Does Banksy Rule OK?

How do you react when confronted with walls defaced with marker pen and daubed with spray painted tags? To most it is a depressing sight, a symbol of decay and neglect creeping into an area. It fills us with a sense weary unease, and seems little more than an attempt at pissing on ones own territory.

Take a closer look however and there are a gems hidden amongst the scrawled mass, public toilet door toilet door witticism for example, (perhaps bodily functions bring out the poet/comic hidden within)

Finding Banksy

If you look long enough you might come across the stencilling of the anonymous UK guerrilla artist Banksy. Is his work vandalism, or is it thought provoking, inventive and humorous, adding to a location rather than detract from it?

Banksy was strongly influenced by the works of Blek le Rat, and the anarchist punk band Crass, both of which mounted campaigns using graffiti and stencils in the early 1980s.

Banksy’s easily recognizable street art, combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stenciling techniques. His highly detailed graffiti consists of two or three layers of fine lined stencils. Often satirical, Banksy’s pieces of art comment on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics.

Banksy’s usual subjects are familiar images or iconic figures which he manipulates to form his to darkly humorous art. Art which is threaded thought with a strong social commentary on topics such as anti-war, anti-advertising anti-capitalist, anti-establishment or pro-freedom.

The very nature of Banksy’s work is disposable by being illicitly carried out in public spaces. Councils have often over painted his works. With Banksy’s increasing fame (infamy) this appears to be a changing trend with councils now preserving and often ’retouching’ Banksy graffiti as potentetial tourist attractions.

Art can be so Crass

If you want to know how to create artwork that jars the viewers emotions then check out the offerings that wrap the Crass records.  The conflicting imagery of Gee Vaucher not only shocks but makes you think about stuff you wouldn’t normally think about.  That’s what hurts me the most.

I took a fresh look at the Feeding the 5,000 Crass album cover and was still struck by the hard edged, mono chrome graphics shot through with her own take on social narrative. In la-de-da art speak ‘the juxtaposed gaiety and horror Gee Vaucher  depicts leaves you cold from the insightful social conscious imagery that tears away the thin veneer of acceptability’.  Slip that into your art mid-term paper and you may get a silver star from teacher. Way to go guys.

Punk influencing punk
Gee Vaucher’s best known for her work with the anarchist punk band Crass. Her work is intellectual, skillful; at times beautiful and often horrifying. She was the artist behind the 1980’s single cover for the Crass record, Bloody Revolutions.  The artwork was inspired by the famous photo of the Sex Pistols. Instead of the Pistols, Vaucher replaces the band members with images of the Queen of England, Pope John Paul II, the Statue of Liberty and Margaret Thatcher.

To my surprise Gee Vaucher’s work isn’t all collage although her finished work closely resembles it.   Although it is one of the mediums she uses.  Much of her artwork is hand drawn imagery created in pencil and water based gouache paint.

Hand drawn and rendered
I was amazed to discover that the artwork for Bloody Revolution, Feeding of the 5,000 and Stations of the Crass was hand drawn and rendered as opposed to collage.

I have a whole new level of respect for Gee Vaucher’s work… kudos to you Girl!  Rumor has it that Gee Vaucher used the same tube of black gouache to creation all of the crass imagery.  This is either an urban myth or she had the largest tube of gouache ever made.

Gee Vaucher’s creates instantly recognisable visuals and graphics. Her collages mixed with awesome hand rendering and stencil lettering have deeply influenced both punk and anarchist aesthetics. Contemporary popular stencil art owes much to the likes of Gee Vaucher, with artists like Banksy at the forefront offering up his own particular brand of social commentary and notoriety.

Shril’s ‘not normal’ gene

Do you ever feel your not quite normal?  I do.  In fact I’m sure I have a school report somewhere that says I’m not.  The ‘not normal’ point was something my parents reinforced in me for as long as I can remember.  Their crys of ‘why can’t you just be normal’ was used as some kind of fore warning that life will not turn out well if I continued to ‘dress like that’ or ‘dye my hair that color’.

That had me wondering if there is a ‘not normal’ gene.  A gene that a number of the population are born with.  Once the gene becomes active then the not normal gene does its magic and stands you out from the herd. I bet there is you know and all artists have this gene.  They are just different.

Activate the not normal gene
Thinking about this a little deeper I can remember the exact time my not normal gene activated.  It was August 1978 whilst I was holidaying with my parents on the Lincolnshire coast in the UK.  I was 13 and the world was just becoming interesting.  I remember walking into one of those old independent type record shops that used to be everywhere before limited company’s like HMV and Virgin swallowed them all up.

The shop was in a small covered in market and had lines of 12” vinyl albums you had to thumb through.  As I thumbed my way through the merchandise I was suddenly stopped dead   in my tracks.  I’m still not sure if it was the garish pink and acid yellow colors that first caught my eye or whether it was the wording splashed across the front.  I had found the album Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols.  My life would never be the same again.  My ‘not normal’ gene had been activated.

Thinking back to that time I can remember a feeling of curiosity and excitement rolling around with my teenage hormones.  The world suddenly seemed more adult and little more dangerous.  It seems foolish now but I remember a number of elaborate schemes to keep my parents from seeing the album cover.  In a small four birth caravan that’s not an easy task.

Punk influence
Although I didn’t realise it at the time that a particular artwork on the album cover and the musical contents it held inside became the biggest influence on me as an artist that I could ever have imagined.  When punk rock came on the music scene with bands like the Sex Pistols – music suddenly became accessible.  The punk movement rocked the music establishment with its Do-It-Yourself ethos.  Suddenly anyone who wanted to could do it.

Punk Art
The artwork that went on to symbolise the punk ethos was created on this album cover by the artist Jamie Reid.  It was a few years later at art school that I found out this type of artwork that resembled the style of a ransom note was referred to as décollage.

In artwork décollage is somewhat the opposite of collage.  A collage is an image built up from other parts of existing images.   Décollage is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image.  A similar technique to this is the lacerated poster. Here one poster is placed over another or a series of others, and the top posters are ripped to reveal the posters underneath to varying degrees.

The artwork that surrounded the punk movement made use of all three of these styles.  They often look the same but examine them closer and you can see they are different techniques.  Jamie Reid is credited as the defining the image of punk rock.  He is the original punk artist.

God Save the Sex Pistols
The ransom-note lettering was synonymous with the Sex Pistols.  Subverted images of cut and paste artwork went on to influence punk imagery for a generation.  His best known works include the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and the singles “Anarchy in the UK”, “God Save The Queen”, and “Pretty Vacant” .  The 1977 silver jubilee portrait of the Queen by was to become the basis for one of punks most iconic and instantly recognisable punk images ever.  This gave Reid the notoriety of becoming the man who put a safety pin through HRH’s lower lip.  Back in 1977 this was not good form.  Now, over 30 years on I feel Jamie Reid’s edgy cut-up DIY graphics remain as striking and influential as the day they were created.

Shril thoughts
Jamie Reid’s punk artwork is fine art, but doesn’t require years of learning fine brush strokes, studying form and aesthetic principles. It does not go with the flow; it kicks at the art establishment.  It is real, it is accessible, we can all do it.  His work says something.  It speaks a language we can all understand.  This is how art should be.  It switched on my ‘not normal’ gene.