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Banksy: An enigma wrapped in street art

A wave of street art took Bristol by storm in the 1980s.

Bristol in south-west England is known in the Indian subcontinent as the final resting place of social reformer Raja Rammohun Roy, but it was also a major centre of slave trade, which continues to arouse passions to this day. The statue of slave trader Edward Colston was torn down in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests — the most recent reflection of a distinct underground scene that developed in the city over the decades, with a defiant, subversive streak on political issues mostly expressed through music and visual art. A wave of street art took Bristol by storm in the 1980s, which formed the context for the rise of Banksy, the iconic graffiti artist, who began on its streets in the 1990s and gained global fame after moving to London around 2000.

Some say his is a carefully created myth, and claims about his identity often pop up, but there are no authentic photos of his and no one knows his real name for sure. Tourists in Bristol are encouraged to go on a Banksy Walking Tour, covering locations where his work is visible. His authorised and unauthorised art sells for millions of pounds, with artwork steeped in political activism visible across Britain and other countries. His satirical and subversive take on contemporary events and issues combined with dark humour with a signature stenciling technique has become immediately recognisable. A mobile home bought by a couple in Norfolk for £1,000 was valued at £50,000 after Banksy used one side as a large canvas for a mural. In 2011, his documentary, Exiting Through the Gift Shop, was nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar; he expressed reservations at the time about the concept of award ceremonies, but accepted the nomination and blanketed Los Angeles streets with his art before the ceremony.

One of the biggest stories in the art world recently was Banksy having his ‘Girl with a Balloon’ painting go through the shredder moments after the work was sold for over £1 million at a Sotheby’s auction in London. Soon after the gavel dropped, an alarm sounded inside of the picture frame and the canvas passed through a shredder hidden within the frame, partially shredding the picture. Banksy posted an image of the shredding on Instagram captioned “Going, going, gone...”, with the auction house acknowledging later that the self-destruction of the work was a prank by the artist.

Art lovers are known to stand in queues for hours to visit exhibitions of his work. In the summer of 2009, the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery was taken over by him for an extraordinary exhibition of his work called ‘Banksy versus Bristol Museum’. In 2010, Time magazine included him in its list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In 2015, he created the ‘Dismaland’ theme park in Weston-super-Mare, which ridiculed and lampooned themed attractions in Britain at the time.

In March this year, Banksy confirmed he was behind an artwork that appeared on the wall of Reading Prison, showing a prisoner resembling its famous inmate Oscar Wilde escaping on a rope made of bedsheets tied to a typewriter. The graffiti appeared as campaigners lobbied to convert the jail into an arts hub. The Reading Borough Council said Banksy’s involvement suggested he was backing the campaign: “We are thrilled that Banksy appears to have thrown his support behind the council’s desire to transform the vacant Reading Gaol into a beacon of arts, heritage and culture with this piece of artwork he has aptly called ‘Create Escape’. The council is pushing the Ministry of Justice, who own the site, to make suitable arrangements to protect the image.”

Such is the demand for Banksy’s artwork that he created a website called Pest Control, described as the only body authorised to authenticate his art: “We do this to prevent confusion, fraud and misattribution.” It cautions and advises potential buyers that “There are a lot of people trying to sell fake Banksy’s who go to great lengths to make them seem real. If it seems too good to be true — it probably is…”

(Prasun is a journalist based in London. He tweets @PrasunSonwalkar)