I hoped I would have time to head to Waterloo Place outside the Athenaum to look at the latest Banksy. A sculpture for a change. And very well placed. And very well judged.
The Times and Telegraph both led with an article that was more about trying to wank into our mouths about the fact there’s a name potentially attachable to the Banksy tag. “Recently outed artist Billy Fucknuts aka Banksy puts new blah blah”. I actively don’t give a fuck what his parents wrote on his birth certificate, seriously. He has preserved his anonymity, and that desire has largely been understood and supported by anyone that gives a fuck about art.
His work tries to get people to think about the things they take for granted. Maybe one kind of ignorance is more triggered by being called out than another. Certainly I’ve noticed that some people with clear political agendas are trying harder than others to downplay his worth as an artist.
We’ve likely all seen it by now. It’s a male looking figure in a suit marching off the edge of the plinth, carrying a flag that has blown in his face obscuring his vision, likely leading to his downfall.
The sculpture has no colour. There’s no plaque telling us the artist’s “intention”. And just because we are constantly being bombarded with bullshit “art” created to serve an agenda does NOT MEAN that actual art does that.
So many people are trying to make the flag into whichever flag they don’t like. “It’s the star of Israel!” “It’s Palestine!” “It’s a George Cross!” “It’s Ukrainian!” “It’s a union!” “It’s a rainbow!”
And here we remember why Banksy is so celebrated. He can read the room and he’s not pointing us one way or the other. The left and the right are both losing their way… so many people are losing their way. If we put the ideology first, we absolutely risk it blinding us, and quickly. And that goes for whichever ideology.
Politics is polarising. And it’s all based on instinct.
Look at the individuals, that helps. Baddies are likely to be standing behind hideous policies. Look at what they are like, their behaviour, the things they’ve said and done. It’s hard really when the media are sqiffing it all – Ed Milliband wasn’t a baddie but he ate a bacon sandwich badly and it got magnified to the extent that we ended up with Brexit. Should eating a bacon sandwich be the decider? Or not being a bacon faced coward equivocator in seething pot of liars?
I remain a royalist. Bite me. We haven’t chosen them. They’ve been reared to it. Thank all that is holy that Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, Liz fucking Lettuce – thank the good Gods that they were just our flash in the pan idiot prime ministers, not our heads of state. We would be even more of a laughing stock internationally. Everyone in the world now looks at America through the idiot. “They wanted him”, we think. “Christ what a nation of morons. What a fucking shame they have so many nukes.” Charles survived that shitshow because of history.
So yeah I’ll walk off the plinth with my flag. And you can walk off with yours.
I’m glad the bulk of outlets haven’t been shoving the artist name down our throats. Let Banksy Banksy. Like South Park, he is playing to The Fools Charter – I still stand with it being one of the most relevant bits of Shakespeare to the modern age. It was supposed to be cut from our As You Like It. I reinstated it, but never really felt like any of the others understood why – they just humoured me cos they thought I liked talking: “I must have liberty, withal as large a charter as the wind, to blow on whom I please, for so fools have. And they that are most galléd with my folly, they most must laugh… Invest me with my folly, give me leave to speak my mind and I will through and through cleanse the foul body of the infected world, if they will patiently receive my medicine.”
The best satire, the best art, takes a shot at everyone. It has to. Shakespeare knew it. South Park knows it. Banksy knows it.
I think this piece does that. And it grows every time some idiot tries to tell the internet what it should actually mean, like they are defeating the art by imposing their tiny ideas on it.
Chapeau, Banksy. Particularly now with the fact that there are nasty little people gunning for “actually he’s called Banana Pigpop”. The old Ursula le Guin thing – if we know the true name we can control it…
Banana Pigpop. Billy Fucknuts, you’ll only ever be Banksy to me, and you could tell me you fucking hate me, that’s fine cos that’s what you’re for. You’re running interference, on your own terms, but for US. Proper fucking artist. Idiot journalists waving a possible name for you like it’s a flag in front of your articles. You’ve all become part of the art.
AlBarclay 