[iamben]

Mayor Bloomberg's reaction is interesting - I'm curious to know when a person transitions from vandal to artist. I don't think anyone could argue that Banksy hasn't cemented a place in the 'history of art' and the books our children read that cover this period will feature his work.

In the UK a lot of people are genuinely gutted when a Banksy gets removed or covered - like something (a gift?) has been removed from the community. People who have their buildings 'vandalised' are often incredibly proud. But at the end of the day, it's still graffiti, still vandalism and I can understand Bloomberg's zero tolerance attitude. I wonder how he'd feel if it was on a building he privately owned (not that he needs the money...)?

[harryh]

Mayor Bloomberg's reaction is obvious.

If he says the city condones Banksy's work then he's going to immediately get asked "Who's job is it to decide which graffiti is art and which will get you arrested?" He's got 10,000 more important things to deal with so he just says it's vandalism and will be treated as such and then moves on to the rest of his day.

[ojbyrne]

I found this interesting to compare/contrast:

"For $41 million — what Citibank paid to sponsor the program for five years — our city bikes became Citi Bikes. To make certain you don’t forget this fact, a Citi Bike sign hangs in front of the handlebars, Citi Bike is printed twice on the frame, and a Citi Bike billboard drapes the rear wheel on both sides. The font is the familiar Citibank font and the Citibank signature decoration floats over the “t.” There is no way to see a Citi Bike without thinking Citibank. The 6,000 bikes so far rolled out, of a possible 10,000, and their signs are a Day-Glo cobalt blue that you see on banks. Nobody wears this color. Nobody paints his or her apartment this color. This blue is bank blue."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/opinion/sunday/color-me-bl...?

[WA]

Haha funny, I was in NYC recently as a tourist and my brother and I, we rented the bikes for a couple days to drive around. I know Citibank, but I didn't pay the slightest attention that the Citibike has anything to do with the bank.

There is no way to see a Citi Bike without thinking Citibank

If I consider my own experience, I'd say it's pretty easy to miss on that.

[saurik]

Why can't vandalism be an artistic medium? I don't see any reason why someone can't be labeled both "vandal" and "artist". (edit: re-reading my sentence an hour later, I think even better wording might be "an outlet for artistic expression" rather than "an artistic medium".)

[DalekBaldwin]

Remember when Karlheinz Stockhausen called 9/11 a great work of art?

[radley]

It's only vandalism to those who want to control the city yet not participate.

[jevinskie]

Maybe the opinion of the property owner(s) is the most important when you determine whether it is vandalism or not.

[arrrg]

That entirely depends on your definition of “vandalism” and that is an extremely boring discussion to have. It’s quite pointless, actually. Who cares about the definition of what is and what isn’t vandalism?

[Tichy]

Do you own a building? Or may I perhaps defecate your web site, for the sake of art?

[James_Duval]

You'd have to eat it first, and servers can be crunchy.

[arrrg]

What are you talking about?

I’m talking about definitions and the argument about definitions that’s happening here. Arguing about definitions is foolish, it’s point- and meaningless. Who cares what vandalism is? The important thing is how one views a certain act, not how one defines vandalism. That only clouds the issue.

Also, I find people who think there are absolutes when it comes to this issue extremely funny.

[rejoinder]

One hopes you'll use the bit bucket.

[Millennium]

> I'm curious to know when a person transitions from vandal to artist.

When they start asking for permission before painting other people's stuff.

[lifeformed]

I don't see why they couldn't be both. They're a vandal when they do it without permission on someone's property. They're an artist when they decide they're doing it out of creative expression. That doesn't necessarily mean they're automatically a good artist, but an artist nonetheless.

[VLM]

The curious other part of the story is watching the train wreck of someone transitioning from a real estate owner to an art owner suddenly without any idea what they're doing or any plan.

The article is seeping thru with "I have no idea what it means" and so on. Well, what it means is you are not an art owner-type but are suddenly an art owner anyway, so you'd best sell that shack or otherwise get rid of it or remove it from the owners control before screwing it up, probably permanently and certainly very publicly.

The story wouldn't read any differently had someone tied a cow to her fence and run off. "I'm the accidental owner of a heifer" and "I have no idea what it means". Well, you're not going to figure it out quickly so use the magic of the market to hand it off to someone who does know what to do.

Its a popular, overdone trope, think of all the hollywood sequels along the lines of "three men and a baby".

[lvs]

That's a bit stuffy. I'd be honored to have Banksy paint my stuff without permission.

[zombio]

By saying that you are giving him permission.

[cjg]

But even if he hadn't said it, it would still have been true.

[Millennium]

I'd probably say yes myself, but I would really, really rather be asked first. That's just basic respect for one's fellow human beings.

[pippy]

In most cases Banksy doesn't ask for permission.

[fastball]

Exactly, which is why Bloomberg considers Banksy a vandal.

[jychang]

Yet he's widely considered an artist.

In an CS proofs class, that would be considered a "proof by contradiction".

[arrrg]

Only if you assume that vandalism and art are mutually exclusive.

I must say, I quite love this seeming (or maybe it’s real?) contradiction. There are no absolutes. That’s what makes Banksy’s work so cool.

[biot]

I could chisel down Michelangelo's David statue into a skeletal structure of David. I'm sure you could appreciate that both as art and an act of vandalism.

[foobarbazqux]

The job of an artist is to break the rules.

[md224]

That's a nice aphorism, but it's too vague; obviously we wouldn't condone artists breaking rules against child abuse or murder. Figuring out where to draw the line is the hard part.

One could argue that if an artist breaks a law to make a statement (about either the law itself or wider sociological issues), then your perspective of the morality of the act could be influenced by whether or not you agree with the artist's statement.

[foobarbazqux]

Okay, fair point. I'll revise: the job of an artist is to break the rules intelligently.

Also, I think you're conflating legality and morality. I can think of situations for all 8 cases of (legal|illegal)(moral|immoral)(agree|disagree). However, you're probably right that agreement/disagreement influences morality judgments.

[pfortuny]

So probably neither Raphael nor obviously Murillo nor Gongora nor probably any romantic poet were artists. Not to talk about the Egyptians.

I do not know about Shakespeare 'breaking' any rules, or any pre-XIX Century painter. Or the Greeks, you know? What rules did the Parthenon's architect break? Or the sculptor of the Laocoon group?

The 'breaking rules' stuff is all very well for some things but it is not the definition of art. Please.

(Spanish examples because I am a Spaniard, but you understand).

Edit: romantical/romantic.

[foobarbazqux]

Incivility is against the guidelines, I don't want to argue with it.

[nly]

I think it's an artists job to get the viewer to take pause and reflect. Whether that means reflecting on the state of society, the human condition, sexuality, property owner rights, or the raw beauty and majesty of nature, doesn't really matter.

[grey-area]

That idea is a relatively recent one, starting with movements like the fauves. Throughout history prior to that, the job of an artist was to produce work his patron/client was satisfied with.

Some would argue that even those now 'breaking rules' have been subsumed by the massive market around art - as soon as the price tag is astronomical, and the method of display only a safe gallery, the rebellion has been captured in aspic and rendered safe.

Banksy is an interesting take on this as much of his work is trying to break out of the confines of the gallery, but he has still been trapped in a system he's at least partly unhappy with by the rising value placed on his work, and has resorted to trying to undermine this with stunts like that $60 sale. It's interesting that the perceived value of the spraypaint with his signature has resisted even that sort of rebellion.

So I don't think saying it must be provocative or break the rules is a very good definition of art, indeed, for most people, even those buying faintly rebellious work in the 20th/21st century, art is decoration (I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but that is how it is consumed), rebellion is an optional extra.

[foobarbazqux]

I see what you're saying, but we probably don't have the same interpretation of the words 'job' and 'artist'. More broadly, the nature of creativity is to challenge authority. Look at any time period, any medium, and the most creative work is always going against the grain. Breaking the rules can be as simple as using an uncommon kind of brushstroke. It doesn't have to be against the wishes of whoever is paying for the work, and furthermore, just because something is challenging authority doesn't mean it's creative.

[grey-area]

Look at any time period, any medium, and the most creative work is always going against the grain.

You are indulging in a circular definition in which most creative stands in for best or most worthy art, which of course depends on the premise which you set up in the first place, and which is a peculiarly 20C view of art. Only with the break down of the patron system and in quest of a new definition of art and a new place in the world did artists turn to the idea of being a creative force challenging the status quo (economic and artistic).

I don't think Michelangelo for example would have recognised your definition of his art as only meaningful in as much as it breaks the rules. His art was almost all in service of the church, which was the dominant political and economic force of the time. You can try to rewrite the history of art as a history of innovation and rebellion, but why bother? Why not understand it in its totality, which is certainly not as an instrument of rebellion, or even as a force for change - for much of the history of art change was gradual and consensual over decades and centuries, and nothing to do with challenging authority, quite the reverse, it was usually in the service of authority, used as propaganda, teaching materials and social proof. Art was a useful craft for most of its history.

Great art can include rebellion, but it is not confined to it, and frankly I think you're defending a pithy but inaccurate slogan which falls far short of capturing the full role of art in our society.

[foobarbazqux]

That was unnecessarily condescending. Incivility is against the guidelines. What I have to say doesn't lose its validity simply because you shame me for my point of view. If you were sure enough of your position, you wouldn't need to humiliate me about mine.

[justinpombrio]

> I'm curious to know when a person transitions from vandal to artist.

Asking for a transition point makes the assumption that they are mutually exclusive. But Banksy is by any reasonable definitions both a vandal and an artist. Hence Bloomberg is simultaneously cleaning up vandalism and destroying art. Whether you think this is a good thing depends on how you weigh these two aspects. Personally, I think it just makes his work more precious. It is the nature of the medium that his work is temporary.

[iamben]

I agree with you completely. But there's a mindset needed from most people before they make the jump from 'vandal' to 'artist' - or vandal artist! There are a lot of graffiti artists doing fantastic pieces - but it'll always be seen as vandalism.

With Banksy a lot of people (certainly in the UK) don't even think of the vandalism, they jump straight to artist - something they probably wouldn't do for a lot of other graffiti. Why so? Publicity? Celebrity sales? The fact the piece has immediate value?

[brenschluss]

> But at the end of the day, it's still graffiti, still vandalism

It's not vandalism if the owners of the buildings are happy to have the piece.

If I scrub a brick wall clean, is it vandalism? No.

If I glue a solid pound of gold to a brick wall and the building owner takes it, is it vandalism? No.

If I have a work painted on my property that draws crowds and will probably have a "market value" of a lot of money, and I'd rather have the work have been painted than not exist, is it vandalism? No.

If I'd be happy or even would actively desire to have a Banksy piece painted on my property, is it vandalism when it does happen? No.

[iamben]

> If I scrub a brick wall clean, is it vandalism? No.

> If I'd be happy or even would actively desire to have a Banksy piece painted on my property, is it vandalism when it does happen? No.

Haha, reminds me of when Banksy would turn up in a van and overalls in the middle of the day, whitewash a wall and then stick up a 'Designated Graffiti Area' sign.. The wall would be covered a few days later... :-)

http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/photos/banksy_designated.jpg

[rolandukor]

yes, but you cannot assume that 'the owners' are all happy. Some may be but some may not be. I probably wont be. For those who are happy, fine; but for those who aren't, I would struggle to see how that wont be characterised as vandalism.

[qq66]

If the building is in public view, local ordinances may require certain displays (obscene displays, tobacco advertisements, etc) to be covered.

[mhurron]

> 'm curious to know when a person transitions from vandal to artist.

When they stop vandalizing.

[alex_doom]

This guy has paid for his copy of WinRAR

[ianstormtaylor]

Nah, they aren't mutually exclusive.

[anabis]

Yeah, I agree. It is art, but if the owners sue, its vandalism.

Private property is one of the foundations of market economy, and I can't think of any necessity of art that calls for suspension of it.

On the same vein, the Mayor can't sue on behalf of private owners. If the owners like it, then its OK.

[yetanotherphd]

This is a criminal matter, not a civil matter. It's just like if a guy punches me on the street, but I decide it was cool and edgy and added to the gritty vibe of the neighborhood. The prosecutor can still bring charges.

[anabis]

You are right, my mistake.

Although it seems hard to press charges without the property owner's cooperation.

Can express permission to paint a graffiti given afterward?

[jasomill]

Surely not. Better question: is "vandalism" without criminal trespass or property damage actually a crime? If it's on private property, and the property owner enjoys the painting, it seems like it'd be quite a stretch for the state to establish that the artist damaged the property by creating it.

[yetanotherphd]

You could always lie and say you gave him permission, but that would probably be a crime in itself.

[mcantelon]

Banksy is adept at leveraging the Streisand effect.

[epo]

You badly misunderstand something. The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence whereby trying to minimise attention actually increases it. "Banksy" has known all along that maintaining the mystique of secrecy would create attention where otherwise there would be none. So the exact opposite of the Streisand effect. His secrecy is to create attention, not avoid it.

[dsuth]

The Streisand effect in this case would be Mayor Bloomberg's reaction, threatening to destroy any of Banksy's artwork found and arrest him if possible.

Honestly, he couldn't pay for that kind of publicity, and unless the good Mayor is actually in on it, Banksy must be grinning from ear to ear at the irony.

[mcantelon]

I'm not talking Banksy's secrecy. I'm talking about the effect of provoking authorities and having their condemnation generate publicity that provides more incentive for Banksy.

[001sky]

/Ironic/ use of the streisand effect == the Banksy effect

There ya go...

[pippy]

The line to me is clear - tagging is vandalism, but if it exists to send a message it's art. A high level of skill is required to make art, either aesthetically or emotionally. Of course there is the grey area where a tag can be so well done you're questioning if it should be in a gallery, but by then the artist has built up a large repertoire of skills.

[thibauts]

Writers used to have some untold rules. Nevertheless tagging / grafiti is at its core, and before being an art form, a subversive means of expression for people that usually are invisible.

Why do you think writers use names like ads ? This is a quest for identity by people that have essentialy been made transparent and ignored by society. They reclaim urban space. "This is mine too, it has my name on it". "You can't do as if I didn't exist".

Being the target of such vandalism is no fun, for sure. I have been. When I did, I tried to remind myself tags are scars forgotten kids draw into average and blind people's landscape.

In this world of writers Banksy is a pacifist. He's addressing average people in their own language. He's talking to us with subtlety and good points, he's touching us, instead of shouting on us.

Be it him or any other writer, don't kill the messenger. If tags are pimples, then our society is sick. Would removing the symptoms cure the disease ? I doubt it, and I guess you do too. We know this all too well for a long time but still don't act on it as a group. These are only reminders, or first symptoms, of what is to come if we continue to indebt ourselves to other human beings. They'll reclaim.

[Apofis]

Nearly everything is art... that's the thing... art is a category. Something doesn't have to be good to be art. Something doesn't even have to have a message to be art. A big black rectangle painted on a canvas, while not considered very good by most, is still art.

[nikatwork]

You realize most writers start as taggers? It's part of the learning process. Everyone's a toy when they start out.

[harlanlewis]

Not all graffiti artists practice on buildings. Plywood is cheap.

Of course, tagging in public, perhaps in a hard to reach place, is a separate skill requiring its own practice... I'd just prefer they did it after having practiced the tag in their backyard first. Like Banksy.

[nikatwork]

Part of the skill in getting up, is getting up without getting caught. If you support full pieces, you shouldn't complain too much about people practicing with tags (although most people do complain).

The solution is of course to have legal walls. But that would be far too progressive for most councils.

[gohrt]

Getting up doesn't require tagging.

Tagging doesn't require permanent paint.

Legal walls don't satisfy the goal of getting somewhere challenging.

[iamben]

I think you're probably correct - and as I said, I think the 'man on the street' attitude in the UK right now would very much be that Banksy is an 'artist' rather than a vandal. I suspect this has a lot to do with an enormous amount of very favourable national press coverage.

[Volpe]

By that definition, tagging an (original) poem is art?

[pippy]

Yes.

The definition of art is more a philosophical question that varies from person to person, so getting consensus on defining what Banksy is is bound to ask the question. Perhaps that's one of his objectives.

[klenwell]

For one influential academic answer to this question, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence

[theoh]

Well, most art critics don't take Banksy seriously, so I wouldn't count on him having a place in the history books any more than a novelty musician like Weird Al, for example. In fact that comparison makes Banksy sound more important than he is. David Blaine, maybe? http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/20...

[radley]

Don't take critics too seriously. Nobody here can name a single critic. But we all know Banksy.

[JamesArgo]

It’s funny he contrasted Banksy with Pollack. I’ve always thought of Pollack (and many other modern artists) as a sort of charming guy who figured out that the art industry is a weird product of status games and so decided to create positional goods with the least amount of effort possible.

[nikatwork]

I find Pollock's works legitimately amazing, and I don't really like much modern art.

Modern art is usually full of clever subtexts and messages that aren't apparent to outsiders. Like a really complicated and abstract piece of jazz music.

Ask a knowledgeable modern art fan to decrypt some paintings for you sometime, it's quite interesting.

[camus2]

You are talking post modern art , not mordern art.Art died when it became highly speculative.But it did not die today, by the time of Picasso it was already dead.

[radley]

Lowbrow FTW

[ojbyrne]

I'm reasonably sure that critics weren't exactly enamored of Pollock during his lifetime.

[brenschluss]

Seriously? This is like saying "poets are just lazy writers who decided to create work with the least amount of effort possible."

[JamesArgo]

Notice the performance in the following description of Pollock at work:

>A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor … There was complete silence … Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint brush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint onto the canvas. He completely forgot that Lee and I were there; he did not seem to hear the click of the camera shutter … My photography session lasted as long as he kept painting, perhaps half an hour. In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally, he said 'This is it.'

In many ways it mirrors the accounts of psychics or other frauds, many of whom are self-deluded and thus not frauds in the common sense. The lone genius, the strange process, the way the world falls away while he's at work, a flaw no one but the guru can keen - these are the type of things we seem to be wired adore. So we should be suspicious of any new tastes we acquire while exposed to them.

Once his work became popular, they became positional goods, like yachts or a diamonds, so we should be doubly suspicious of the tastes of those who paid for it.

Take a random person, get him or her to drip paint onto a canvas however they see fit. Create many paintings every day, save the ones that seem, by hap, to be the most pretty. I contend critics and buyers alike would not be able to reliably distinguish between the works of Pollack and the works of the random person. He created a new style of painting - one that happens to require no skill. I have no idea if he bought his own shtick, but I like the idea that he didn't.

[lmm]

Poetry requires quite a bit of technical skill. You can immediately tell the difference between a good poet and someone trying to imitate them. Not so with Pollock - a painting by someone trying to imitate Pollock looks very much like an actual Pollock.

[andrewb]

I made a recent trip to NYC and visited several museums and Five Points. I was more impressed by the artwork by the graffiti artists than the majority of items at say MoMA PS1.

Unfortunately, I think graffiti art will be accepted one funeral at a time.

[toyg]

It's really weird how this could still perceived as an "ongoing debate", in NYC of all places. Keith Haring died 23 years ago! Hip-Hop culture is 40 years old! Pretty much everyone under 50 thinks meaningful graffiti (i.e. not meaningless tags) are art.

[radley]

Our generation accepts graffiti. Previous generations didn't. It's when they die that objections will cease.

[lclarkmichalek]

If not in art history books, he'd have a place in anthropology history books, simply due to the vast differences in the way people perceive his work, and the conversation (furore in some cases) that it causes.

[brady747]

I'm guessing critics are often historically wrong about the importance of various artists. How are you determining most of them don't take his work as value additive? Why do you accept their opinion as valuable?

Also, for reference, My wife is an Art History Professor at a highly respected liberal arts college and she takes Banksy seriously.... though she would not want to be called a critic.

Disclosure: owner of a Mr. Brainwash original

[ecocentrik]

It looks like art criticism is pretty much dead so I wouldn't look to them for an opinion. "There Are Fewer Than 10 Full-Time Art Critics in the U.S." http://galleristny.com/2013/05/there-are-now-less-than-10-fu...

[iamben]

He makes the contemporary/2000s artist pages in a number of the generic art books I've picked up over the last few years. Although I can't claim to be any kind of a critic.

[Goes to play some Weird Al on Spotify ;-)]

[80]

Critical reception is far from the strongest metric for seeing which artists are going to stick around. "Who's buying his work" is a better question to ask.

[jayvanguard]

Most people don't take most art critics seriously, so there is also that.