Banksy in LA

Today’s Observer carries an article about Banksy’s first foray to LA.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Jude Law and Keanu Reeves were among the celebrities gathered for the first LA show by the Bristol-born prankster and graffiti artist who is known for his street art and interventions in Britain,. His show, 'Barely Legal', was his first large-scale exhibition in the US. Complete with valet parking and a retinue of publicists the show included pieces of British iconography, such as a Guardsman on Horse Guards Parade atop a pantomime horse, in addition to work aimed specifically at the local audience. Occupying an entire wall is a painting reinterpreting an American icon, the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. In Banksy's interpretation, the scene is given an urban setting with a group of protesters raising the flag on top of a car.


On entering the exhibition , visitors were presented with a flyer reading: 'There's an elephant in the room. There's a problem we never talk about. The fact is that life isn't getting any fairer. 1.7 billion people have no access to clean drinking water. 20 billion people live below the poverty line. Every day hundreds of people are made to physically be sick by morons at art shows telling them how bad the world is but never actually doing something about it. Anybody want a free glass of wine?'


A week before the Los Angeles exhibition, Banksy visited Disneyland, somehow managing to place an inflatable figure dressed as a Guantanamo detainee alongside a railroad ride. A short film of the escapade runs inside the LA show. In the same darkened screening room a glass case displays another of his recent interventions: the Paris Hilton CD doctored by Banksy, which he carried out with the help of Los Angeles-based producer Danger Mouse. Enormous cockroaches had been placed inside the display case.
Like much of Banksy's work, it is an overt statement. But of what, precisely?


Banksy himself displayed a fine sense of bullshit in a interview he gave to Roger Gastman published in the LA Weekly. 'Some of the paintings have taken literally days to make,' he confided. 'Essentially, it's about what a horrible place the world is, how unjust and cruel and pointless life is, and ways to avoid thinking about all that. One of the best ways turned out to be sitting in a warehouse making paintings about cruelty, pain and pointlessness.'

Banksy on the West Bank

Anarchy Jordan, an artist at the first public view of the show on Friday night, had his doubts. 'I don't know if he's selling out, but it's sad,' Anarchy Jordan was impressed by the subversiveness of some of the pieces, including the familiar Paramount films logo bearing the word Paranoid. 'Coming to LA and doing this is subversive," he said. 'After all, LA is the origin of so much nonsense.'

This used to be at Brian Haw's protest outside parliament

Banksy
Graffiti