Ulrich Blanché BANKSY Ulrich Blanché Banksy Urban Art in a Material World Translated from German by Rebekah Jonas and Ulrich Blanché Tectum Ulrich Blanché Banksy. Urban Art in a Material World Translated by Rebekah Jonas and Ulrich Blanché Proofread by Rebekah Jonas Tectum Verlag Marburg, 2016 ISBN 978-3-8288-6357-6 (Dieser Titel ist zugleich als gedrucktes Buch unter der ISBN 978-3-8288-3541-2 im Tectum Verlag erschienen.) Umschlagabbildung: Food Art made in 2008 by Prudence Emma Staite. Reprinted by kind permission of Nestlé and Prudence Emma Staite. Besuchen Sie uns im Internet www.tectum-verlag.de www.facebook.com/tectum.verlag Bibliografische Informationen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Angaben sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. Table of Content 1) Introduction 11 a) How Does Banksy Depict Consumerism? 11 b) How is the Term Consumer Culture Used in this Study? 15 c) Sources 17 2) Terms and Definitions 19 a) Consumerism and Consumption 19 i) The Term Consumption 19 ii) The Concept of Consumerism 20 b) Cultural Critique, Critique of Authority and Environmental Criticism 23 c) Consumer Society 23 i) Narrowing Down »Consumer Society« 24 ii) Emergence of Consumer Societies 25 d) Consumption and Religion 28 e) Consumption in Art History 31 i) Marcel Duchamp 32 ii) Andy Warhol 35 iii) Jeff Koons 39 f) Graffiti, Street Art, and Urban Art 43 i) Graffiti 43 ii) The Term Street Art 44 iii) Definition of Street Art 45 (1) Street (and) Art 46 (2) »Illegal« versus »Self-authorized« 47 (3) Word versus Image 49 (4) The Viewer of Street Art 51 (5) Street Art Is Site-specific 52 (6) The Performative Aspect of Street Art 53 (7) Street Art Is Ephemeral and Participatory 54 (8) Street Art and Advertising 55 (9) Quality Characteristics of Street Art 56 iv) Urban Art 59 3) London at the Turn of the Millennium 61 a) The London Art Scene since 1980 62 b) Damien Hirst and Young British Artists 66 c) What makes a British artist in the 1990s a Young British Artist? 73 4) Banksy 79 a) Street Art – The Rise of Banksy 79 i) Why Did Street Art Increase around 2000? 83 ii) The Spectacularization of Art 87 iii) Barcode – »Barcode Leopard« (2000) 89 iv) Money 93 (1) »Cash Point« (ca. 2001-2005) 93 (2) »Di-Faced Tenners« (2005) 97 v) Leftist Consumption 100 (1) »IKEA Punk« (2009) 100 (1.1) »Street« Art: Site-specificity and the Role of Photography 105 (1.2) Commercialization of Street Art 108 (2) »Destroy Capitalism« (2006) 110 b) Painting – »Crude Oils« (since 2000) 114 i) The Series and the Exhibition 114 (1) The Framing 118 (2) Rats 120 ii) Selected Artwork 121 (1) Toxic Waste Barrel – »Crude Oil« (2005) 121 (2) Shopping Cart – »Show me the Monet« (2005) 125 (3) The Tesco Supermarket Motif and the Shopping Bag 129 (3.1) Street Art in a Museum – »Discount Soup Can« (2005) 129 (3.2) Supermarket Bag – »Very Little Helps« (2008) 132 (3.3) Essentials and Non-Essentials – Shopping Bag and Religion 137 c) Installation – »The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill« (2008-09) 140 i) Fast-food Consumption – »Nuggets« and »Sausages« 144 ii) Animals as a Raw Material Supplier – »Leopard« 150 iii) Children, Consumption and Cosmetics – »Rabbit« 152 iv) Media Consumption – »Primates« 155 (1) The TV-Set 156 (2) The Artist as Masturbator 160 5) Banksy and Damien Hirst 165 a) »Keep it Spotless (Defaced Hirst)« (2007) 165 b) Hirst’s Spot Paintings 168 c) »Keep it Spotless (Defaced Hirst)« (2007) Part 2 173 d) The Location Reference – Street and Art 183 6) Artistic strategies for dealing with Consumer Phenomena 189 a) A Consumer Paradise Illusion? 191 i) The Controlled »Shock« 191 ii) Over-Identification and Irony 192 b) Banksy’s Anti-Consumption, Political-Activist Caricature 192 i) Images of Images 193 ii) (Dis)placement and Staging 195 c) Brands not Products 196 d) Souvenirs 199 e) Advertising 199 e) (Im)material Things 202 7) Appendix 205 a) Banksy’s Pseudonym 205 b) Banksy’s »Biography« 212 c) Banksy’s Exhibitions 222 i) Banksy’s Artistic Activities and Travels 228 ii) Banksy’s Album Covers 230 d) Bibliography 232 i) Online Sources with an Author 232 ii) Online Sources without an Author 240 iii) Other Websites 245 iv) Printed Magazine or Newspaper Articles, Papers, Essays and Interviews 247 v) Books and Exhibition Catalogs 250 vi) Videos 255 Thanks to Rebekah Jonas, Ira von Moltke, Charlotte Reuß (lectorship bibliography), Rob Sharp, Prudence Staite, Andrew Bloch (Frank PR), Adrian Nabi, Jakob Paur (Juice). Ulrich Blanché sen., Vanessa Krout, Florian Wimmer, Nadja Gebhardt, Siri Hornschild, Anna Fech, Lisa Neubauer, Angela Beyerlein did the editing of the German version. I would also like to thank my supervisors Prof Dr. Hans Dickel and Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat. This study was written with the help of a two-year grant by the Bavarian Elite Aid Act (Förderung nach dem Bayerischen Eliteförderungsgesetz) and supported in the research phase in London by the DAAD. 1) Introduction a) How Does Banksy Depict Consumerism? 11 How does Banksy, often called a »Street Artist«, deal with consumer culture in his art? To answer this question, this study highlights representative works of his art, specifically works dealing with different aspects of consumer culture. At the same time, an attempt was made to select works that show his versatility as well as to introduce and analyze works from different periods of his oeuvre and a range of work groups. This book about Banksy, urban art and consumption is one updated half of my German PhD thesis published unter the German title »Konsumkunst – Kultur und Kommerz bei Banksy und Damien Hirst«, consumption art, cul- ture and commerce at Banksy and Damien Hirst« in 2012 written between 2008 and 2011. The second half has the working title »Damien Hirst – Gallery Art in a Material World« and will be published soon. I devided my thesis due to its lengh and to reach a wider readership. Each of the two books make sense without the other. Both contain the same chapter about Hirst’s and Banksy’s collaboration pieces and as well as theoretical chapters about consumption. Banksy is usually categorized as a Street Artist, however, he developed fur- ther in both content and form away from this sometimes narrow term. Alison Young suggested, Street Art could be a historical term soon, like Young British Art.1 Sotheby’s sells Banksy already simply as »contemporary artist«. This pub- lication does not just deal primarily with Banksy’s Street Art, but rather with the artist Banksy and his relationship with consumer culture. The selected Banksy works stem primarily from the period between 2000 and 2009. In the publication »Something to s(pr)ay. The Street Artivist Banksy« (2010), I dealt intensively with Banksy’s works on the street and adequately delineated the definition and development of the concept of Street Art. By Street Art I mean self-authorized signs in public space, often urban space that want to communicate with a larger circle of viewers. Style writers (their work is usually addressed as Graffiti in the media) also create self-autho- rized, that is non-legal, illicit or at least uncommissioned works, but usually primarily try to reach their peers. Based on the aforementioned short defi- nition of Street Art (discussed in the chapter »Street Art, Graffiti and Urban 1 Alison Young in her talk »Mainstreaming the Street: The Cultural Value of Illicit Street Art« at the Street Art Philosophy Confernce in NYC, March 2015. Ulrich Blanché: Banksy. Urban Art in a Material World Art«) this study examines two of Banksy’s gallery shows/installations, which are extended forms of Street Art, and relate to it in both form and content. The umbrella term Urban Art, mentioned in the book’s title includes Street Art, Style Writing and art by Graffiti or Street Artists in other locations and 12 media than the street. Inspired by the subtitle of the Tate Modern’s exhibition »Pop Life« in 2009, a title of a similar wording, »Art in a Material World«, has been selected as the subtitle for the present study. This consumer-art retrospective exhibition featured Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Andy Warhol, among others, three of the artists also discussed here in detail. The exhibition, »Pop Life« explored phenomena between art and commerce, much in the same vein as the pres- ent study. Like some of the works discussed here, the title »Art in a Material World« was influenced by a pop song by Madonna in 1985: »We are living in a material world and I am a material girl«, who took the term »material world« from Karl Marx.2 The materialistic values and faith in objects still seem repre- sentative of contemporary consumer society. But why was »consumer culture« chosen as the focus? The first chapter focuses on the terminology of consumption in general as well as its use in this analysis as a phenomenon that transcends time and existence. Consumption in its modern form is, at least ‘for the masses’, a relatively new phenomenon. In the history of art (as treated in the chapter »Consumption and Art His- tory«) consumption only first appeared in the 20th century in DADA and later, more conspicuously, in Pop Art, with a mix of glorification, observation, irony, criticism, or perhaps all at the same time. The positive aspects of con- sumer culture have secured, at least until now, rising levels of affluence in the western world, while the negative aspects of (perverted) consumer behavior are associated directly, although this association is often denied, with the most momentous issues of our time: global warming and the international financial crisis.