Existencilism

This space is usually devoted to blogs reviews, but I don't know whether Banksy's site could be considered a blog or not. This cutting-edge (no pun intended) stencil artist who singlehandedly changed the look and technique of the international graffiti movement is certainly a commentator, and he's found a high-impact, high-profile way to spread his exuberantly subversive message about all things political and social.

Imagine an adult leopard, stalking angrily away from the cage he has just escaped. A second look at the cage reveals that it's actually a giant IPC (international pricing code) on wheels, with half a dozen bars bent open far enough to provide the getaway. The free and independent spirit escapes the confines of McWorld and the spiritual prison of global capitalism/militarism. And all this is conveyed with an apparently simple (but appearances can be deceiving) cut stencil.

Even with his fame and a string of books, the public still doesn't know the Bristol, U.K.'s native's real name, despite its familiarity with his sophisticated technique and politically aggressive style.

In 1999 his spray-paint and stencil work began appearing on London walls and supplanting the freestyle work that had always been the graffiti artists' exclusive method. Thanks to his extensive travels during which his work has showed up on urban walls spread over several continents, Banksy is now internationally recognized as a consummate and serious technician as well as a political gadfly.

This is no unschooled wall dauber. A careful look at images like his life-size rendition of Two Bobbies (male and female) Kissing reveals a flawless and careful mastery of the pictorial medium, probably bolstered with no negligible amount of formal education and training.

The driving force of Banksy's work is often generated by his incorporation of conflicting and disharmonious elements, as with the stenciled, black-and-white figure of the masked urban terrorist poised to throw a bouquet of carefully hand-painted wildflowers, which serves as the front page of the artist's website.

He doesn't limit himself to outdoor public graffiti, however. He's also an exhibiting studio artist and inveterate prankster. His easel paintings feature the same jarring, contradictory content as some of his best stencil graffiti, making him seem like Thomas Kincaid wielding a straight razor. One canvas, for example, shows an immaculately rendered tranquil woodland pastorale with a buccolic footpath, beside it an ominous aluminum tower topped with four security cameras. Some of these pictures have shown up in the world's most prestigious museums -- sneaked in by the artist and mounted to the wall with adhesive. London's Tate Museum, the Louvre, and New York's Museum of Modern Art have all been unappreciative recipients of Banksy's art, as was New York's Metropolitan Museum where curators were surprised to discover they'd been selected by the outlaw artist to receive his gold-framed portrait of a woman wearing a gas mask.

Banksy's street work remains his most dynamic and politically relevant work, however. His pictures on the segregation wall dividing Israel from the Palestinian territories, which combine stenciling with paintings of beautiful landscapes seen through trompe l'oiel holes and windows, are among his best, and his ubiquitous London rats, such as those clambering over an official sign reading "Warning: Anti-Climb Paint" combine artistic sophistication with good-humored anti-authoritarianism.

Despite his prodigious abiities, Banksy doesn't take himself all that seriously. When an admirer mused that his rat motif was really clever because "rat" is an anagram of "art," Banksy mused, "I had to pretend I'd known that for three years."

Fortune and celebrity mean nothing to him. "The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over," he truculently declares, adding, "Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit."

All of the images discussed in this piece can be viewed at Banksy's website.

His books include "Wall and Piece," "Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall," "Existencilism," and "Cut It Out." All are available at Amazon.com.