[lifeformed]

The whole "high-art = big money" mindset is what ruins everything. Just let it be. It's an image that people enjoy looking at, and it's right there for everyone to see - touchable, fragile, transient. Giving it a monetary value defeats the whole purpose of it. It's not meant to be preserved, it's just a curio that livens up the outdoor scene.

Stop valuing it so much - it's meant to be weathered and destroyed. Enjoy the art for what it is and let urban nature take its course.

[dionidium]

This is one of those things, like complaining that the developer of a webapp you like "sold out" to a large company, that sounds nice unless it's your app with an offer or your building that just got tagged by Banksy. The owners of this building didn't assign the value; they inherited it. In any case it would be plain dumb to ignore it and I have no idea why anybody would upvote a comment suggesting that they do so.

[lifeformed]

My comment isn't direct at the individual in this article; I don't blame them for what they did. I just was thinking the whole culture that's evolved out of this is kind of annoying. Our society had the opportunity to just enjoy some cool images, but turned it into some stupid meta-drama.

The whole point of these works is to bring out this drama and highlight the absurdity of it all. It's not absurd in the sense that people are acting irrationally, but absurd in how our culture treats art as some mystical thing that has to be set on a pedestal behind protective glass. We've elevated "art" into something that supposedly only highly-cultured people can appreciate, and shut it away from the layperson.

By doing his art in the cheap and fragile form of graffiti, intimately accessible to everyone, he's giving art back to the people. It's just a simple creative expression for a creator to enjoy sharing. Yet, as Banksy surely predicted, we've tried to apply our weird notions of art onto it, that it should be locked up, cut out of the wall, sold for millions, viewable only to the elite.

There's no easy way out, because no individual is incentivized to change, yet society as a whole needs to change.

[Amadou]

it would be plain dumb to ignore it and I have no idea why anybody would upvote a comment suggesting that they do so.

I upvoted it because I was going to write essentially the same thing.

I've been thinking about it since Colbert publicly non-invited Banksy to paint the wall outside his studio. I don't believe that dollars are an appropriate unit of measurement for life experiences. I do believe that graffiti and others forms of street art are intentionally impermanent and functions of their location.

I would support trying to sell it if the building owners were living hand to mouth, but that's obviously not the case. The author's already monetized the "inheritance" by selling a literary "piece" to NY Magazine. She doesn't need to sell it so leaving it as part of the gestalt the artist created is the greater good. If it gets defaced by some other graffiti artist or the police/Bloomberg (who are only feeding the frenzy with their attitude) then so be it, the limited lifespan of graffiti is an inherent part of the art. Like making sandcastles.

I would probably set up a hidden video cam in case someone else came along and tried to steal it. Not that the stealing is necessarily a problem for street-art, but taking it would involve damage to the building itself and that would be unacceptably outside the scope of screet-art.

[joe_the_user]

I don't believe that dollars are an appropriate unit of measurement for life experiences. I do believe that graffiti and others forms of street art are intentionally impermanent and functions of their location.

But Banksy isn't graffiti in general or something other people decided was worth money after someone just did it for joy. Banksy's shtick is calculated to generate publicity and a whiff subversion specifically as a part of him maintain his position as a highly paid, highly valued, highly publicized. Banksy could have gone to NYC and done anonymous graffiti for year and no one would have notice if there wasn't any publicity.

[twoodfin]

Unlikely. His shopworn "social commentary" is typically a dead giveaway. ("I remember when all this was trees.")

[baddox]

I don't understand your attitude. Money is a very good way to genuinely quantify the value of something. Putting a dollar amount on a piece of art means people do enjoy looking at it for what it is. Unless you're defining "value" in some manner unfamiliar to me, you can't say "enjoy it" but "stop valuing it."

[markost]

But don't you see, you're missing the entire point. Banksy is a graffiti artist. At no time have any of his works been capable of being bought or sold. His graffiti has routinely been lost, painted over, weathered, or ignored. That is the whole point of his work. Not only that, but often the point of his work is to devalue some other seemingly valuable thing--witness his Ronald McDonald statue[1].

Just because some rich people feel like attaching monetary value to most art doesn't mean Banksy's art has to fall in line. It's not like you're going to take down a section of wall and sell it, and someone did, he would also be missing the entire point.

Just be happy that cameras exist and take a picture.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8886934.ece/ALT...

[lotsofcows]

"At no time have any of his works been capable of being bought or sold."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/arts/design/another-banksy...

[stickydink]

They, were on sale, just last week ;)

http://banksy.co.uk/2013/10/13/central-park

[lmm]

If people enjoy seeing it it seems decidedly churlish not to preserve it for future generations. As does someone who can only enjoy it because other people won't be able to.

As for missing the point, I'll raise you death of the author. A piece of art must stand on its own merits, not the intentions of its creator.

[icebraining]

But you can't preserve it for future generations, because the location and inevitable impermanence is part of the work. By covering it, you'd be defacing the work to protect it.

[lmm]

The defence of the value of his work was that "people enjoy looking at" it. Is that compromised by covering it? No.

(Any measure of art preservation is an inconvenience to viewing it, but we generally consider this a worthwhile tradeoff)

[icebraining]

we generally consider this a worthwhile tradeoff

Yes, generally we do, and I'd agree for graffiti done in canvas or similar mediums, but I think street art is an obvious exception, since the canvas is the whole street. You could only preserve the artwork by preserving at least the whole building, and possibly more than that.

[joe_the_user]

The whole "high-art = big money" mindset is what ruins everything. Just let it be. It's an image that people enjoy looking at, and it's right there for everyone to see - touchable, fragile, transient.

I agree but I'd like to point out that Banksy is as much a part of the "high-art = big money" as the galleries and the press.

[skue]

> Giving it a monetary value defeats the whole purpose of it.

And what if the purpose is the absurdity of its monetary value?

I don't believe that Banksy's goal is to have his work be seen as curios. It's getting us to have these conversations.

[lifeformed]

I agree, and I think the message is clear: we've perverted what people call "high art". To paraphrase another post I made, we've raised "art" on a pedestal behind protective glass, as something that supposedly only highly-cultured people can appreciate. We've applied this perversion to Banksy's graffiti in a very ironic way:

People want to preserve the paintings, even though they're intentionally transient. They want to cut them out of the wall, even though the environmental context is critical to the piece. They want to sell them for tons of money, even though it's been freely given in a public space, for everyone to appreciate.

In short, people want to destroy the whole artistic value of the piece in order to increase the monetary value. I guess all that remains is the meta-message that predicts this outcome.

[wazoox]

Value in art comes from excess of money in too few hands. Much too rich people need investment vehicles, and because of this sad state of the matter art, collectible cars, London flats and many other rich toys get ridiculously expensive, completely disconnected from any sense of utility or real value of any sort.