Banksy

Banksy is a prolific graffiti artist from Bristol, UK, whose artwork has appeared throughout Bristol, London and other locations around the world.

Quotes

• Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. We the people, affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
• The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires...
  • • "Wall and Piece"

• I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said "that's a clever anagram of art" and I had to pretend I'd known that all along.
  • • "Wall and Piece"

• People who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one.
  • "Wall and Piece"

• Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else.
  • "Wall and Piece" pg. 141

• 'I got home at last and crawled into bed next to my girlfriend. I told her I'd had an epiphany that night [about using stencils] and she told me to stop taking that drug 'cos it's bad for your heart.'
  • "Wall and Piece"

• T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.
  • "Wall and Piece" pg. 153

• People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that's only if it's done properly.

• You know what hip-hop has done with the word 'nigger' - I'm trying to do that with the word vandalism, bring it back.

• The Holy Grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.

• I wouldn't sell shit to Charles Saatchi. If I sell 55,000 books and however many screen prints, I don't need one man to tell me I'm an artist. It's hugely different if people buy it, rather than one fucking Tory punter does. No, I'd never sell anything to him.

• If you don't own a train company then you go and paint on one instead. It all comes from that thing at school when you had to have name tags in the back of something.. that makes it belong to you. You can own half the city by scribbling your name over it.

• I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.

• A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody told them to

• Remember crime against property is not real crime. People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access.

• I have no interest in ever coming out. I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, "I want to be famous." You ask them for what reason and they don't know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes. I'm just trying to make the pictures look good; I'm not into trying to make myself look good. I'm not into fashion. The pictures generally look better than I do when we're out on the street together. Plus, I obviously have issues with the cops. And besides, it's a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there.

• Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don't like to use the word 'art' at all.
  • banksy.co.uk

• The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. 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.
  • banksy.co.uk

• Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it and there's no admission fee.
  • (Tristan Manco. Stencil Graffiti)

• When explaining yourself to the Police it's worth being as reasonable as possible. Graffiti writers are not real villains. I am always reminded of this by real villains who consider the idea of breaking in someplace, not stealing anything and then leaving behind a painting of your name in four foot high letters the most retarded thing they ever heard of.
  • banksy.co.uk

• People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

• • taken from 'Brandalism' in the book 'Cut It Out'

• A lot of people think that scuttling around stencilling images onto buildings in the middle of the night is the action of a sad, frustrated individual who can't get attention or recognition any other way. They might be right, but I've done gallery shows and, if you've been hitting on people with all sorts of images in all sorts of places, they're a real step backwards, painting the streets means becoming an actual part of the city. It's not a spectator sport.
  • Tristan Manco. Stencil Graffiti

• The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.
  • taken from ADbusters magazine

• Some people want to make the world a better place. I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don't like it, you can paint over it!
  • Banksyhttp://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2018739.stm

• Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.
  • Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

• Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet.
  • Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

• People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.
  • Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
  • Also, "Wall and Piece" pg. 178

• "There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover" - Metropolitan Police Spokesperson
  • Wall and Piece back cover.

• Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksky clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.
  • Charlie Brooker on Banksy in The Guardian, 22nd September 2006

• The artist Paul Klee said "drawing is like taking a line for a walk", but for me it's always been more like drowning a photocopier in a canal.

• I never use sketchbooks in the way you imagine a "real" artist does - perched in a terrace cafe with a pencil capturing the essence of their muse. I tried that once when I was on holiday with a girl, but her nose came out so big in the drawing that she never let me touch her again.

• I pretty much use sketchbooks to note down great ideas of somebody else's I've just had. A good sketchbook means you don't actually need to bother with having a memory yourself. You can get away with a fair bit of substance abuse if you always carry a notepad and a sharp pencil around with you.
  • All from "Street Sketchbook" by Tristan Manco

• The craft is finding a decent drainpipe to get access to the site as much as it is in the art...Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to convey his insanity - I use short, thin ledges above mainline train tracks.
  • Evening Post 2004 (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)

• You could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on roller blades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting as it is when you go out and paint something big where you shouldn't do.
  • The Guardian 2003 (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)

• [I first picked up a spraycan] the day someone ram-raided the Halford's round the corner from our house.
  • Venue magazine (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)