We know who Banksy is. So what?
When you’ve built your artistic brand on anonymity, you might think that being outed is fatal. Then again, it wasn’t so when ‘80s street artist SAMO revealed himself to be Jean-Michel Basquiat, and I’m not so sure it spells the end for Banksy, either. Reuters recently concluded a long investigation (“The Search for Banksy,” March 13) that traces itself back to 2000 Manhattan, where they unearthed a police complaint against a man caught defacing a Marc Jacobs billboard. The final piece of the puzzle: the obscure street artist who paid bail to get out of custody was named “Robin Gunningham”—a name that had already been revealed by UK’s Evening Standard and The Mail On Sunday in 2008, though those tabloids couldn’t definitively pin down the Bristol man photographed in Jamaica as “Banksy.” Reuters finally connected all the dots. The puzzle was solved. (We could only wish that Reuters applied such keen investigatory skills to finding out, say, who killed Jeffrey Epstein.)
The question remains: So what? Does it matter that the identity of one of the most iconically famous yet anonymous artists of the last 50 years has been outed?
The artist known as Banksy is a set of contradictions. He has benefited from anonymity, calling it his “superpower.” Yet he remains one of the most well-known names in modern art, even if his face has been a mystery—until now. (He seems intent on backing away from the revelation and staying underground.)
He made his start in a radical art form that grew out of defacing society’s consumer emblems and spaces, yet, even as a vandal, he’s largely managed to escape the cops-and-robbers game. “The most important part of the job was to run away after we’d done it,” he comments in the 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, his voice altered, his face hidden in shadow. The Scarlet Pimpernel role seemed to suit him well. He’s also avoided the fines and arrests that typically face other, lesser-known street artists. And of course, his works are sold in huge gallery shows. (Sellout!)
Through his Pest Control Office, which authenticates and sells works privately, he’s earned hundreds of millions; yet we must balance this against notable works of charity and humanitarian giving, such as his donations of stenciled walls to raise money for public housing, or his purchase of a 30-foot French yacht (renamed the Louise Michel) that he uses as a rescue vessel to save refugees attacked with water cannons by coast guards from countries that refuse them entry.
So: contradictions.
One amusing piece of the Reuters puzzle is what role Massive Attack singer Robert Del Naja—also a Bristol street artist, and a friend of Gunningham’s — plays in all of this. He was present in Kyiv with Banksy in 2022 for a street art activity (during which the artist reportedly traveled around in a local ambulance for extra privacy under his new passport name “David Jones”). Del Naja also assisted in the famous “Girl with Balloon” shredding incident in 2018, filming the crowd’s reaction in a British museum. One can’t help thinking Banksy loved the idea that people thought Del Naja was Banksy all along; it added an extra layer of mystique and threw people off the scent.
Reuters itself has faced public backlash for its “outing.” Let a few online comments suffice:
@neuroid99: “Banksy is in part a folk hero. It might be in the public interest and completely within the bounds of professional ethics for journalists to publish Robin Hood’s identity and the location of his hideout in Sherwood Forest, but the peasants will still f*cking hate you for it.”
@UnderstandingOdd679: “I think a much greater public service would be the deep dive into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto and the longterm stability and impact of Bitcoin in the investment world. With as much as we hate billionaires and would like them to hand over their money, someone out there created $100 billion of worth for themselves out of thin air.”
Clearly, there are bigger issues than Banksy’s true identity.
Meanwhile, the art market has responded to the Reuters story with its usual fixation on the bottom line. The New York Times notes online sales for Banksy hit a peak during the pandemic—presumably when museums and building facades were out of reach—but have dropped quite a bit since then, as has the contemporary art market in general. (Glut!)
Again, I think back to Exit Through the Gift Shop. The first half revolves around Banksy’s involvement with French émigré to LA Thierry Guetta —a sort of ADHD pest with a video camera who would tag along with Banksy and other street artists on their night runs, gathering footage. “With Thierry, at least we had someone who could capture some of it,” shrugs Banksy.
For Guetta, the thrill of finally meeting this elusive street artist and getting to film him was different: “I felt I had the piece that will finish the puzzle… It was like getting something in the daylight that (before) you would only see in the night light.”
That’s the two sides of the Banksy matter, right there: Banksy loved to be noticed, but preferred not to be identified. The media—Thierry—was obsessed with revealing him. That was the ultimate goal.
I also recall the first half of the film shows how thrilling street art was in its infancy: the danger, the free flow of ideas, all of it cloaked in hoodies, tag names and anonymity.
The second half—focusing on Guetta’s sudden morphing into street artist “Mr. Brainwash,” churning out graffiti art knockoffs for a massively hyped LA show—shows how rapidly it could all degenerate and consume itself.
