Art

The last we heard of reclusive ne’er-do-well Banksy, he was doing nothing more radical than putting on a museum show in his home town of Bristol in 2009. Perhaps the street artist was finally becoming a gallery artist, I thought, leaving the hardcore illegal art vandalism behind him, to get fat off institutions and auction houses for years to come. It seems I was wrong. Instead, the ever-protean Banksy now plays guerrilla film director for his thrill-seeking, mock-documentary, ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’. Feature continues

It’s a real-life fairy tale of obsessive French graffiti fan Thierry Guetta, who gains access to street art’s inner circle to film its night-time exploits and vertiginous painting missions – with masked heads and pixellated faces, of course. Halfway through some insane footage of pratfalls and pranks in Paris and Los Angeles, Banksy turns the camera on his keen follower, suggesting Guetta leave his tapes and the filmmaking behind him and take up the spraycan himself. The plucky Frenchman transforms into Mr Brainwash, becoming a successful, if wholly derivative, urban artist almost overnight. A typically vapid Mr Brainwash image – in tired Warhol-style portraiture – finds its way on to Madonna’s ‘Celebration’ album of greatest hits and his debut exhibition in LA all but eclipses Banksy’s own: the film’s rags-to-riches conversion is complete.

‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ reveals a sickness within the street art culture that Banksy has himself unwittingly helped create, showing up other Banksy-lite artists and those unimaginative collectors who clamour for bankable limited-edition prints and accept Mr Brainwash’s rise to stardom without question. Banksy’s film is both an enjoyable street art romp and a cautionary tale about the state of its art market, but could it be that the central character of Mr Brainwash is actually an invention of the wily Bristolian artist, with Guetta acting out the role of kind-hearted Pinocchio who parrots but eventually pains his master? Possibly, but it’s even more implausible that Banksy could have masterminded and funded this elaborate stunt over such a long period of time, given that Mr Brainwash now has his own sold-out exhibitions and glossy magazine profiles.

While his brash new protégé takes to the limelight in the film, Banksy has struggled to keep his usual low profile in the real world. He’s been outed in the papers as a well-educated thirtysomething named Robin Gunningham and recently become embroiled in a vicious graffiti war back in London, where his reputation among the hardcore contingent is still that of a second-rate stenciller who got lucky. After Banksy partially painted over a piece by old-school graffiti writer Robbo on the Regent’s Canal towpath, Robbo’s north London crew systematically defaced all of Banksy’s nearby murals (ironically now much prized by the local council).

Many people claim to have done so, but I have indeed met – albeit accidentally – the real Banksy, an unremarkable, medium-build man wearing glasses, at an East End graffiti jam a few years ago. However, direct access to him is strictly limited nowadays. Banksy nevertheless agreed to one exclusive interview to settle some scores and to create a brand new piece of work for Time Out magazine’s cover, in which he revisits some of his classic pieces featuring royal Foot Guards variously pissing or spraying graffiti on walls. After lots of waiting and furtive messaging, the trail having gone cold many times, he responded to our questions from his bomb-proof bunker. But like Kirk Douglas, I had to make sure that this really was Spartacus first…

Read the interview