The forces of taste, fashion and regard have long colluded in a disconcerting way around Banksy. He is an ‘artist’ that the great and the good of the auction world take as seriously and reverently as your more common or garden fan who gazes upon his grim graffiti and feels they really ought to like it. In a saner world, in which everyone had not colluded on the premise that Banksy is Important and Good, he would be seen mainly as a vandal and a nuisance.
His vandalism is lucrative in part because it is a parade of ‘subversive’ clichés, so saccharine and obvious they hurt. Thus, we have little black stencils depicting policemen kissing, the House of Commons filled with chimpanzees, or a girl reaching after a heart-shaped balloon. His art is bad in large part because it is so openly political. He is a robo-lefty; this was his response to the proscription of Palestine Action – grafitti of a judge beating a protester. Roger Scruton’s idea that beauty is art’s purpose is in permanent violation by Banksy.
Anyway, his main selling point is the secret of his identity. But his anonymity, long in question, has now slipped further thanks to some detective work published last week. The story is rather amusing in its mundanity, and a terribly common one, best summed up as: ‘Robin Hood figure, defender of the little people against the System and the Man, turns out to embrace the Man and the System, for they have made him stinking rich’.
The real name of Banksy – who went to fee-paying Bristol Cathedral School – has long been suspected to be Robin Gunningham. After being outed as Gunningham, he changed it to David Jones, the most common male name in the UK. The sleuthing that led to this proposition revolves around a company called NTS Services, incorporated in March 2020 to provide ‘management services’ and maintain the ‘client relationships’ leading to ‘high profitability’. This boring-sounding company also had a previous name: Nothing To See Limited, thought to be a riff on a phrase used by Banksy in his 2015 ‘Dismaland’ project, possibly the most horrible of them all. This was a dystopian ‘bemusement park’ curated by Banksy at a derelict lido in Weston-super-Mare. It was billed a ‘satirical, dark commentary on consumerism, surveillance, and entertainment.; one of this horror-exhibition’s displays was a coin-operated boat full of people wearing headscarves. Subtle, it wasn’t.
At any rate, one can certainly enjoy quite a lot of consumerism with £19 million in one’s pocket, which is the amount that is held by NTS Services, according to its most recent annual report.
Banksy is as administratively crafty as he is good at thinking up grotesque bits of stencil. Take the story of the two David Joneses. The director of NTS Services, a David Jones born in 1972, resigned last month and was replaced by another David Jones, only this one was born in 1973. Further sleuthing last week found that a David Jones with the same details is linked to another company: Outline Design and Services Limited. The director of this outfit is an accountant named Simon Durban. Simon Durban is the name of the person who spent 15 years as Banksy’s business manager.
The whole Banksy circle has been well-trained: certainly, behind every rich and famous man is a lot of other men, and women. A woman thought to be his mother, outside Bristol, called from her garden: ‘No comment to anything’. I was amused by the statement of a former neighbour of the artist: ‘I once gave him and his partner a lift from the station. They were very nice, but I don’t know more than that. We let him keep himself to himself, and I’m glad he didn’t graffiti my house.’
Banksy is as administratively crafty as he is good at thinking up grotesque bits of stencil
There is much satisfaction to be felt at the outing of this scourge of walls the world over, a satisfaction that is enhanced by the sizeable edifice of people around him who speak only in smug obfuscations and riddles. But the real satisfaction might be that if he is identified, he might get arrested and the assault on our senses might temporarily stop.
For Banksy is not a law-abiding man who respects private property. He and his team simply vandalise at night when they can’t be seen, deploy fake filming permits or, most commonly, don high-vis vests and pretend to be builders. Presumably the artist would not agree with the idea of one law from everyone else and a special leniency for him because he is powerful, celebrated and rich. But hey ho. Consistency and an avoidance of hypocrisy, especially where wealth and power are concerned, has never really been the way the protesting left operates.
Either way, Banksy ought to be arrested on a dual charge: vandalism of buildings, and vandalism of culture.
Comments