Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

This essay is written to argue whether the street artist Banksy is a true graffiti writer. This is an argument that has followed Banksy throughout his career and, thus far, has seen no definitive answer. The most common perception is that Banksy is a graffiti artist, however, often these ideas are based on his choice of medium i.e. spray paint and his painting on other’s property. Many in the graffiti world believe that his works don’t constitute true graffiti, but instead represents another art from. In this essay I am going to look at the core principles of graffiti and then at Banksy’s work and practices relating to his work in order to find an answer. In doing so I am also going to produce a piece of physical work to accompany the essay. This artefact will mirror the conclusion by, in the event of his not being a graffiti artist, taking his separate art form and adapting it into graffiti, or in the case of his being a graffiti artist, joining his graffiti style with that of another writer.

The first section of this essay will outline the major features of Graffiti art; The second shall deal with the qualities of Banksy’s work that mirror aspects of true graffiti art; The third will continue to review Banksy’s work, but through its differences to true graffiti art; Finally I shall join the two major arguments in a conclusion and judge them in order to receive a definitive answer.

The name is everything. Interviews with the biggest names in graffiti mention: “The Name”, in essence, “The Name” is the graffiti writer’s identity; how he presents himself to the world, his persona. This is represented by a “tag”, a simple, easy-to-remember word or phrase that gives off a character, the creation of this tag works to act as a brand “that comes to have far greater meaning than the actual word”[1]. The tag is easily identifiable to other writers bringing fame and recognition, reputation grows through: Repetition of your tag, as put by writer: Japan1 “You have to get your name around” [2]; The placement of your tag, “You want to get your name in a place where people don’t know how you could do it”- Junior161 [3]; And its mural quality, “It’s about the tag, it’s about graphic form, styles and spray-paint application”[4]. At its purest form, “The name is the FAITH of graffiti”-Cay161 [5]

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These two examples of the artist LEE’s work show the importance of the name. Although the pieces have great mural quality and extra features, there is no doubt as to the identity of the artist, shown by his name emblazoned upon them. Lee is also known to be the first to paint a whole train, the train being a moving billboard giving access to a city full of potential viewers, getting his name around.

Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

The method is almost as important as the name, to become a master writer, one has to follow the steps through Piece creation: First a tag is needed, your name, throughout my project my tag is: RBT, taking letters from my name and allowing me to incorporate a robot character for more elaborate works. Next is the “throw Up”, two letters from your tag filled in with an outline, I skipped this step as my pseudonym itself is only three letters long. This brings one to the “Dub” the whole tag in two colours or more with a background if wanted.

For

mine, I chose to use contrasting yellow and blue for a background, a red black and white fill with a white outline. I tried to further my skills in having a go at creating a fade between the blue and the yellow, another fade between the red and the black and through use of arrows for effect; I wasn’t as successful as I wanted to be, however the point of going through each stage is to learn the required skills. Next is the “Masterpiece”, a work that either is an elaborately decorated name or a different subject painted in the spray; however a major point is the inclusion of the name as a large part of the piece.

My “masterpiece” here, again used as a practice, is on a small scale, and with limited space, meaning the inclusion of the name was less effective than it should be, however, for my final artefact, I have followed the rules closely, and with greater skill, gained through my practice pieces.

One of the major ideals with graffiti is the repeatability and the relation to the tag, “How’re you gonna get your name round if you do all that fancy stuff”- Junior161 [6], if your tag or character is too complicated to repeat with ease, it loses its power; In reference to a series of “OBEY” posters, the street artist: Shepard Fairey says: ”It started as an inside joke, but through repetition, it gained real power in people’s minds because of its perceived power”. This principle originated in propaganda such as the Lord Kitchener posters during the war, and this same principle was championed by graffiti writers at its birth in New York, creating an “Economy of the ego”[7] the writer with the most and best pieces was the best.

One thing that Banksy does, perhaps more than any other notable artist, is get his name about. Banksy does this in more ways than one, piggybacking on his media success to bring greater notoriety to his name in addition to physically producing his works in such large volumes that he has them placed all around cities in Britain and America, and often in hard to reach spots. An example of one “Hard to reach spot” where Banksy has daubed with his paint is the Israeli-Palestine wall; the wall is patrolled night and day by hundreds of heavily armed soldiers. The volume of Banksy’s work and their placement fit into the philosophies of Junior161 and other original writers; as David Samuel, another British graffiti artist, says: ”It’s about the adrenalin of painting when any moment you might be caught, beating the security system”[8].

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Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

Banksy has, perhaps unknowingly, followed Junior161’s philosophy regarding “fancy stuff” in his pieces, by finding the balance between mural quality and his ability to quickly reproduce a piece through the use of the stencil. Examples of his mastery of stencilled image repetition are littered around London and his hometown of Bristol in the form of his rats: approximately 30cm high, these rats can be seen holding umbrellas or saying some profound political message or humorous statement, e.g. “Because I’m worthless” (pictured), parodying the L’Oreal television advertisements. In the same way as mentioned previously, the repetition of the image gave the viewer a sense of power and so “it gained real power in people’s minds through its perceived power”.

Some are unique, but many are identical. Further beyond this is the repetition of Banksy’s images due to his fame, with pieces appearing on television, through the free use of his material that anyone can access to sell for one’s own profit and his extensive internet coverage. Banksy’s pictures are so well known, that his work is instantly recognisable.

This leads me on to my second point, that Banksy’s work is instantly recognisable, even without the inclusion of a tag. This, style itself has become for Banksy what a tag is for a conventional graffiti writer, an identity. The major point of a tag is for people to know how “Big” you are, Banksy is an anomaly, however, as his notoriety has come about from his pieces selling for exorbitant prices when many people still consider them criminal acts.

This in turn has led to his large media coverage and in turn led to the recognition by the public of his work. These sales and the resulting coverage however have led to the opposing opinion from other, more purist graffiti writers lay claims that Banksy is a “sell-out” and is rejecting his art form for the money. Banksy has before tried to turn this opinion around; holding a “graffiti all-comers competition” in Leak Street, a tunnel that has since become graffiti designated area. [9]

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BLADE’s piece entirely focuses upon his name and is made completely in free-hand. The mural quality achieved through this method shows his accomplished skill with a spray can. The Banksy shown is one of his earlier pieces which much more heavily feature his tag, however the tag is not the subject, neither does it draw the viewer’s attention. There is also little skill, further than cutting out of stencils, involved in the creation of this piece, labelling him as a “toy”.

Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

Whilst his name seems to cover every street and newspaper from London to Bristol, Banksy’s work doesn’t feature his name as its most major constituent. As Cay161 said: “The name is the FAITH of graffiti”, so in not including his tag in every piece of work he produces, is Banksy turning against his faith? It certainly seems that way to an extent. By not using his tag as a key feature of his work, Banksy forgets the idea of the original form of self-publicity in the graffiti art world. Perhaps this can be forgiven however, for Banksy has shown preference for other ways of making his name known. What seemingly will never be forgiven by established graffiti writers is his use of the stencil: even the use of masking tape to create a straight line sees the perpetrator dismissed as a “toy”.

The image pictured is my Banksy test piece. In a similar manner to his rats, I took my robot and added a pseudo-political statement designed to be both thought provoking and funny. The statement on the banner reads: “Laugh now but one day I’ll be in charge”. Banksy himself has used this slogan with both his rats, and with monkeys painted wearing sandwich boards emblazoned with the saying. Something I learnt from this test was about the thickness of the paper needed for the stencil; when stencilling the slogan, I used normal paper and thus the ink bled through, making it unreadable. I think in hindsight also that I should have let the image’s fill be white rather than black, to tie in better with Banksy’s other works.

Banksy’s most un-graffiti-like characteristic is his team of people who work for him. When creating pieces of work Banksy rarely works alone, requiring accomplices to distract security guards, to film or to help with the creation of his stencils, sculptures or any of his other works. The use alone of assistants isn’t the issue, for instance, in the film: “Style Wars” the graffiti writer “Seen” is shown, working with friends on a large piece, it is the way in which Banksy’s helpers are used that raises an issue with the graffiti world.

As previously stated, Banksy is thought to be a “sell-out, a crossover and gets taken out because we hate street art and he’s got no integrity”-10Foot [10], this lack of integrity stretches beyond just his works’ sales, it speaks of Banksy’s modus operandi and his way of using his staff, that they work for him, and not with him. This may seem a trivial matter, but on review of any large piece, done by a larger writer, those who helped him have their tag within the piece too, as can be seen in the image– Hand of Doom, by Seen (Pictured) (seen at the base of each letter is a helper’s tag).

Banksy’s assistants have no such recognition within his works. Banksy’s works bear only his tag, his name, his mark, nothing to link other people to his work although others were still involved in the design and creation process, as seen in Banksy’s film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”.

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Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

This use of assistants leads me onto my next point: Pest Control. Pest Control is the organisation, set up by Banksy that “uses everything from a tightly drawn up contract to a well timed phone call from the man himself” [11] to regulate the authorisation and sale of his work. This control over how his work is sold, what works are authorised and authenticated is perhaps a bigger issue to many graffiti writers than the fact that his work sells. For the vast majority of graffiti art, in order to sell a piece, one only needs to own the wall on which it is situated, although many writers, such as Ben Eine would prefer not to sell pieces, Eine saying: ”I’m going to travel as much as I can, paint as much as I can and sell as few pieces as possible” [12], it is a necessity to gain popularity and commissions and therefore recognition (one of the core principles of graffiti writing) as well as earning a living, so they care little about the sale of their pieces. Pest Control, however, actively prevents the sale of any Banksy piece that was once part of a wall, or fence, or door etc. Banksy is such a large figure in the street and graffiti art world, that by refusing to authenticate pieces, Pest Control undermines the seller, scaring away prospective buyers, leaving an owner with a worthless chunk taken from his wall.

Many graffiti artists dismiss those who use stencils as “art fags” or “toys”, due to their cheating method of perfect reproduction. This easy creativity given by the use of stencils, displays a lack of skill in decorating his tag. To a graffiti writer this shows disrespect to the art form and therefore he would have no ground in using graffiti artist as a title. Furthermore, the graffiti community sees the use of stencils as devaluing artistically the worth of the work itself, a hypothetical example given being how a photocopy of the Mona Lisa is worth less than the original that took skill in production whereas the photocopy, such as a stencil requires a wipe of ink or paint to reproduce without flaws.

Banksy is the most successful street artist to date, he has created his pseudonym that has lasted twenty years and has seen him become one of the most famous unknown entities in the art world. This recognition, this fame has given him the opportunity to paint all over the globe, from San Francisco to Melbourne and of course his hometown of Bristol, allowing him to essentially “tag” in more varied locations than any other graffiti artist. However, this named fame is left wanting when it comes to just how much his name is put about, but I do not think that this loses sight of the original graffiti writer’s philosophy as his style has become one just as unique and recognisable as LEE’s or Kase2’s or SEEN’s were in their days.

For my artefact therefore, without the recognised style that Banksy possesses, it is imperative of me to include my tag in not just an autograph fashion, but also as a major factor in the piece, similar to that of LEE’s work.

The next conflicting point is Banksy’s use of stencil to mass-reproduce the same image. As I believe I have shown in the arguments, the advantages of the use of stencil seem to give a much closer method of working to the intentions of writers such as Japan1 or Junior161 in getting a volume of work over its quality. In using stencils, Banksy is able to maintain a standard of quality unrivalled by artists who produce the same volume of work, without stencils.

This ability of reproduction, as well as a stencil’s gift of high detail when working on a small scale, as shown by Banksy’s rats, will be very useful in making my robot look more robot-like than seen in my free-hand “masterpiece”.

I see the most effective argument for Banksy not being a true graffiti artist is his use of his staff and Pest Control. I feel that taking editorial or artist credit for work to be fine, but there is no mention of who has helped with what projects, the closest one gets is in Banksy’s film where video of his studio and the installation of a piece show his staff helping him to a large extent. Coupled with

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Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

his disregard for those to whom he lends his golden touch in the form of his art, some may call this a more vandalistic approach; however in devaluing his own product, it can stop it from being what the original Graffiti artists wanted their work to be: ART.

On reflection, I believe that Banksy’s ethics in regards to his art to be very anti-graffiti, being almost the polar opposite attitude to that of a graffiti community. However, I see his art, his physical work to fall within the bounds of graffiti art, this being what I am assessing for my artefact, I see Banksy, as a producer of graffiti art to be a true graffiti artist.

This, my final piece titled “I’m Falling Apart” joins Banksy’s style with that of a more conventional graffiti writer. I in particular like the way the white came out on the robot, this white fill has been used by Banksy in works such as his kissing policemen, 18 minutes and “it’s not a race”. The background was intended to look like smoke pouring from the pipe in the robot’s head however, this effect didn’t come off as well as I’d hoped, but the ink didn’t bleed on the stencil thanks to the use of thick card this time. As for the writing, the idea was to create a wild style effect, i.e. one that is hard to read to those who do not know what they are looking for, the letters read RBT. I am very pleased with how they came out, although I perhaps created them overlarge and so had to downsize the robot a touch, meaning he doesn’t quite fill his portion of the canvas. Overall however, I feel that this artefact successfully melds the styles into one piece, whilst still keeping the elements influences identifiably as different sources of one art form.

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Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

References:[1][Street Art; Tate; Page 23][2][The Faith of Graffiti; Harper Collins; Page 6][3][The Faith of Graffiti; Harper Collins; Page 7][4][Street Art; Tate; Page 23][5][The Faith of Graffiti; Harper Collins; Page 8][6][The Faith of Graffiti; Harper Collins; Page 7][7][The Faith of Graffiti; Harper Collins; Page 5][8][Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall; Aurum; Page 39][9][Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall; Aurum; Page 46][10][Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall; Aurum; Page 46][11][Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall; Aurum; Page 2][12][Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall; Aurum; Page 7][13][The Faith of Graffiti; Harper Collins; Page 7]

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Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

Annotated Bibliography:

Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall, by Will Ellsworth-Jones:

This book is published by Aurum press, a small independent publishing company. However, Aurum press specialise in non-fiction books, which leads to the suggestion that they would not publish anything likely to be seriously unreliable. Aurum Press are publishers for Daily Telegraph books and many celebrity authors e.g. Warwick Davis, Alice Cooper and Didier Drogba, among other things, both the book and the website show signs of high production values suggesting a degree of pride in their titles which leads me to believe the book can be trusted.The Author, Will Ellsworth-Jones was previously chief reporter and New York correspondent for the Sunday Times as well as holding editorial positions at The Telegraph Magazine, The Independent Magazine and Saga Magazine. His reporting background suggest that he should be very skilled and in-depth in his research, this gives me the impression that the material he has written will be correct and well researched.At the back of the book is an 8 page list of sources, a 2 page bibliography and another 8 pages given to an index. These 18 pages cover all major points and interviews within the book with detailed sources to back them up with.All this put together, I feel that “Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall” will be a very trustworthy and credible source for information on Banksy, and will certainly use it in my written report.

The Faith of Graffiti, by Norman Mailer:

This essay is published by HarperCollins, one of the largest publishers in the world, with over 1000 books published per year, and global yearly revenues upwards of $1bn. The credibility of HarperCollins to publish only the best books pitched to them is unquestionable.The essay’s Author is equally trustworthy; Norman Mailer is a multi award winning author, playwright, actor and essayist. Some of his most notable achievements are becoming a double Pulitzer prize winner and also winning a National Book award.The only referencing in the essay is for the interviews taken, in referencing who spoke the words e.g. interviews with Junior161, Japan 1 and the then mayor of New York John V. Lindsay.I believe that this book is definitely credible and will use it in my written report.

Street Art, by Cedar Lewisohn:

This book is published by Tate publishing, Tate is an art charity that runs some of the largest galleries in Britain and so are very unlikely to produce anything on the topic of art that is un-researched or outwardly false.Cedar Lewisohn is an artist, writer and curator for Tate Media who recently co-curated the “Rude Britannia” exhibition at Tate Britain, showing he is an expert in the field of Street and Graffiti art.This book contains little or no referencing.I believe that I could use this book, but would have to back up points from it with other sources.

Style Wars, A documentary on graffiti and hip-hop culture:

Co-directed and Produced by Henry Chalfant, one of the main people behind the spread of Graffiti in popular culture, co-author of Subway art etc. I believe that this documentary provides a variety of interviews and information that can be used to back up points put forward in other books.

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Robin Leverton Is Banksy a True Graffiti Writer?

Exit Through the Gift Shop, A film, made by Banksy:

This film gives an insight into the creation of graffiti, made by Banksy himself, an expert on the subject of himself. This film gives a great insight into how graffiti is formed, which will help with my artefact, and how graffiti is viewed by others, which will help with the report.

Graff: the art & technique of Graffiti, by Scape Martinez,

Published by Impact books, an art book specialist publisher, however they are a small publisher. The author is Scape Martinez, a graffiti artist and so an expert in his field. I shall use this book as it is more instructional for creation of my artefact.

Spraycan Art, by Henry Chalfant & James Prigoff:

The book is published by Thames and Hudson who publish over 180 titles a year, specialising in art, architecture and design, they are a medium sized publisher, but I would consider them credible, with high production values added to the previously mentioned features. Henry Chalfant, as previously mentioned was one of the major people behind the growth of the graffiti movement.I would consider Spraycan Art to be a trustworthy source to help back up other sources, but not perhaps as a standalone source itself.

Subway Art, by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant:

The book is published by Thames and Hudson who publish over 180 titles a year, specialising in art, architecture and design, they are a medium sized publisher, but I would consider them credible, with high production values added to the previously mentioned features. Henry Chalfant, as previously mentioned was one of the major people behind the growth of the graffiti movement.Martha Cooper is a photographer, who along with Henry Chalfant made her name through the publication of this title.The book itself is considered the bible of graffiti and gave people from all over the world access to the phenomenon in New York.I will use this book as a reference for my artefact.

Seven Years With Banksy, by Robert Clarke:

Published by Michael O’Mara Books LTD, a smaller publisher. Robert Clarke is a little known author with no major credits to his name. In terms of the book itself, it has received very negative reviews for being vague and not giving any details about Banksy or his methods of working.I will not use this book for reference for my essay.

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