Genuine Banksy Banksy in his own words taken from his artwork, books, website and interviews.
Banksy :
www.banksy.co.uk/If you want to say something and have people listen, you have to wear a mask.
If you want someone to be ignored then build a lifesize bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town.
Nobody ever listened to me until they didn't know who I was.
Please Note: I am unable to comment on who may or may not be Banksy, but anyone described as being "good at drawing" doesn't sound like Banksy to me.
I have no interest in ever coming out. I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, "I want to be famous." You ask them for what reason and they don't know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes. I'm just trying to make the pictures look good; I'm not into trying to make myself look good. I'm not into fashion. The pictures generally look better than I do when we're out on the street together. Plus, I obviously have issues with the cops. And besides, it's a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there.
Maintaining anonymity can be kind of crippling. I gave a painting to my favorite pub to settle a tab once, which they hung above the bar. So many people came in asking questions about it I haven't been back there for two years.
In retrospect getting your work in the newspapers is a really dumb thing to do if what you do requires a certain level of anonymity. I was a bit slow there ... within a week [of Barely Legal] there were journalists from the Daily Mail at the door of my dealer's Dad's chip shop asking if he knew where they could find me. All the attention meant I lost some of the element of surprise.
A few days after the show in Los Angeles opened I was painting under a freeway downtown when a homeless guy ran over and said, "Hey—are you Binsky?" I left the next day.
The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a s**t.
The last time I did a show, I thought I’d got a four-star review, then I realized they said, “This is absolute ****.”
I get support from people I would least expect, and hate from people who I considered to be on my side. When someone buys my work, they know that they’re indirectly funding street damage, and you’d be surprised who’s cool with that.
I’ve always felt that if you paint graffiti, you’re first and foremost in the entertainment business. You’re in public space, so what’s the point in thinking you only do it to amuse yourself? It’s all about entertainment. It’s about entertaining the crowd while the pickpockets go ’round the back.
People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that's only if it's done properly.
The Holy Grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.
Some people want to make the world a better place. I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don't like it, you can paint over it!
T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.
If you don't own a train company then you go and paint on one instead. It all comes from that thing at school when you had to have name tags in the back of something... that makes it belong to you. You can own half the city by scribbling your name over it.
When explaining yourself to the Police it's worth being as reasonable as possible. Graffiti writers are not real villains. I am always reminded of this by real villains who consider the idea of breaking in someplace, not stealing anything and then leaving behind a painting of your name in four foot high letters the most retarded thing they ever heard of.
Remember crime against property is not real crime. People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access.
A lot of people think that scuttling around stencilling images onto buildings in the middle of the night is the action of a sad, frustrated individual who can't get attention or recognition any other way. They might be right, but I've done gallery shows and, if you've been hitting on people with all sorts of images in all sorts of places, they're a real step backwards, painting the streets means becoming an actual part of the city. It's not a spectator sport.
Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don't like to use the word 'art' at all.
You know what hip-hop has done with the word 'ni**er' - I'm trying to do that with the word vandalism, bring it back.
Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.
My sister inspired me to do it. She was throwing away loads of my pictures one day and I asked her why. She said "it's not like they're going to be hanging in the Louvre." I thought why wait until I am dead?
Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to convey his insanity -- I use short, thin ledges above mainline train tracks.
The art world is the biggest joke going. It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.
Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it and there's no admission fee.
I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said "that's clever, it's an anagram of art" and I had to pretend I'd known that all along.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
f**k that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.
Every new campaign, Nike emails me to ask me to do something about it. I haven’t done any of those jobs. The list of jobs I haven’t done now is so much bigger than the list of jobs I have done. It’s like a reverse CV.
I have been called a sellout, but I give away thousands of paintings for free, how many more do you want?
I think it was easier when I was the underdog, and I had a lot of practise at it. The money that my work fetches these days makes me a bit uncomfortable, but that's an easy problem to solve—you just stop whingeing and give it all away.
I don’t think it’s possible to make art about world poverty and then trouser all the cash, that’s an irony too far, even for me. I love the way capitalism finds a place—even for its enemies.
I’m always trying to move on. You’re not supposed to get dumber as you get older. You’re not supposed to just do the same old thing. You’re supposed to find a new way through and carry on. ... Anything that stands in the way of achieving that piece is the enemy, whether it’s your mum, the cops, someone telling you that you sold out, or someone saying, “Let’s just stay in tonight and get pizza.”
A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody told them to.
The human race is an unfair and stupid competition. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some people are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising some people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse. What we need in this race is a lot more streakers.
If you win the rat-race you're still a rat.
People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.
I'm out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?
Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else.
There are no exceptions to the rule that everyone thinks they're exceptions to the rule.
Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red indian proverbs makes you sound like a f**king muppet.
People who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one.
I Don’t Believe In Anything. I’m Just Here for the Violence.
Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can't even finish my second apple pie.
I originally set out to try and save the world, but now I’m not sure I like it enough.
I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.
Banksy at work in his studio around the time of Severnshed
Host :
www.flickr.com/photos/24387752@N07/2717210340/A decade of written interviews with Banksymelfeasance
www.flickr.com/groups/banksy/discuss/72157605470700385/Audio interviews with BanksyJosie Le Grice
www.legrice.org/banksy_talks.m4aBBC 2003
www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/articles/2008/05/27/banksy_interviews_feature.shtmlNational Public Radio 2005
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4559961BBC 2007
www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/articles/2008/05/27/banksy_interviews_feature.shtmlBBC Bethlehem 2007
news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7120000/newsid_7125500/7125548.stm?bw=nb&mp=wm&news=1&nol_storyid=7125548&bbcws=1300 images of Banksy's 20th century workBanksy Back-in-the-Day
www.flickr.com/groups/651750@N23/
