Just got back from a whirlwind, exhausting trip to New York City. I must say, over these last few months of traveling there with my daughter for her orientation, helping her move into her dorm and attending Parent's weekend over the last 4 days, my knowledge of the city is more than I thought it would ever be. I get around like a pro either by foot, metro ( I know, subway but metro sounds better to me) or my last choice, cab. The island of Manhattan has shrunk considerably for me and I can get much out of a long weekend there. I have to admit, I love it. On arrival, as we took a cab from Laguardia, my older daughter, the art history major, let out a gasp which scared the crap out of me as we were on the wildest cab ride ever (I do fear for my life in some of them!!) and thought we were headed right over an embankment. Lucky us, it was only 'BANKSY'.
Scattered throughout lower Manhattan, one comes across giant works of art on sides of buildings or smaller, quick doodles of graffiti on boarded up doorways that are credited to Banksy, the British graffiti artist that remains unknown to those who love him and those that he irritates with his work. He is a household name in England yet to get to the bottom of who exactly he is, is still a work in progress.
Elusively, he moves about the world, literally, from London to the West Bank, along the streets of New York, throughout the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina and even "installs" his work in museums around the world when no one is looking--a Mona Lisa with a smiley face landed in the Louvre and the Tate Britain--only to be quickly removed. He is an art rebel--pointing out how crazy the art world has become when his stencil-like work done on canvas sold for over $500,000 at Sotheby's in 2007. His anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-capitalist views oddly have made him a very wealthy rebel. Wonder how he feels about that?
1 comment:
With all these "anti" no wonder how he became a millionaire!
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