Cards, too. No charge to walk in and read them, laugh your HEAD OFF, then walk out again.
 




Buzzer

Languidly Clinical
Oct 1, 2006
26,121
But Banksy's jokes are free at the point of use. They're only expensive if you want to buy the original. And that's part of the joke.

I don't think that's what the person meant. It's the general chin-stroking about how edgy his art is. Take this for instance:

banksy.jpg


Exactly the same message as this

opinion-graphics-2_1128789a.gif


Which one gets the pseuds stroking their chins? Which is the one that gets valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds?
 


Buzzer

Languidly Clinical
Oct 1, 2006
26,121
If you listen really quietly, you can hear all the anti-Banksy snobs heading this way. The intellectuals that have all the books but none of the time to read them. Their three-quarter lengths rustling in the breeze. A slim-line tonic resting on their beer gut.. jealousy really is an ugly trait.

Oh please. Get some new material. Someone doesn't like something - must be jealous. Anyway, I thought it was the anti-intellectuals who are accused of not liking Banksy...just because.
 






Albumen

Don't wait for me!
Jan 19, 2010
11,495
Brighton - In your face
I don't think that's what the person meant. It's the general chin-stroking about how edgy his art is. Take this for instance:

banksy.jpg


Exactly the same message as this

opinion-graphics-2_1128789a.gif


Which one gets the pseuds stroking their chins? Which is the one that gets valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds?

. . . .
<insert random not sure if srs meme>
 


Buzzer

Languidly Clinical
Oct 1, 2006
26,121
You sir, are the embodiment of the 'pseuds' that you mock.

Go on then. Please explain in the example I've given why Banksy's art is intrinsically more subversive than the Matt cartoon? That goes for Albumen too. I'm serious, I can genuinely see no difference between the two in the message they are trying to get across or how they choose to portray it.
 


Doc Lynam

I hate the Daily Mail
Jun 19, 2011
7,354
Go on then. Please explain in the example I've given why Banksy's art is intrinsically more subversive than the Matt cartoon? That goes for Albumen too. I'm serious, I can genuinely see no difference between the two in the message they are trying to get across or how they choose to portray it.

Because one also encapsulates the relationship we have to our environment and objects within it (especially when state owned) and this also allows for the physical corrupting of brand/ product or propaganda.

banksy-west-bank-wall-2.jpg
 
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Go on then. Please explain in the example I've given why Banksy's art is intrinsically more subversive than the Matt cartoon? That goes for Albumen too. I'm serious, I can genuinely see no difference between the two in the message they are trying to get across or how they choose to portray it.

When I was studying French for A-Level, I got into terrible trouble with the teacher for expressing the opinion that the jokes in Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme weren't as funny as the jokes in The Harry Worth Show (which, for the benefit of younger readers, was a notoriously unfunny TV sketch show).

My only comment on this particular spat is that, generally speaking, Banksy out-performs Matt when it comes to both laughing out loud or getting a political point across succinctly. But I don't dismiss all of Matt's work. I just don't think Matt is capable of crafting a "Punch and Judy show that references Jimmy Savile". I'll reserve judgement, though, on whether the Banksy gag works.
 


Biscuit

Native Creative
Jul 8, 2003
22,325
Brighton
Go on then. Please explain in the example I've given why Banksy's art is intrinsically more subversive than the Matt cartoon? That goes for Albumen too. I'm serious, I can genuinely see no difference between the two in the message they are trying to get across or how they choose to portray it.

You told me earlier to get some new material, and I guess that's an interesting point to start with here. The material Banksy's working with isn't new. The cartoon you posted was an excellent example and there are plenty of others, going back decades, that poke fun at Government censorship and other social justice issues. The joke isn't a new one. Where we differ is the "how they choose to portray it." bit.

So what's new and different about it? Well for me it's about how the art is displayed. For years, art has been in frames, hung on a wall. Hung on a canvass or squirrelled away in small newspaper cartoons (that's where your example Matt is from) but Banksy shook things up a bit. His art isn't hung over a mantel piece - at least it wasn't designed to be consumed that way. Being sprayed on a wall in a public place doesn't make it easy to hang in your front room. Obviously, as his popularity grew, people produced cards and calendars and coffee-table books other such tat - but that isn't how the art was originally supposed to be seen. Banksy put his art in crowded cities all over the world. The idea being to put any number of social and political issues right in our face - to make us stop in our tracks and consider what we're seeing. It was funny yes, and it was also relevant. That's a very different to chuckling through a newspaper comic. It's interrupting us and asking us to stop and think.

So the messages may not be new (he never claimed they were) but the way he's portraying it is very different to the example you gave. Some people just don't like things when they're popular, without stopping to think why they've become so popular in the first place.
 
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Buzzer

Languidly Clinical
Oct 1, 2006
26,121
Because one also encapsulates the relationship we have to our environment and objects within it (especially when state owned) and this also allows for the physical corrupting of brand/ product or propaganda.

Does his art corrupt the brand? Is it effective anti- propaganda? Not when you can walk into any of those remainder sale shops in Western Road and pick up a print of his work for a tenner alongside the iPoo t-shirts that spoof the iPod adverts.
 


Buzzer

Languidly Clinical
Oct 1, 2006
26,121
. His art isn't hung over a mantel piece - at least it wasn't designed to be consumed that way. Being sprayed on a wall in a public place doesn't make it easy to hang in your front room. Obviously, as his popularity grew, people produced cards and calendars and coffee-table books other such tat - but that isn't how the art was originally supposed to be seen.

It may not be how it was supposed to be seen but it clearly is sen as such now. It's become coffee table stuff. His art doesn't have any shock value. At the low end it's on sale in tat shops and at the high end it's mainstream auction sale art with the value being because of the notoriety of the artist rather than the shock value of the art itself.

Yes, you're right. I do sound like a pseud. Think I'll leave it here. :thumbsup:
 




Hotchilidog

Well-known member
Jan 24, 2009
9,143
Does his art corrupt the brand? Is it effective anti- propaganda? Not when you can walk into any of those remainder sale shops in Western Road and pick up a print of his work for a tenner alongside the iPoo t-shirts that spoof the iPod adverts.

What's the deal with those prints? Are they officially sanctioned?

I would say it is still effective anti-propaganda as people do still consider Banksy a 'street' artist despite his obvious commercial appeal and I think people are drawn to his work for that reason. His recent forays into Palestine did enough to keep him in touch with the original meaning of his early work.

I like his work, it's witty and communicates in a thought-provoking and entertaining manner. As with all art that is my purely subjective opinion, I accept that is one that is not universally shared.
 




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