Whether Banksy is one person or a group of collaborators, no one knows. Anonymity removes the status of celebrity and forces the focus on the artwork. By being outside of the art establishment, Banksy has fun playing the game as he increases the popularity of all street art. The meteoric two decade rise of Banksy’s art has produced what Max Foster of CNN called “the Banksy effect”. This term references the increased popularity in street art because of Banksy’s accomplishments and critical success.

Banksy’s clever bit of performance art at Sotheby’s transformed Girl with Balloon into new art, entitled Love is in the Bin. Three years later, this art sold for 25.4 million dollars. Besides painting, Banksy builds sculptures like Death of a Phone Booth, creates catalogs, builds public installations, participates in performance art like Sirens of the Lambs, and directs films like, Exit Through the Gift Shop. The Academy Awards nominated Banksy’s film for an Oscar. It was a documentary examining street art, modern art, and celebrity. That same year, 2010, Time magazine’s Most Influential People list included Banksy.

Banksy is a creative and generous philanthropist, giving his time and money to help those in need—often using auctions to raise money for charities. His art speaks of their plights to the public, creating a subculture of their own. His enigmatic artwork and messaging spreads over the internet and across the world.

He began his activities in England in the 1990s. His messages are anti-war, as in Love is in the Air (Flower Thrower), anti-capitalism as in Love is in the Bin, and anti-establishment, as in You Have Beautiful Eyes, which was anonymously installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Some are anti-consumerism, like Ronald McDonald, a fiberglass replica moved from one McDonald’s to another every lunchtime during a week in New York for a performance. Because of his concern with migration, Banksy bought the rescue boat, Louise Michel (named after a French anarchist), “to uphold maritime law and rescue anyone in peril without prejudice” This boat set sail on August 18, 2020, with a ten-person crew that rescued 89 migrants on its maiden voyage.

While Banksy was doing his residency in New York in 2013, he set up an installation named Concrete Confessional in the East Village. At the same time, Banksy set up a make-shift exhibition called Spray Art on the southeast corner of Central Park near 5th Avenue and 59th Street to sell his work for $60 each. The total amount he sold was $420 for the day.

Asked to leave a message for New York after his residency, his audio guide said, “Banksy asserts that outside is where art should live, amongst us. And rather than street art being a ‘fad’, maybe it’s the last thousand years of art history that are the blip. When art came inside in service of the church and institutions. But art’s rightful place is on the cave walls of our communities. Where it can act as a public service, provoke debate, voice concerns, forge identities.”

Exit Through the Gift Shop can be seen here.

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