[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.