This is my attempt to take Banksy seriously. According to “Banksy Does New York,” a new documentary about the mysterious street artist that screens as part of the DOC NYC Festival on November 14 and premieres on HBO two days later, I have not done that in the past. The use of “I” here is more general than personal. More specifically, the film makes the claim that the media that covers visual art (of which ARTINFO is undoubtedly a part) failed to acknowledge the importance of the hooded trickster’s New York City residency in October 2013, when he produced a new work every day for one month and revealed the contents on a special website. What was not disclosed was where the work was located.
This sent people scurrying like sewer rats to the far reaches of the five boroughs, equipped with flashing camera phones for maximum efficiency in social media upload-ability. Filmmaker Chris Moukarbel focuses on these self-dubbed “Banksy Hunters,” who spent the entire month excitedly parsing through clues on Twitter and rushing to the next spot Banksy defaced, whether it be an underpass in the heart of the commercial art world in Chelsea or a street corner in East New York.
Banksy’s supporters see the democratization of his residency, using the street as his canvas and delivering his work straight to fans through non-traditional methods, as a middle finger to the art world. In the process, the film puts him on a pedestal as a populist hero — bringing art back to the people and subverting the networks of the art world that validate work based on capital.
But this notion is based on a few misconceptions. The first is that Banksy exists as an autonomous artist outside the art world he critiques. Through his embrace and then shunning of commercial dealers, he pretty much created a market for modern street art that wasn’t there before. The creation of the Banksy brand through a process of hype and exclusivity is not dissimilar to the world he rejects, and some would say has even added to the appeal of his work being removed from walls and sold without his permission. One feeds into the other.
The film has no answer for this because it’s not interested in engaging with the hypocrisy of Banksy’s continued project of straddling the line between the inherent illegality of being a street artist and the fame of being a commercial artist. It presents Banksy’s supposed subversions of the market — selling real prints at a table off Central Park for $60 apiece without telling anybody, in one instance — as examples of the artist sticking it to the man. What it really shows is white dudes buying what they think is cool street art to decorate their overpriced condos. Once they realize the piece of art they bought for cheap on the street is worth a ton of money, they transfer the work back into the networks of capital that flow through the art world and add an addition on to said condo.
What the film would rather do is blame not just the gallerists and collectors who taint art with money, but the critics as well, who are pretentious and work as a comedically snooty opponent for the narrative the film wants to build. The problem is that the criticism is annoyingly vague. (Not to put to much emphasis on it, but we covered Banksy’s residency in New York extensively.) And if Banksy is all about rejecting the traditional art world, why does validation from the art press even matter?
What “Banksy Does New York” doesn’t want to admit is that Banksy is taken seriously, and taken seriously to task for the contradictions in his work. His politics are convoluted at best and banal at worst and his work formally uninteresting. Even graffiti community purists don’t accept them, and their “spot jocking” (one artist tagging over another’s work) is displayed in the film as the work of jealous competitors. But as long as we keep creating a false image of the artist as a prophet, critique will never be accepted. Banksy will always be a folk hero and we’ll be the fools.
