Banksy in the Big Apple... (1 Viewer)

[skiroomalum]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...zi-doctored-landscape-to-help-aids-group.html

Banksy just spent a month teaching New Yorkers how much we need his "art". He does have a good sense of humor though. And this was a great gesture.

 

[roni]

The prizes he realizes are ridicoulously high of course, but his art is cool. Banksy get's a *like* from me any day of the week.

 

[Skygazer]

Me too, I have a collage of his above my computer screen and it makes me smile.

 

[mjp]

He's an average artist on his best day. But I do like some the ways he plays with perception. He did a genius thing in New York; he set up a street vendor to sell his art for $60 a pop. Most people didn't buy it because they thought it was fake. That's pretty god damn funny.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I loved following it. Street sales like Gypsy Lou, but worth thousands of dollars to people who didn't know any better. It was brilliant. LOVE this guy and hope he doesn't turn into an asshole.

I'm pretty sure Lou Reed would have appreciated it too...

 

[Bruno Dante]

I've got his Wall and Piece book which is pretty cool. I like his stuff. It's worth noting a French graffiti artist who called himself Blek Le Rat had a big influence on him, especially in terms of using stencils. Also, does anyone remember the book Subway Art and Street Art? The former was US-based and the latter was about the European graffiti scene and both were from the early 80s when it was inextricably linked with the hip-hop scene, particularly in New York. There was quite a big scene in Bristol which included future music artists Goldie as well as 3D out of Massive Attack. This was about the same time I used to have a piece of lino on which to practice back spins whilst listening to a ghetto blaster. :DD

 

[Otto jr]

Also, does anyone remember the book Subway Art and Street Art? . :DD

Have you seen the pbs documentary companion to 'Subway art?' It's called Style Wars. Made in 1981. It's on YouTube now.
I saw the Banksy 'slaughter truck' on 8th ave. the other day. Cute. I have seen so much graffitti and other street art over the years, it's hard for me to make this guy into such an exalted figure just yet.

 

[mjp]

Have you seen the pbs documentary [...] called Style Wars...

You can get that on Netflix too. I know because it's been in our queue for 9 or 10 years. ;)

 

[Bruno Dante]

Have you seen the pbs documentary companion to 'Subway art?' It's called Style Wars. Made in 1981. It's on YouTube now.

I've seen that but it was a dodgy VHS copy years ago. I'd forgotten all about it though, so cheers for reminding me.

 

[Skygazer]

Just to keep him level headed apparently there is a new book out titled: Wanksy: Interpreting a Grafitti Virtuoso.
Amazon has it ( if you are interested). An everyday story of yukky, everyday grafitti ( like we don't see it all the time!)

 

[Otto jr]

There's a guy who is some sort of honcho at the MTA. He's in charge up at the 6 yard in the Bronx. He was certainly in the front lines when the MTA was trying to rid themselves of graffitti, but even he recognized that there was value in the art form.
A few years after the last subway car had been scrubbed clean he encountered SEEN standing by the razor-wire. He had the foresight to commission SEEN to bomb one last subway car, 'for old-times sake.'
The honcho had this car put off to the side on one of the "lay-up" tracks in the back of the yard. It's still there and this guy wants to find a way to keep it when he retires.
In a hundred years, I would hope that the SEEN six-train car will sell for more money than any Banksy. But that's just me, it's just the way I look at things.

Edit: nothing to do with the above but if you watch closely in 'style wars' you will see a Buk quote on the side of a subway car. Whoever catches it (or already knows) and posts it here gets a pint of Cutty from me. It was SEEN who tagged it up.

 

[mjp]

Debates about what is art aside, riding the old NYC subway in the very early 80s was a fucking miserable experience. You can say that cleaning them up robbed the city of something, but I can't agree with that. Saving an old tagged car for nostalgia's sake is one thing, but cleaning them up was a good move.

 

[Otto jr]

I'm torn on that one. I was a teenager in New York in the early 80s so I have nostalgia for all of it, but it was a mess.
There's a lot of talk about pre-Giuliani NY lately because Di Blasio is going to be mayor, it will be the first time in 20 years that someone other than Giulliani/Bloomberg will be running the show.
Bernie Goetz was also in the news this week. Busted for selling a bag of weed in union square. It brings back memories.
Things were ugly back then.
So I am torn. I do feel like we were robbed of something and the clean trains are a reminder of a lost city, but I also hesitate to go back and experience that city again.

 

[mjp]

I do feel like we were robbed of something and the clean trains are a reminder of a lost city, but I also hesitate to go back and experience that city again.

Well that's the thing, isn't it. It's easy to glamorize the filthy and dangerous past of New York, and tell war stories and feel that unique pride of survival. But not many people would want to go live in 70s/early 80s New York again. Or even visit it.

Just like no one in Los Angeles wants to go back to the 80s or early 90s and all the murder and chaos and misery. Living through times like that only makes you appreciate better, slightly more peaceful times. I'm not arguing for gentrification, but maybe as you get older and don't want everything you do to be a dangerous or miserable ordeal, you look at things differently.

I think big chunks of New York and Los Angeles were made less dangerous and more pleasant without completely losing their souls. But of course some places did lose their souls, so...

 

[mjp]

he set up a street vendor to sell his art for $60 a pop.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Well that's the thing, isn't it. It's easy to glamorize the filthy and dangerous past of New York, and tell war stories and feel that unique pride of survival. But not many people would want to go live in 70s/early 80s New York again. Or even visit it.

Just like no one in Los Angeles wants to go back to the 80s or early 90s and all the murder and chaos and misery. Living through times like that only makes you appreciate better, slightly more peaceful times. I'm not arguing for gentrification, but maybe as you get older and don't want everything you do to be a dangerous or miserable ordeal, you look at things differently.

I think big chunks of New York and Los Angeles were made less dangerous and more pleasant without completely losing their souls. But of course some places did lose their souls, so...

Boston in the '60s-'70s was filth pit (along with the "dirty water" Charles River). There were a few neighborhoods where you felt like a human, but too many where you didn't want to turn the corner, and litter, litter, at every turn. It was as if every Burger King and McDonalds restaurant in the suburbs had been blown up, and all the garbage had landed in Boston. Of course, I was young and my mother was a staunch Irish Christian, so peeing on the sidewalk was a sign of the devil.

The city took its time cleaning itself up, and eventually, with with the help of a verbally bungling now ex-Mayor who is loved and ridiculed at the same time (Thomas Menino; a great man who has done a bunch of great things for Boston, but he just can't express it properly), and today the city is largely a safe place, a clean place, and thanks to The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), you can fall out of a canoe in the Charles River and not have to get a tetanus shot.

In some respects, Boston has lost a bit of its soul (Wally's Jazz Club, a 40s/50/60s bastion of top jazz talent, is now a relic with less interest), but by and large, the regentrification of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville (my old haunt) has worked, as long as you aren't banking on subsidized housing and somesuch (let's not get political if we can help it). The history is still here, and the tourists were here in the 60s/70s/80s/90s, etc. So, it is was it was, or something like that.