What with Thanksgiving being earlier this year, the xmas decorations were up in Florence before one single flake had flown. I've been a busy little elf the past week or so, working on this year's crafty gifts for my pals. Can't give any clues or post any pix because the recipients may be reading my blog, but suffice to say that my fingers have been flying.
Season's Greetings, originally uploaded by trailerfullofpix.
There's been some heated discussion of Banksy lately in my Flickr groups, with threads like Is Banksy Rubbish? and Is Banksy's Work Art or Vandalism? Yes, he's a vandal, and yes, his work is overrated, overexposed and overpriced. But that doesn't excuse this recent act of vandalism down in Brighton, where his kissing coppers have been blanked out with black paint by person or persons unknown, which seems not only anti-Banksy but anti-gay as well. I hope they nick the little wankers what done this.
Despite all the ranting (mine included), I still love those rats. And I envy anyone who bought prints for £95.
In recognition of the 2000th viewing of my Flickr photostream, I created a new set of my Top 40 most interesting photos. I'm still not sure how Flickr determines "interestingness," whether a bunker full of people troll through each and every photo that's uploaded and then rate them, or whether there's some kind of bot that gives points for color, contrast, composition, etc. The neat thing about my new set is that I used a set generator widget to create it. Here's how it works: First you give the widget permission to access your Flickr account. Then you set up the parameters of your set -- number of photos, sort criteria, tags, etc. You can even have your set refresh daily so that pictures come in and drop out, like with my Top 40 which presumably changes every so often. When you've got it all determined, which literally takes 20 seconds, the set will magically appear on your Flickr page. You gotta love it.
This is one of the stamps of mass destruction by James Cauty. I just scored this print on eBay. Cool, huh?
It seems like such a short time between my initial enchantment with Banksy and his fall from grace in my eyes. I first stumbled upon pictures of his street art on Flickr when I was doing research on London and Brighton for my trip. I thought he was great -- his biting social commentary, amusing and/or powerful images, the subversive way he worked (stenciling on walls by night, sneaking his own works into museums and hanging them by day).
When Spooner asked me this summer what I wanted to do when I came across the pond, my immediate reply was "Look for Banksies." "Banksy," he growled. "What's Banksy?" I explained and the next thing I knew he was sending me a link to a front page article in the NYTimes about the opening of Banksy's show in Los Angeles. Clearly, my say-so that something is cool means nothing, but the NYTimes has all the cred in the world.
We did have a great time looking for Banksies, and we found three -- one in Southwark, one in Chalk Farm, and one in Brighton. We also discovered a gallery in Brighton that sells limited edition prints. The three ghetto rats that were on display in the window drew us in and we talked for a while with the gallery owner. He told us that a Banksy print that went a year ago for £95 would fetch over a thousand quid today. Unbelievable!
In the gallery, we also looked at prints by some up-and-coming graphic artists. When he saw me looking at several postage stamp prints, the gallery guy told me about James Cauty, a musician-turned-artist. He creates stamps of mass destruction -- satirical pieces about the war, the monarchy, global warming, and the roles the US and the UK are playing in All Things Evil. He's run afoul of the Royal Mail with his stamps depicting Queen Elizabeth wearing a gas mask. One of his series is about 5/ll, the day Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament. Another, called America Self Destruct, shows Bugs Bunny with dynamite strapped to his waist and a detonator in his hand. Dolk Lundgren, a Norwegian street artist similar to Banksy, has done a great print of Prince Charles wearing a Burger King crown. All brilliant stuff, and still (somewhat) affordable.
So, what's my beef with Banksy? He started out as an artist of The People, going about at night with spray paint and stencils, giving the masses of London something to look at, think about, or be amused by on their daily journeys around the city. Now, he's the darling of the celebrities, and Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie pay tens of thousands of dollars for his works, which they will hang on their private walls in their guarded homes, kept far away from the grit of the streets and The People. But the power and the joy of his images comes from seeing them in the context of those streets. These aren't so much fixed images as they are temporal and transitory ones. How they are seen and perceived varies with the day, the weather, the traffic, the news, the crowds. The images change over time as they fade, are painted out by building owners or tagged over by other graffiti artists. Hiding Banksy away in the homes of the stars is just wrong.
