Tag: banksy

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More Banksy film news

Hahaha, I thought I’d only have to post one thing abut Exit Through The Gift Shop today. Of course, as soon as the journalists who were at the press screening got back to their desks, news about the film and the screenings started popping up all over the web.

Esquire Magazine has the most interesting article so far:

This morning, Esquire was invited to a preview screening of Exit Through The Gift Shop, the new documentary by Banksy. It took place in a temporary cinema the street artist has built in some dank railway arches next to Waterloo train station. As you would expect from him, both the site and the movie were surprising, entertaining and just a little unsettling.

The cinema, nicknamed “The Lambeth Palace” and sold as “London’s darkest and dirtiest new cinema” (with an exception made for “Cineworld Edmonton”), is a 150-seater auditorium at the end of a series of gloomy bare-brick caverns, in which typical Banksy interventions have been placed: a cardboard Queen and Prince Phillip opening ceremonial velvet curtains to reveal a spray-painted Anarchy “A”, a bonfire of Old Master paintings going up in fabric flames, hamster cages of animatronic hot dogs, and a bar in the form of a grungy ice cream van…

Read the rest on Esquire.co.uk

Esquire also says that the film will be screening twice daily there until March 1st. I’m seeing the film later this week, so I’ll post a review in a few days.

Rodrico has some photos from the event, where they have painted a red carpet on the road and made a sort of mini-exhibition…

More photos here.

All photos by Rodrico

Via/pretty much the same post as Banksy Prints

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Banksy screens film in underground bunker

@TimeOutArt has posted some camera-phone snaps from inside of the secret underground location where Banksy is screening Exit Through The Gift Shop. There was a press screening on Monday morning, @Eelus has tweeted that he has been invited to a screening on Wednesday and Pictures on Walls has 300 tickets up for grabs to screenings over the weekend. Time Out also says that next week’s issue of Time Out London will feature a Banksy-designed cover and an exclusive interview with the man himself.

That that’s today’s Banksy film update.

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Giant Banksy pub rat to be painted over

Photo by Paul Stevenson

Remember that dilapidated pub in Liverpool that sold at auction this week for £114,000? And how most people assumed that it sold for that price because there is a huge rat painted by Banksy on the outside of the pub worth at least £114,000? Turns out, the buyers plan to knock the pub down, artwork included. It’s a shame really. Sure, nobody expects street pieces to last forever, but this is a well-executed and well-preserved piece. It seems nuts that a developer would just knock it down.

The buyer said this to The Telegraph:

“I’m not a fan of modern art, I can’t say I know much about it really”

and

“All I was concerned about was getting this great building for a good price, I’m going to turn it into luxury flats.”

I’d urge somebody to start a campaign to save this piece, if only I could think of any logical way for it to be preserved (could they cover it in a layer of anti-graffiti paint?). After all, it just takes one jerk with a can of spray paint to destroy the entire thing.

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Park City paper says vandalism can never be art

Photo by Barnaby

The Park City Record, the local paper in Park City, printed an editorial this week in reaction to Banksy’s recent painting spree there. I think I can see what they were getting at, and they could have made some great points (in fact, they correctly noted that Banksy’s artworks were essentially guerrilla advertising for Exit Through The Gift Shop), but then they didn’t. And by that, I mean they wrote something which was so outdated and wrong-headed that they pretty much made everything else they wrote pointless. They wrote “But let’s be clear. Graffiti is art when it is invited, and it is vandalism when it is not.”

Really? Do people still think like that? Even when Neas was sentenced to prison for his graffiti in 2008, the judge commented that Neas has artist talent.

Here’s what I wrote as a comment on the Park City Record’s website:

You might think graffiti is never art, or that it is generally or always bad art, and although I would disagree with you, we could at least debate the topic rationally, but your position isn’t even logical. If the Mona Lisa had been painted on somebody’s front door without permission, that might annoy the property owner, but that wouldn’t stop the painting from being a great work of art. Art is art no matter where or how it is made. Of course, graffiti that is painted without permission is also vandalism. But why can’t it be both art and vandalism at the same time? You had the chance to make some great points with this article, and then you suggested that something can only be either art or vandalism, not both, and now I can’t take anything in this editorial seriously.

Simply put… how can there still be educated and intelligent people who don’t grasp that something can be both art and vandalism simultaneously?

Via Banksy Prints

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Banksy rat pub sells for £114,000

Photo by Paul Stevenson

That giant rat? A Banksy painted in 2004 on a pub in Liverpool. Instead of getting buffed or physically removed, the entire pub has just been sold in an auction for £114,000. The Liverpool Echo reports that the piece had serious interest from 4 parties, but eventually sold to some club owners. Let’s just hope they don’t turn it into “Club Banksy” or something like that. On a similar note, the outside of The Foundry has a similar Banksy rat which is going to be preserved and incorporated into the design of new hotel which is about to replace that pub.

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Banksy on Channel 4 News

A very interesting article on Channel 4’s website and piece on the 7pm Channel 4 news on Monday. Read it if you are interested in the art market.

There’s no one quite like Banksy – the only street artist most of us have ever heard of it.Aside from the mystique that surrounds his identity (the Daily Mail claims to have unmasked him) his rise from the streets has brought him into conflict with the art market. One Notting Hill dealer accuses of him of being a control freak.

Our little excursion into the Banksy market was instructive.

Banksy has an outfit to sell his prints, Pictures on Walls in Commercial Street, and a sister organisation, Pest Control to authenticate everything. He has an agent and a publicist.

Read the rest on Channel 4 News…

I’ll say two things about the article and video: 1. Who cares if Banksy’s a brand or whatever? Every successful artist does the exact same things to varying degrees. 2. Channel 4 should stop pretending that the media aren’t complicit in the Banksy hype that they’re now trying to call him out for. The BBC found the house where Banksy grew up and could have revealed his identity, but didn’t. The Daily Mail could probably do a hell of a lot better job “unmasking” the guy. And if the Channel 4 reporter Nicholas Glass was at the opening of Banksy versus The Bristol Museum and honestly didn’t notice that there was artwork for sale, he can’t be said to have been very observant at all. And of course, I include myself in being complicit building Banksy-hype and generally ignoring the odd bits like not authenticating street pieces or the fact that he works with a PR agency, but I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to not be part of that hype-machine. Oh, and I’ll add a third comment: 3. Yes, we should respect Banksy’s privacy and just let this thing run it’s course, it’s more fun that way.

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First fan review of Banksy film

First of all, I came across this quote today from Skewville from a few years ago about the potential implosion of the street art world: “I think once there’s a big corny movie that comes out like street art 3d or whatever, then it’s gonna… that’s when it’s over.” I just thought that was funny.

More importantly, urbanartcore.eu has just posted a review of Exit Through The Gift Shop. From what I’ve seen, it’s the first review by a fellow street art fanatic and not a typical film reviewer. It’s great to hear that everybody from film critics to hard-core Banksy fans are loving the film.

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Banksy film in Berlin

Exit Through The Gift Shop is playing at the Berlin Film Festival today, and Banksy had a little video message for people before the screening.

Banksy Prints reports that Banksy said “I guess my ambition was to make a film that would do for graffiti art what ‘The Karate Kid’ did for martial arts — a film that would get every schoolkid in the world picking up a spray can and having a go…As it turns out, I think we might have a film that does for street art what ‘Jaws’ did for waterskiing.”

Banksy Prints also speculates that since the festival director has stated that Banksy is in town, maybe he will paint a few pieces in Berlin. I’d say there’s a pretty good shot of Banksy doing some painting while he’s in town, after all, if I’m not mistaken, there are no surviving Banksy paintings left in Berlin.

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Banksy smashes estimates at auction

Bomb Hugger by Banksy

It looks like Banksy‘s film Exit Through The Gift Shop is already helping boost the price of his artwork, even though it sounds like the film is more about Mr. Brainwash (whose prices somehow have not dropped to $0, yet). This week, there have been 5 Banksy pieces at auction in London, and almost all sold above the high estimate.

First up was the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Auction on February 11th. There were three Banksy pieces in that auction: one print and two originals.

Why is there a Banksy print for sale at Sotheby’s instead of Dreweatts or Bonhams? Because it was a Kate Moss. An edition of just 50, these are probably the most sought-after of any of Banksy’s prints. They aren’t my favorite, but I’m just one guy and the market definitely disagrees with me on this one. The print was estimated to sell at £25-35,000. Including the buyer’s premium, it went for £46,850. The Kate Moss prints have sold for as much as £96,000 before, but this is probably the best price one has achieved since the recession hit.

Both originals at Sotheby’s were older works, and sold to benefit The Luggage Store Gallery. Bomb Hugger and Armoured Car were both estimated at £25-35,000. Bomb Hugger sold for £58,850 and Armoured Car reached £49,250.

Next up was the Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Auction on the 12th. They had an amazing Banksy canvas, You Told That Joke Twice. Christie’s estimated the piece at £100-150,000, and it sold for £169,250 including the buyer’s premium, which put the hammer price near the upper end of the estimate. This was the only Banksy piece this weekend not the exceed the high estimate.

Later that day, Phillips de Pury had their Evening Sale in Contemporary Art. Their Banksy was Vandalised oil #001, a fantastic crude oil. With a conservative estimate of just £60-80,000, the results here were outstanding. The painting sold for £121,250 including the buyer’s premium.

Now, as noted with the Kate Moss print, these aren’t the best auction results Banksy has ever had, and I don’t want to sound like that NYTimes article that said “The art market is once again shooting up like a rocket,” but the Banksy market at least seems on the road to recovery.