The popular anonymous street artist, Banksy, has come to more recent attention within the last decade because of his artful destruction of Girl With Balloon. Famous for his provocative, political, radical graffiti, Banksy began his work on the walls of major urban cities and has since moved towards canvas painting, conceptual sculpture, and even film.
However, throughout his major success in most spheres, he regrets having shifted to a more public audience. Banksy writes in a rare interview with the Independent, that “commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We’re not supposed to be embraced in that way.” As an anti-colonialist, anti-consumerist artist, Banksy struggles with profiting off of his work: “It feels like as soon as you profit from an image you’ve put on the street, it magically transforms that piece into advertising.” When success feels like failure, I think back to Stuart Firestein’s TedTalk on failure; specifically, how failure is integral to the creative process. When combining the two ideas, I wonder if Bansky ever recognizes his failure as a part of his creative process. Perhaps when he rose to fame, he learned that going back to his roots was a more effective way of producing his art. In the way that "creativity results from dissociating ideas that have been too long associated," Banksy has begun to realize that by profiting off of his work, he is no longer dissociating himself from capitalism, consumerism, colonialism, whatever it be. With that being said, one cannot talk about Bansky without a mention of his purposeful destroying of Girl With Balloon.
Banksy's destroying of his artwork was in itself a failure. The entire piece was meant to be shredded, however only half of it was. Even though the contraption was rehearsed ahead of time, it failed while the very piece was being auctioned off. Selling for $1.4 million, the piece has been critiqued for having accomplished nothing. The true meaning is up for debate, as Banksy himself has never made much comment on it other than an Instagram video with the caption of " 'The urge to destroy is also a creative urge' -Picasso." Banksy's creative process is up for debate, and perhaps he himself has no specific creative process that he is aware of. It is evident however, that destruction is a part of his creative process. The creativity of destroying is not one that is often discussed, but one that intrigues me.
Another aspect of Banksy's creative process is that of ambiguity. The fact that his intentions are unclear and could have multiple meanings is just as much a part of his creative process as the colors he uses and the stencils he designs. There are a multitude of creative processes, and those of Banksy are unique and not often the first imagined.
Sources:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-story-behind-banksy-4310304/
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2018/10/18/banksy-video-reveals-shredding-mechanism-failed-at-sothebys https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/16/banksy-what-the-hell-happened/
https://www.blinkist.com/magazine/posts/banksy-teaches-us-ambiguity-creativity
I find your description of Banksy's failures to be incredibly interesting. I think it is also fascinating that a piece he created to be destroyed in a showing of rebellion against modern capitalism in art and creativity failed and ending up making the piece worth even more.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of destruction as a form of creativity also intrigues me. I feel like most of the time, we associate creativity with creation, but perhaps destruction is a form of creation. I guess you can make new things out of the pieces of the things you destroy. Street artists in general are also fascinating to me- their art has a sense of illegality about it, but it is undeniably still art. I think it's also interesting that Banksy's success is paradoxical to him, and it reveals how society views success versus what success should be.
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting when creators/artists start to get a lot of attention for their work without actually wanting it. I think it highlights the idea that some people prefer to create for themselves or for the sake of creating rather than for an audience, and the fact that they start to accumulate an audience could actually feel like a failure. I feel the same way, I could do commissions for my art but I would rather draw what I want to draw than create for someone else, even if I was getting paid for it.
ReplyDeleteI think Banksy is a very interesting creative! It is obvious that he is intrinsically motivated because he wants to protect his anonymity and does not see fame as a good thing to come from his work. That is a bit rare in the creative world.
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