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by Amadou 4619 days ago
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.

1 comments

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.

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