Opinion Painting the town red

It has been a perfect tempest in a teapot,the distracting,frothy combination of art,money,celebrity and urban exploit that Banksy has brought to New York. This British graffiti artist,purported millionaire,activist,filmmaker and prankster spent the last month roaming the city,perpetuating what is — depending upon your point of view — street art,political resistance or vandalism.

It began on October 1 when Banksy’s website announced a month-long “artist’s residency” titled “Better Out Than In”. (The phrase may seem to elevate the streets and the outsider artist above insiders and their pristine galleries,but it is also a crude British version of “gesundheit”,except for expulsions other than sneezes.) The website said that each day of October,Banksy would unveil a work somewhere in the five boroughs and announce its location online. The works would vary among “elaborate graffiti,large-scale street sculpture,video,installation and substandard performance art”,according to an email from a representative of Banksy to The Village Voice. Banksy madness ensued,on the street and even more in the media,as if October were,somehow,a slow news month. It didn’t hurt that Banksy is one of the few graffiti artists whose work has been successfully monetised — with high prices paid at auction for prints and occasional paintings,as well as for pieces of Banksy-limned walls. In addition,he seems to have a kind of genius for self-promotion. His anonymity,his anti-establishment views,his terse quotations all contribute to the Banksy mystique and brand.

The project attracted scores of devoted fans intent on a glimpse of their hero or his work,people seeking new selfie ops and those intrigued by the prospect of seeing someone luck in to some money. It was Zorro meets Kilroy meets Lotto. It has also resembled an extended joke on the art world: a widely dispersed art fair played out in fits and starts.

Banksy seemed to conduct a kind of social experiment,using the city as a rat maze into which he dropped different kinds of bait to see how New Yorkers would react. We saw paranoia,greed and competitiveness as well as camaraderie,flash-mob-like fun and sincere or cash-driven reverence. People who had barely heard of Banksy until one of his works turned up on their buildings were suddenly hiring guards or covering them with plexiglass or roll-down gates. Some graffiti pieces lasted less than two hours before they went the way of all graffiti,and much else,quickly sinking beneath the restless surface of the city.

But what of these works as art? They have been decidedly uneven,running such a gamut of contemporary genres that Banksy began to feel like a collective. His October offerings have had a made-by-committee variety,full of adman jokes and sight gags that emphasise a clear punch line over visual style.

Banksy is best known for stenciled images on walls,with or without words. Nearly half of the works in “Better Out Than In” used this technique,with results that were steeped in genteel nostalgia. Their contrasting gray tones and touches of colour had a louche 1940s or ’50s aura. The standout of the series — and by far the most political — was The Sirens of the Lambs,a truck with cute automaton heads of sheep and cows poking through the slats,making alarmed noises on their way to slaughter. Tuesday’s Banksy seemed designed to demonstrate both his charitable instincts and his dollar value. The Banality of the Banality of Evil,is a saccharine Kinkade-esque landscape to which Banksy added a man in Nazi uniform,seen from behind gazing off into the distance,à la Caspar David Friedrich,and his signature under the name of the original artist,K. Sager. All proceeds of the sale will go to Housing Works,an organisation dedicated,as its website says to “fighting to end AIDS and homelessness”.

The New York Times