Banksy's back with surprise daily street art of animals across London
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Artworks from one of Britain's most celebrated artists, Banksy, have appeared across London in the past few weeks, delighting and surprising the city's residents. Banksy's real identity remains unclear after decades in the public eye, and he's unveiled art installations that have left critics and fans guessing, as Willem Marx reports.
WILLEM MARX, BYLINE: His name is unknown, his contributions often unexpected. But his ability to grab headlines remains unmatched. The series of surprising stenciled animal graffiti has appeared across the British capital this month and once more catapulted the artist known as Banksy back into the center of the country's cultural conversation. A black goat materialized last Monday on an old industrial building in Southwest London. The next day, two elephants appeared in bricked-up windows at the end of a row of houses. Monkeys swung across a bridge in East London. A wolf was painted on a South London satellite dish but stolen soon after its appearance.
A day later in Northeast London, a pair of pelicans were spotted perched above a fish and chips shop. A cat adorned an abandoned billboard. A glass police box in the heart of London's Financial District was transformed overnight into a fish tank. A mural of a rhino appeared as if climbing atop an abandoned car, and a gorilla outside London's largest zoo looked to be liberating a seal and several birds.
ANDREW RENTON: I think there's strong evidence over the years that Banksy sees himself as a political artist and has a resonance in political terms in almost everything that he does. And it's kind of interesting because the works that have appeared in the past week are, in many ways, not political.
MARX: Andrew Renton is a professor of curating at Goldsmiths University, and his academic research often focuses on the way contemporary artists interact with society.
RENTON: It's kind of illusion magic, and that's what draws you in. That's what enables you to understand this very accessible art. And that accessibility, we might argue, is political. So it's not high-flying. It's not deeply philosophical. It's not hard. The accessibility is what gives him a tool to communicate.
MARX: Yet despite the sometimes whimsical subject matter, Banksy's social criticism and satire can be very serious, says art dealer and curator Acoris Andipa, who manages a high-end art gallery business.
ACORIS ANDIPA: He puts situations together which are, at first, playful and comical and - humorous perhaps is a better word. And then there's a depth to it. So people laugh and then suddenly draw in and suck between their teeth and then just goes, ouch. That's got a sting to it.
MARX: Andipa first sold a Banksy work almost 20 years ago and has sold hundreds of his paintings and thousands of his prints since then. He says the recent spate of street pieces is unlikely to move the broader market.
ANDIPA: If you're asking whether there's a correlation between his street art and any activity pricing going up or suddenly a big fervor of purchases, I would say no, not really.
MARX: Indeed, the artist himself has long rejected the commercial and reputational trappings of his success. But for some, that only adds to the allure, says Jasper Tordoff, a Banksy specialist at MyArtBroker, a company focused on the so-called secondary market that bills itself as the largest private dealer of Banksy's work.
JASPER TORDOFF: The anti-establishment theme that's been so strong in a lot of Banksy's prints - a lot of people really like that poking fun at the art world which they are sort of participating in, which is, you know, ironic on all counts. And that's, again, something that collectors really enjoy.
MARX: He's produced artwork focused on Britain's domestic challenges as well as international conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. And Tordoff says, given his sometimes-controversial stances, the anonymity helps protect his work's value. But when it comes to the mystery of Banksy's real identity, almost everyone in the art world has a theory.
For Acoris Andipa, who's never met him in person but knows many people who have, Banksy's continued anonymity relies on several factors - the strong relationships he's built with people around him, his Robin Hood reputation as a philanthropist who donates sales to good causes and a certain secretive romance to his street art installations that can challenge, confuse but also inspire. For NPR News, I'm Willem Marx.
(SOUNDBITE OF JORJA SMITH SONG, "GREATEST GIFT")
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