I’m finding it a little hard to feel upset at the Banksy “exhibition” that was on display in Art Miami and its sister fair CONTEXT this past week. Others have found reasons to boycott the affair, and Marc and Sara Schiller, two street art aficionados I respect, wrote on Wooster Collective that they are calling out the Miami Art Fair for letting all this happen: “Knowing that Banksy has condemned the show, they could have easily rejected the exhibition and not legitimized the stolen artwork. But they didn’t. And this tells you a lot about what their motivations are.”
RJ Rushmore of Vandalog echoed the Schillers’ sentiment and then highlighted the possible monetary motive for the display:
… as the Schillers note, Banksy’s best work really only works when experienced in context in which it was intended (whether that intended context be on the street or in a gallery), and bringing these pieces indoors probably makes most of them much much much weaker than they were on the street.
This is certainly not the first time we’ve seen someone trying to make a buck off Banksy and it’s reasons like this that Banksy created Pest Control, a controversial committee which determines the authenticity of Banksy works on the market and which refuses to authenticate any street works or works not originally intended for resale.
Banksy, “Stop and Search” (2007), from Bethlehem, West Bank
I find the rejection of the display of these five iconic Banksy’s and the resulting anger a little misplaced. Certainly viewing the works in their original context would be desirable, but it’s also nearly impossible for most people. The work, like most street art, is often placed on private property, and in the process, the artist ceases to own it. The fate of the work is left in the hands of others, not the artist. This is the deal; it’s street art, after all. Where that work ends up is anyone’s guess. There was the obstacle of the art fair ticket price, but any American museumgoer is accustomed to paying to see art. Yes, these works were once free to see but so is almost all art before it enters a fair or museum. Then again, this is about other issues, in my opinion.
Street art by its very nature is an act of faith in the public trust. You place the work — most often illegally — in public, and you kiss it goodbye. A photo online is usually the only residue of most of the ephemeral work. As proof of this concept, all you have to do is look back to the 1970s and ’80s, which was a rich period for street art, and realize that little, if any, of the work from the streets remains. This, I believe, is unfortunate.
Keith Haring’s subway drawings exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum
Not all the work was lost, though, and this isn’t the first time that work taken from the street has been exhibited outside of its original context. Keith Haring’s white chalk on black paper subway drawings of the late 1970s and early ’80s were a critical part of his rise in the public’s imagination. Many people tore down the works from the streets, particularly in the subway stations, immediately after they were made, and some of those people had the intention to sell them ASAP. In recent years, those works have been showcased in high-end galleries, like the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, and earlier this year, the Brooklyn Museum’s Keith Haring show featured a whole room of them. I don’t think many people would argue that these works don’t deserve to be in either of those places.
But let’s not mistake the Banksy show for what it is and what it isn’t. It is no longer street art; it is a historic artifact much in the way Assyrian murals stripped of their original temples and public buildings are displayed in museums the world over. This is history, and this needs to be preserved.
The popularity of Banksy, I would argue, has propelled him into the realm of a cultural icon worthy of historic preservation. He’s the only artist since Warhol that has successfully become a household name, more so than Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. What we’re really arguing about, I believe, is how his legacy should survive and what role the artist should have in those decisions.
by Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergenic | Read more:
Photos: Hrag Vartanian
