
I’m the Accidental Owner of a Banksy - c0riander
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/im-the-accidental-owner-of-a-banksy.html
======
lifeformed
The whole "high-art = big money" mindset is what ruins everything. Just let it
be. It's an image that people enjoy looking at, and it's right there for
everyone to see - touchable, fragile, transient. Giving it a monetary value
defeats the whole purpose of it. It's not meant to be preserved, it's just a
curio that livens up the outdoor scene.

Stop _valuing_ it so much - it's meant to be weathered and destroyed. Enjoy
the art for what it is and let urban nature take its course.

~~~
dionidium
This is one of those things, like complaining that the developer of a webapp
you like "sold out" to a large company, that sounds nice unless it's your app
with an offer or your building that just got tagged by Banksy. The owners of
this building didn't _assign_ the value; they inherited it. In any case it
would be plain dumb to ignore it and I have no idea why anybody would upvote a
comment suggesting that they do so.

~~~
Amadou
_it would be plain dumb to ignore it and I have no idea why anybody would
upvote a comment suggesting that they do so._

I upvoted it because I was going to write essentially the same thing.

I've been thinking about it since Colbert publicly non-invited Banksy to paint
the wall outside his studio. I don't believe that dollars are an appropriate
unit of measurement for life experiences. I do believe that graffiti and
others forms of street art are intentionally impermanent and functions of
their location.

I would support trying to sell it if the building owners were living hand to
mouth, but that's obviously not the case. The author's already monetized the
"inheritance" by selling a literary "piece" to NY Magazine. She doesn't _need_
to sell it so leaving it as part of the gestalt the artist created is the
greater good. If it gets defaced by some other graffiti artist or the
police/Bloomberg (who are only feeding the frenzy with their attitude) then so
be it, the limited lifespan of graffiti is an inherent part of the art. Like
making sandcastles.

I would probably set up a hidden video cam in case someone else came along and
tried to steal it. Not that the stealing is necessarily a problem for street-
art, but taking it would involve damage to the building itself and that would
be unacceptably outside the scope of screet-art.

~~~
joe_the_user
_I don 't believe that dollars are an appropriate unit of measurement for life
experiences. I do believe that graffiti and others forms of street art are
intentionally impermanent and functions of their location._

But Banksy isn't graffiti in general or something other people decided was
worth money after someone just did it for joy. Banksy's shtick is calculated
to generate publicity and a whiff subversion specifically as a part of him
maintain his position as a highly paid, highly valued, highly publicized.
Banksy could have gone to NYC and done anonymous graffiti for year and no one
would have notice if there wasn't any publicity.

~~~
twoodfin
Unlikely. His shopworn "social commentary" is typically a dead giveaway. ("I
remember when all this was trees.")

------
iamben
Mayor Bloomberg's reaction is interesting - I'm curious to know when a person
transitions from vandal to artist. I don't think anyone could argue that
Banksy hasn't cemented a place in the 'history of art' and the books our
children read that cover this period will feature his work.

In the UK a lot of people are genuinely gutted when a Banksy gets removed or
covered - like something (a gift?) has been removed from the community. People
who have their buildings 'vandalised' are often incredibly proud. But at the
end of the day, it's still graffiti, still vandalism and I can understand
Bloomberg's zero tolerance attitude. I wonder how he'd feel if it was on a
building he privately owned (not that he needs the money...)?

~~~
theoh
Well, most art critics don't take Banksy seriously, so I wouldn't count on him
having a place in the history books any more than a novelty musician like
Weird Al, for example. In fact that comparison makes Banksy sound more
important than he is. David Blaine, maybe?
[http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/20...](http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/oct/02/banksy-
warhol-footsteps-new-york-street-art)

~~~
JamesArgo
It’s funny he contrasted Banksy with Pollack. I’ve always thought of Pollack
(and many other modern artists) as a sort of charming guy who figured out that
the art industry is a weird product of status games and so decided to create
positional goods with the least amount of effort possible.

~~~
brenschluss
Seriously? This is like saying "poets are just lazy writers who decided to
create work with the least amount of effort possible."

~~~
JamesArgo
Notice the performance in the following description of Pollock at work:

>A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor … There was complete silence …
Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint
brush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized
the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became
faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint
onto the canvas. He completely forgot that Lee and I were there; he did not
seem to hear the click of the camera shutter … My photography session lasted
as long as he kept painting, perhaps half an hour. In all that time, Pollock
did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally, he said
'This is it.'

In many ways it mirrors the accounts of psychics or other frauds, many of whom
are self-deluded and thus not frauds in the common sense. The lone genius, the
strange process, the way the world falls away while he's at work, a flaw no
one but the guru can keen - these are the type of things we seem to be wired
adore. So we should be suspicious of any new tastes we acquire while exposed
to them.

Once his work became popular, they became positional goods, like yachts or a
diamonds, so we should be doubly suspicious of the tastes of those who paid
for it.

Take a random person, get him or her to drip paint onto a canvas however they
see fit. Create many paintings every day, save the ones that seem, by hap, to
be the most pretty. I contend critics and buyers alike would not be able to
reliably distinguish between the works of Pollack and the works of the random
person. He created a new style of painting - one that happens to require no
skill. I have no idea if he bought his own shtick, but I like the idea that he
didn't.

------
pantalaimon
That's terribly comical, considering it's just a graffiti piece. Banksy will
find the fuzz it creates hilarious, I'm certain. Actually, the reactions it
creates could be seen as the much grander art performance, compared to his
previous 'art sale' [1]

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX54DIpacNE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX54DIpacNE)

~~~
GhotiFish
What an effective display of the issues I have with art.

Only a few people want these pieces, they are worthless in a vacuum. Only when
shown in the context of "These pieces are by _legendary artist banksy_ " do
they become valuable treasures, in great demand.

It distresses me the number of things on this planet that are valuable because
people think they are valuable, not because they have any actual use.

I suppose their value is in manipulating others. That is a form of utility, I
admit.

~~~
arrrg
What’s your definition of “no use”? I’m quite confused by that. When I was
last walking through a museum I felt tremendous joy and very much loved
looking at everything. That’s a use, right? That makes those are pieces
useful. It should be quite obvious that things capable of doing that acquire
value.

Sometimes that gets a bit ridiculous but a blanket claim that art has no use
(or, even more specifically, that Banksy’s art has no use) seems equally
ridiculous.

~~~
lmm
>What’s your definition of “no use”? I’m quite confused by that. When I was
last walking through a museum I felt tremendous joy and very much loved
looking at everything. That’s a use, right? That makes those are pieces
useful. It should be quite obvious that things capable of doing that acquire
value.

But an original and a copy of a great picture inspire just as much joy when
looking at them. Yet one is treated as far more valuable than the other. So
something's funny there.

~~~
dsuth
Original artworks have greater value due to scarcity. It's pretty simple
supply/demand - if everyone wants artwork from a certain artist, those pieces
become more valuable. The same reason the value of artwork tends to spike
after an artists death - no more artworks will be produced, so there is a
definite cap on the amount of art.

Mayor Bloomberg's statement that he intends to target Banksy's artworks to
destroy them will make them very valuable indeed, in a "last chance to see"
way.

~~~
lmm
Just making something scarce doesn't inherently make it valuable; there needs
to be some reason it's "better" than non-scarce equivalents.

------
yetanotherphd
It took ten minutes of reading articles and comments to convince myself this
was real and not a joke. You can't make this stuff up:

"A scuffle broke out at the scene of Banksy's latest piece in Williamsburg as
a building manager and bystanders manhandled a vandal who tagged over the
piece [of graffiti]."

"The building manager grabbed him and threw him down and was calling the cops,
but the guy bolted"

~~~
fennecfoxen
To be fair, Banksy put up something good-looking, and the vandal put up his
tag. If you caught someone putting the latter _anywhere_ , grabbed him and
called the cops, I'd say you're probably on the right track.

It's got more in common with "graffiti on a tasteful outdoor mural" than with
typical graffiti-on-graffiti.

~~~
yetanotherphd
I'm just going to quote from the comments section of [1]:

theoddfather: Already dissed? Jesus, why are people so ghetto?

bronxflash: how is that 'ghetto?'

theoddfather: Tagging is ghetto bullshit with no redeeming social or artistic
value. It's garbage and obviously in this case was meant to simply deface
something that clearly has a great deal of value to many people.

bronxflash: while i appreciate the fact that you said 'tagging' and not the
all-inclusive 'graffiti,' tagging was the foundation in the early seventies of
an entire visual aesthetic that came to be related to the explosion of urban
culture; hey, it had to start somewhere and it started with tagging. graffiti
was at no point in its origins exclusively 'ghetto': white kids on the upper
west side, in south brooklyn, and the east bronx all did graffiti. maybe more
kids in the hood did it, because not everyone had the same social outlets by
way of moeny and power and social status. banksy wouldn't even exist without
what filtered out of upper manhattan and the southern bronx and was known as
'tagging.'

[1]
[http://gothamist.com/2013/10/17/banksy_bed_stuy.php](http://gothamist.com/2013/10/17/banksy_bed_stuy.php)

~~~
alwaysinshade
"banksy wouldn't even exist without what filtered out of upper manhattan and
the southern bronx and was known as 'tagging.'"

Fair, but we've reached the point where we can discern the difference between
something that conveys a message, and what is merely a trademark. A tag is
territorial and self serving - a trademark. It might have been what gave birth
to other forms of street art, but its value is intrinsically less than
something that exists to conjure discussion and consideration, even if the
public sentiment towards it is negative.

~~~
yetanotherphd
What you say gets to the essence of the difference: a man who wants to assert
his ego, against others and the state, vs a man who entertains the middle
class with whimsical, nostalgic, left wing drawings (basically the XKCD of
graffiti).

I think both are equally valid forms of expression. However my main surprise
was with the people in the story who believe that artistic merit should
determine who gets to break the law.

~~~
lmm
> However my main surprise was with the people in the story who believe that
> artistic merit should determine who gets to break the law.

Really? The law is and should be subservient to morality; people who've done
something good but illegal are naturally lauded (and those who've done
something bad but legal are condemned). I don't think any of this is
surprising.

~~~
alwaysinshade
"The law is and should be subservient to morality; people who've done
something good but illegal are naturally lauded (and those who've done
something bad but legal are condemned)"

Really thoughtful response. I think that really captures the spirit of what
people find attractive in modern day Robin Hoods like Dread Pirate Roberts,
Satoshi Nakamoto and, in the art world, Banksy (consider that they could be
collectives, not individuals). People would argue it's romance, and wouldn't
necessarily be wrong, but the core of our admiration is fighting things which
inhibit progress.

------
3pt14159
I tried to find out the owner of a commercial building that was Banksied in
order to buy a cut out of the wall from him, but by the time I had gotten
anywhere the work had been overtagged :(

------
mathattack
The whole Banksy craze tells me how much of the value in art is things being
famous for their own sake. It isn't that it's art (or graffiti) that causes
the problem (or value) it's that it's someone famous.

There is a story in NYC about the French embassy finding they had a
Michelangelo in the lobby of their building. (It was there when they bought
the building) Once they realized what they had (years later) then they had a
problem. They couldn't sell, it, and it required security, so ultimately they
gave it to a museum.

[http://www.thearttribune.com/The-Cupid-attributed-
to.html](http://www.thearttribune.com/The-Cupid-attributed-to.html)
[http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/a-statue-
for-a-...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/a-statue-for-a-statue-
sort-of/?_r=0)

------
danielharan
"Will it make us money?" and describing this as "our plight" are wrong-headed
and hilarious, but par for the course in a city where the mayor doesn't see
the beauty in such art.

------
sharkweek
I think my favorite one so far was his "art stand" where he was selling his
original Banksy stencils for $60 -- I'm assuming these will likely start
popping up in auction for quite a bit more.

I would have likely walked by a stand like that and assumed it was a scam. But
if you had told me it was real and I could have bought one for $60 bucks, I
would have tried to immediately buy them all.

[http://instagram.com/p/fa_ndFq-3W/](http://instagram.com/p/fa_ndFq-3W/)

~~~
cromulent
Only 8 were sold, 4 to one guy to decorate his new home in Chicago. I bet he's
happy.

------
recroad
If your family owns a building in NYC you're already rich. No idea why people
would ask you that.

------
RockyMcNuts
It's not graffiti, it's disrupting the entrenched fine art distribution
incumbent oligopoly.

hacking is just like painting and all that -
[http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html)

------
zakarum009
In my opinion, graffiti is a very temporal, fleeting art form. Enjoy it while
it lasts, but it's impossible to preserve graffiti, especially from an
infamous artist..

------
brunoqc
"No. 17 will forever be ours"

imho art like this belongs to the city.

~~~
NamTaf
They were, confusingly, referring to 'No[v]. 17'. The prior sentence refers to
a new day coming, which is 'No[v]. 18'. I have no idea why they didn't go with
the accepted abbreviation of November as 'Nov'. They weren't referring to
building number 17.

Just clarifying, not disagreeing with your statement :)

~~~
e28eta
It means the #17, as in the 17th painting by Banksy, as the article says early
on.

~~~
NamTaf
Aha, my bad. Thanks for the correction.

It makes more sense now that I think about it; I'm almost a month early for it
to be Nov. 17th.

------
intelliot
Who is Banksy? Is he Satoshi Nakamoto?

------
drcode
HN, please don't feed the trolls, even if they're PR-hungry artists.

~~~
mcantelon
HN is interested in the indivudal or collective knows as Banksy as he/it
successfully hacks mainstream culture with critical messages.

~~~
michaelwww
Your language exhibits a bias that says: a) Banksy is a culture hacker b)
Banksy is outside mainstream culture c) Banksy is a successful hacker. All of
that is arguable, but one thing we can say for sure is Banksy is interesting
because people are interested in Banksy - famous for being famous like Paris
Hilton.

~~~
mcantelon
I assert A, B, and C, yes. Banksy managed to simultaneously profit from, and
socially comment globally using, a street medium. Paris Hilton was born with
the looks and means needed to make connections and she worked from that,
gaining notoriety through her lack of inhibition. I can see the comparison in
that their trajectories were both unconventional to some degree, but beyond
that, not much simularity.

If you haven't, I'd recommend watching the humorous Banksy-related documentary
"Exit Through the Gift Shop". It's quite interesting and entertaining and not
what you'd expect.

~~~
voltagex_
Another really good one to watch is "Bomb It" on Netflix/iTunes. The sequel is
out soon.

~~~
michaelwww
I haven't finished it, but I like this a lot better because it's authentic
street art from the people who grew up in those locales. The Banksy collective
on the other hand has a lot of money behind it and feels more like rich people
appropriating street art.

------
Theodores
If the mayor was serious about catching Banksy then he would go to the phone
companies and get all of the phones that were within a 200 metre radius on the
night that the artwork went up for each and every piece. Then he could put
them in a database, get his 'SQL for Dummies' book out and select just the
phone records that are common to all incidents.

He can then go back to the phone companies and get the billing details for
Banksy and his entourage. He could also ask them to let him know exactly where
they are, follow them and catch them red handed doing their next piece.

Personally I see Banksy as a cartoonist rather than as a graffiti artist. He
does not have a formal arrangement with the papers to syndicate his work, he
does not even have to churn something out every day. Instead he gets his work
prominently shown in all of the British papers, reaching an audience that no
other cartoonist can. He has Robin Hood grade street cred. due to this
audience reach.

Whereas other cartoonists use pen and paper, Banksy uses the side of some
house or another wall as the medium. It is an intermediate form much like the
conventional cartoonist's paper is. Although of value to the crazies that go
mad for such things it is of no value to Banksy if his aim is to get his work
into the paper, to reach a mass audience.

As for the people who have inherited the work, they could just let the boring
'tag' graffiti artists vandalise the Banksy masterpiece as quickly as
possible, whilst there is still the media interest. It will then be known that
it has been destroyed and the troublesome visitors will cease to turn up. They
can then paint it over, to restore their property back to normal and get on
with life.

Getting back to the mayor, if the trick works for catching Banksy then it will
probably work for all of the inane tagging losers out there. So long as
citizens report new tag-vandalisms in a timely fashion then the police should
be able to get a reasonable sized list of phone numbers to work with.

I have known and known of 'tag' graffiti artists in my time. I still don't see
why they are so determined to do what they do and for so late into adult life.
I feel sorry for them not having any meaning to their 'art'. The strangest
thing to me are the 'tags' put up in some foreign town. Imagine going to
another country, a place you do not live, just to paint your tag up on some
walls that you are not going to see again.

With a Banksy it cannot be said to truly exist until the papers report the new
birth. With small time tedious tagging types they get Facebook instead of the
media to show off their efforts. Invariably those that tag post their tags
online somewhere. The phones can lead the authorities to where this is and get
the evidence needed for prosecution.

~~~
x7z42zg4y
as someone who in her time did millions in "damage" to the rail network your
average writer has decent opsec besides the fact they almost all use burner
phones on a day to day basis. they wont take phones with them on missions.
last thing you want is your phone to ring when your hiding from the transit
police. (what banksy opsec is like IDK ) also stencils are for people that
cant actually paint.

~~~
Theodores
> "stencils are for people that cant actually paint."

That is a bit like saying that those that use a sewing machine for embroidery
cannot sew. Or musicians that use a computer cannot perform live. Or writers
that use word processors 'cant' use punctuation.

Banksy has a style, technique and message that makes his work his, and highly
regarded by untold millions of people. People that do gormless tags (most
graffiti 'artists') have just the tag.

There is a difference between art and craft. So what if you have learned the
craft, i.e. how to hold a spray can, it does not make it art. There is more to
it than that. You have to find a voice deeper than a tag.

'Opsec' is a confabulated word to describe 'trying not to get caught'.
Obviously anyone committing a crime does what they consider prudent to not get
caught. However, the intelligence level of a tag 'artist' is not that high,
hence, when they do get caught there is invariably pictures of their tags on
their mobile phone and facebook-instagram-whatever page. So, the HN reading
you might be that clever at 'opsec' to not get caught, but, the rest of those
taggers out there - fish in a barrel (if only the police didn't have such
small fish to dry).

------
confusedev
Just enjoy it.

------
robabbott
First-world problem...

