"When the paintings suddenly started going for, like, really big money it definitely weirded me out, and I kind of went away to the middle of nowhere and I stopped making any more paintings. But the whole time the auction houses were just selling paintings that I’d done years before and sold for not much money. Or paintings that I traded for a haircut or, you know, an ounce of weed and they were going for like 50 grand." (lightly edited)"
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director. He has never publicly confirmed his identity. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stencilling technique. His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the
"Someone famous once said It takes two people to make a piece of art. One person to make the art and another person to stop them from destroying it. Which is a more poetic than saying: It takes two people to make a piece of art. One person to make the art and another person to come round later from the council and sand-blast it off."
Banksy"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]"
Banksy"I like ironies unless theyre real. I was arrested for painting a picture about corruption over a billboard. As a result I spent 40 hours in a cell with the cops taking the piss and telling me lies, followed by a spell of community service and a hefty fine for which I never got a receipt and no record appeared to be kept."
Banksy"When graffiti first started it was about getting noticed. But with inflation getting noticed is worth almost nothing these days. Now you have to be a genuine nuisance if you want to get along."
Banksy"The problem with painting in Zoos is that its slightly too effective. They tend to get rid of it as soon as possible. Id had enough when the rope ladder into the Chimpanzee enclosure at the Sydney Zoo snapped and I fell into the moat getting a mouthful of monkey piss. By 10am the next morning the words Please help me get out of here I am the victim of a cruel scientific experiment... I am not a monkey... Somebody do something had been completely painted over. The solution was to write stuff on cardboard and throw it into the enclosures when no one was looking. Then you just sit back and listen to the explanation parents give as their kids ask Why dont we just let them go home if they want to, mummy?"
Banksy"People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course its more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army. Why all the bombs? Because its healthy to think about bombs all the time, because its difficult to get your head around the fact that humans have the hardware available to make their entire species extinct. Nobody talks about it anymore but they say this is why weve all become so into money, because at the back of all our minds we all know that the atomic bombs have taken our future away from us."
Banksy