17 September 2006

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


8 comments:

elasticwaistbandlady said...

I like this guy's humour! I don't ever think it's selling out to showcase your art to a larger mass of people.

jams o donnell said...

His work is full of humour, no doubt about that. What I like mostabut his work is teh fact that yu can laugh or smile then you realise there is a powerful message there.

elasticwaistbandlady said...

I like the revised Paris Hilton CD ala Banksy. I've listened to two tracks off of it. C....R....A....P! I've relegated it to novelty gift status for Christmas along with William Hung CD's and rubber vomit.

jams o donnell said...

I really do like his work.. I love his mischief - caustic commentary but biting humour.

The Paris Hilton thing was hilarious.. I can't say that I am sorry she got a dose of Banksy's wit... But her CD as a present? Oh dear ewbl, that's cruel!!!!

elasticwaistbandlady said...

Yes. As a Christmas present. She puts the GAG in gag gift.

I have to admit it though, she is very pretty. Too bad she's dumb as a box of rocks. The glory of God is intelligence, but I'd still like to have boobs like her. Gaw, I'm so shallow sometimes.

jams o donnell said...

I suppose she is attractive but .. far better looking than Nicole Ritchie but the same could be said for a stepladder..

I have caught the odd clip of Hilton on tv and she hardly struck me as one of the world's intellectual titans! Hiho I daresay her lack of intellect will never cause her to go hungry...

Anonymous said...

i'm anarchy jordan, who was quoted in this article, and i wanted to make my opinion clear -- i think that banksy's work creates a great clash between the two faces of the spectacle, to wit, disneyland and war; what i meant by selling out is that when revolutionary autonomous creativity becomes "Art" and people stand in line to museum it up, it loses a kind of radical potential. the most important thing about radical vandalism is that it intervenes in bourgeois normalcy and disrupts it. what could be really subversive about standing with your hands behind your back and looking at art at a designated time and place? there was a huge line outside to see the work and it just looked like a big money production, a gallery event for the distraction of a few "hip" folks with a position, what with the whole warehouse they rented out and the huge canvases and sculptures shown. see http://situationist.gq.nu for a critique of the artist in a hierarchical, commodity society...

jams o donnell said...

Thankyou for your comment Anarchy. For some works of art there probably is little other option but to view them in galleries. I'm being a touch facetious I realise but there is no chance of seeing Rothkos littered around London!

AS for Banksy his art is feral and is thus best seen in the wild so to speak. The one piece which I used to see every work day was the CND canvas that used to be part of Brian Haw's protest outside the Houses of Parliament. That was the right place to see it.

Thanks for the link. I will read your critique.