banksy yeah!!

How do I start to write about Banksy? First of all, when I was only thinking about starting a blog, I knew that if I ever had one, I wanted to feature Banksy and his work. I looked more intensely into his work when I included  in my thesis, a shop window he did for a pet shop in New York in 2008, that was brilliant, and as ironic as it gets. That’s the video I edited from material from that window. Banksy commented on that window that “If it is art and it is seen from the street I guess it can still be called street art.”

Well Banksy, is the pseudonym of a British graffiti artist, whose real life identity is not publicly known. According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s." Banksy made a name for himself painting stenciled satirical and political images in public spaces, but always succeeding in keeping his identity hidden. Banksy is now one of the most well known street artists, and is known for his unique critical eye on the british culture, politics and the modern lifestyle.

"A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves." banksy

"People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine." banksy

"A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with." banksy

Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti directly himself, however, art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art, sometimes authentic, sometimes not, reaching amounts of up to hundred thousand pounds, leaving the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder. The auction record for a Banksy is 288,000 pounds ($640,000) for “Space Girl and Bird”.

Banksy's first film,  "Exit Through The Gift Shop", subtitled as "the world's first street art disaster movie", made its debut at the 2010  Sundance Film festival. In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for best Documentary for the film.

You can go look through a lot of his work in his site here, where I found all the pictures and here is the site of his movie and here is (yes it is true) an interview at "all these wonderful things" blog concerning his film. I can go on looking at his work, his interviews and his quotes for ever but I am stopping the writing with this last quote and suited picture.

"All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?" banksy