April 28, 2008...5:17 pm
Blanksy
Regular readers may remember the blog i did on Moon Street a few months back, which included quite an old original Banksy on the side of the Full Moon Pub and Youth Hostel, with quite a different tag from normal.
Close up
Well, it’s been getting quite a bit of attention over the last few months, including stories like these from far away, so, unsurprisingly, it’s gone.
Close up
Happened about three weeks or so ago apparently, few blokes with professional equipment, cutting it out and lowering it carefully onto a pre-prepared frame.
Immediate thoughts of some people were that it had been stolen, but i wasn’t quite sure how you could steal a part of someone’s wall without them noticing, so gave the Full Moon a call today.
Turns out they had known it was there for ages, and had arranged for it to be taken down. Partly to save it, with all the attention it was getting, it wasn’t going to last that much longer i wouldn’t have thought. But partly also to sell it, bills are always present, and if you’ve got, what £40k, sitting on the side of your building, would you do any different?
Mixed feelings about this in a way. On the one hand the piece is now safe, and should survive for a few more years at least. Graf may be temporary, but in a way Banksy’s moved beyond graf into something culturally bigger, and it would be silly to ignore that completely. It’s good there will also be some left that people in the future can enjoy (or perhaps think we were mad for getting so worked up about).
On the other hand, it’s yet another piece of work that was meant to be free for everyone to enjoy that now won’t be. There’s no way to authenticate it, so no large gallery, auction house or serious collector will touch it with a bargepole, obviously, but apparently it’s going to be put up for sale at the little gallery in St Nicholas Market on Corn Street, which already has another non authenticated street Banksy coming up for sale in the next couple of weeks.
I dunno, i still haven’t sorted out completely what i feel about this. Totally understand that if graf is temporary, then it shouldn’t matter whether someone chops it out and sells it or not, people and their lives are more important than a bit of spray paint on a wall. But at the same time i guess my concern is that people try to take things that everyone can enjoy, and make a living out of removing them and selling them to the highest bidder. On a case by case basis it seems fine, encouraging it to happen more and more seems wrong to my mind.
Hell, i just dunno what i think on this one, what do you think?
6 Comments
April 28, 2008 at 6:32 pm
*headdesk* For fucks sake. But this is capitalism for you. Somebody likes something? It’s free? How can it be free! It should be making money! See also: corporate executives in various documentaries talking about music piracy/giving away music for free on the internet + any fairy story about taking beauty from nature and letting it wither and die in a cage.
I still like the fact that I did a bit of Stokes Croft earlier this year, and walked past that. Right past it. I like the Tony Blair stencil more than the little wee Banksy (which is still lovely in it’s own way).
But anyway, this is how I feel, as relevant as you’ll find it: I try and ignore the money for Banksy issue now because it’s just so frustrating. I think it’s awesome for him, that he can do so well at something that must be the best job in the world. When it’s in his hands or hitting the people who don’t pose with it or cut it out and sell it on, his work is 100% impacting and socially relevant. But it’s increasingly being put into the hands of those that only seem to devalue it - and use it to make profit that they won’t share outwards. And who needs that? Not good for anyone.
April 28, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Heh, that’s mental, I walked straight past the chaps doing that. It’s at the end of my street and I walk past it all the time; there’s been work being done to the Full Moon on and off for months now (wish they’d fix the fucking leaky guttering pipes sometime!), so I didn’t really think anything of it at the time.
On the serious side of the topic, well, pretty much Wot She Said (noun-into-verbification aside
). Reminds me of the way Wall Street yuppies managed to bring about the wholesale collapse of the British comics industry through speculation in the mid- to late-80s. (Excuse the oversimplification.)
The silver lining might be that come the inevitable crash, a few of the $tencil profiteers take pavement headers off the nearest tall building, or else their greed leads them down the ‘tana brick road to Milken honey - four small walls and a bucket to shit in.
I still prefer ‘Gay Zone’ though
PS That Canadian article actually manages to get a better grip on local psychogeography than most mainstream UK reporting I’ve seen, either on the B*n*s* thing or Bristol in general (the Beeb putting a bunch of flowers in the teddy’s paw, Grauniad/Observer conflating St. Paul’s and Easton etc).
April 29, 2008 at 9:23 am
…and there goes another GAYZONE. You don’t see too many of those these days, and that was one of the last ones out there.
Who was responsible for the changing all the DAYONEs anyway, was it one person or just anyone with a marker/can and a sense of humour?
April 30, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I heard it’s going to be on sale at St Nicks Market from next Tuesday …
May 7, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I see the local rag got an easy story out of this.
Hopefully people will get bored and move on to the next greatest thing ever.
May 10, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I think I prefer today’s version of the story - not often you see the Post putting ‘paradox’ into a headline!
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