They've been relisted for just $750. Bargain.

I had someone in TX contact me awhile back about trading s basquiat original for a Bast piece I had. It seemed to good to be true so I never responded, wonder if this is it....

Need.....need.....need.......got.....got.....need.....got......

LOL....no chance, just your doubles to swap comment got me misty eyed for swapping football stickers and the like in the playground as a kid

No.

There is no soul to his work.

who's Basquiat

There is a certain feeling of "epic-ness" that comes with looking at a Basquiat piece that even large Banksy works can't attain. Although Banksy might get the acclaim equal or even greater than Basquiat one day, individual Basquiat pieces will always overshadow individual Banksy pieces in direct comparison.

I think the best analogy to illustrate this would be comparing Rauschenberg to Warhol. I have personally stood in front of Rauschenberg's piece "Bed" and contemplated a wave of different emotions and thoughts that I never could have done with a Warhol. And while Warhol is much more highly acclaimed in the art world, the commodifiable aspects of his pieces detract from the "epic-ness" of their impact. I have never been awestruck by a lone-standing Warhol piece in a museum, that is to say the magnitude of Warhol is only realized when you look at the body of his work as a whole.

don't take this the wrong way but is this better than Banksy? And if so why? please enlighten me

Maybe. Banksy has the advantage of being alive so he can grow and evolve. He is also still largely a UK phenomenon as can be seen by the prices his work fetches at auction in the UK vs. the rest of the world.

My personal view is that Banksy's pieces work best on the street because he is brilliant at context and that is what he will probably be remembered for in the end. The works on canvas and print are fun as pop art and I confess to owning a few of the early prints but they lack the scale, power, and subversiveness of his street work.

Ultimately the thing that makes him great in the street also works against him in the conventional setting. You lose the "oh my god did he really do that" feeling as you go past a street piece when you look at the image in your house every day. It's decorative and comfortable but you can plumb it's depths easily. Because of that lack of depth I wouldn't spend serious money on his work at this time.

I don't agree that Banksy is decorative. I find squiggles on a canvas decorative, I don't find ironic juxtapositions decorative nor something that is shallow in depth.

I can understand where some of these sentiments are coming from. Of course visually a Basquiat is much more complex and is of course stunning in its own way but it's a bit of comparing apples and oranges. I never experience a Basquiat the same way as I experience Banksy's Kissing Coppers for example. Or the streetwork for VLH, we've probably all seen the videos of people gazing at it, interacting with it etc. People interacting with a Banksy this way is probably something that's never quite happened with a Basquiat. Not saying it's better but just a different experience that's incomparable.

I'd say similar things about Hirst or Duchamp, a lot of their work isn't visually attractive in a traditional sense, but they can still stop me and get me thinking for usually much longer than a 'pretty' or decorative artwork can.

And I think by this point Banksy has become a lot more known in the US. Although still far from the household name he is in the UK. But I think a fair amount of people that have a clue about current culture, the visual world and what's happening today here have at least heard about him.

Wow, I don't agree, I've seen some huge warhol canvases, the hand embellished, painted ones that completely blew me away. Especially the first time I saw a huge Hammer & Sickle canvas

you took the words...
I will have to see one up close,until then i will try and keep an open mind

I think the answer to all of those is no. I raised the point of Basquiat being dead not because it adds weight but because it means his career is over - he cannot evolve, his canon of work is complete. Banksy can continue to grow and improve. I still think Banksy will be remembered for his street work rather than the prints and canvases.

The Hammer and Sickle are beautiful, but lack intimacy in my opinion.

The closest I have ever come to being awestruck in front of a Warhol was standing in front of the Gold Marilyn at MoMA for the first time, but if I had a hypothetical list of "most awestruck I've been standing in front of it" works, nothing by Warhol would likely be in the top 50.

I guess the works I have been most profoundly impacted by upon my initial viewing of them have been works that exist on a grand scale, but express a profound intimacy. This does not mean however, that I only like artists that do this, in fact I often times prefer the opposite of it (Koons is one of my favorites).