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Bansky: Pranksy

Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: art, Banksy, design, galleries, graffiti, Lauren Collins, museums

If you're digging Lauren Collins's story on Banksy this week (plus the slide show), you'll also like this tale of a westward journey in pursuit of Banksy, by my colleague James Gaddy. Who and what did he find? A few more images from the elusive trickster are within. We've had a recent run of Beatles heds.

Lost in the hoopla and media coverage was serious consideration of the graphic power of Banksy’s work. His early images showcased drawing and stencil-cutting prowess with an added edge: his seemingly effortless wit. Using an engaging trompe l’oeil technique, he created a range of visual puns—rats taking photos of pedestrians, policemen kissing, the Mona Lisa with a rocket launcher—and expanded on the stencil-graffiti syntax established by Blek Le Rat, softening the hard edge of the stencil with clever takes on clichéd images of war, government, religion, and art.

His vandalism also interacted with the city’s urban furniture on a visceral level: Rats spilled toxic fluid off the wall and into the street, policemen spray-painted their own graffiti on the walls, a diver appeared from a public fountain holding a drain plug. The style reflects its environment, says Tristan Manco, the Bristol-based author of the book Stencil Graffiti, by blending elements of official signage with those of punk bands like Crass, who used stencils to make their logo. The pranks were a natural outgrowth of his sense of humor as well: A mixture of meta-graffiti and wry social commentary, they were a pie in the face of stuffy elitism. Read on.

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Emdashes, founded December 2004, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.

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A few clips

Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)

More clips.

Tell me more

They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.

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Edited by Martin Schneider, designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.

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