Di-faced tenner by Banksy ©
From Kissing Coppers to Girl with Balloon, from Brace Yourself to the Di-Faced Tenner dedicated to Diana, Princess of Galles in 2004 – when The Banksy of England printed over a million pound worth of £10 notes replacing Queen Elizabeth II’s face with Princess Diana’s and threw them at the lucky crowds at the Reading Festival and Notting Hill Festival; there are plenty of artworks the famous yet anonymous artist from Bristol, Banksy, is famous for.
Kissing Coppers by Banksy ©
Ever since the 1990s, the craft of Banksy has inspired an abundance of unauthorised exhibits popping up everywhere in the world that won’t always deliver what promised in terms of art autenthicity; The Art of Banksy is one of the major and more trusted exhibition brands and features over 70 original and authenticated Banksy artworks, canvases, sculptures, unique prints and limited-edition pieces – all on loan from private collectors.
This international art display has travelled everywhere from Amsterdam to Auckland, Gothenburg, Istanbul, Melbourne, Miami, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto and London.
The Art of Banksy‘s producer Michel Boersma is in for an interview about organising Banksy exhibits without ever getting to meet Banksy.
Michel, what’s the question you are most frequently asked when you tell people that you organise Banksy exhibitions?
Michel Boersma, Producer of The Art of Banksy – © to the owners
It’s the one that you also want to ask me and that you’re probably going to ask me in the next five minutes.
Do you know who he is?
Exactly! I don’t know, obviously, and I think one of the things people don’t realise and that is part of the game, is that they don’t actually want to know who he is. This changes the way we see Banksy’s art – because if we knew that Mr X had done this, our perception would change. But we don’t know. So, who is Banksy? Is Banksy a person, or is Banksy a group? It seriously doesn’t matter, and it shouldn’t matter, but we’re all buying into this mystery, and we are also presented with the fact that we all ignore it because we don’t really want to know. Banksy is not involved in curating exhibits; he’s not interested – but the collectors are, and so we work with the collectors. I’m not involved here to talk from Banksy’s point of view, but I do know as a fact that he doesn’t want to do these exhibitions – he considers this like “Yeah, this is art, but it’s been done” – and so now he needs to do new things.
How does Banksy manage to stay anonymous?
Balloon Girl by Banksy ©
I think there are many sides to this. I think that for the general audience, it’s much more enticing because it’s a sort of Robin Hood feel: you don’t know him, and therefore you like him because it’s as if he is one of us, instead of somebody from the art world. For him, I think it gives him a lot of freedom; he gets away with things that for you and me would probably mean ending up in jail. And what I like is that he does it in broad daylight: just put a high-face jacket on, put a van down, start working on a wall, and nobody is bothering you or asking you a question.
What is the most important lesson from Banksy?
I can’t say that, because you need to decide what his messages stand for. We don’t explain to you in our exhibitions what he means. Very often, it is clear what he means, but you would still be surprised by what you hear if you’re just standing there anonymously in the exhibition and listening to the people. It’s fascinating to see how ten people who visit the same exhibition see something completely different in the same images. It’s not clear-cut – for me, it’s an eye-opening thing to see how different people react to the same pieces of art and then interpret them in a completely different way.
Who is a typical Banksy art collector?
Brace yourself by Banksy ©
A lot of the collectors we work with are not rich people, but they invest in the legacy. They often bought it at the beginning when Banksy was just starting out, and they bought it because they liked the images and the style. Then, of course, we’re also dealing with investors who are rich and have multiple Banksy pieces and see it as an investment – but it’s a different way of looking at it. The main goal I see is to have a Banksy to show to a wider audience. Here’s the thing: there are a lot of Banksy exhibitions out there that are called The Art of Banksy, and we had to rebrand ourselves completely because they were copying our promotional artwork. And when they catch up, we will change it over again. Seriously, it does take a lot of effort and a lot of trust with the collectors to get the real artworks, so here’s where we are different: we don’t have fakes. We don’t have copies. We have originally authenticated Banksy’s artworks, and we don’t have anything that came up on the walls either. This is all art that has been sold by Banksy to collectors, and Banksy has been paid for it; the ownership has been transferred, and it has authenticity. A lot of the other exhibitions around have laser copies printed out, and I know certain pieces that are in their collections with numbering, are actually on the wall of their legitimate owners – so it’s all fake, it’s nothing real, while we actually even use real quotes from Banksy.
Where do you take the quotes from? He’s anonymous.
We took them from the quotes attributed to Banksy from his books, or anything mentioned in the Exit Through the Gift Shop documentary video [a 2010 British documentary film about French-born Los Angeles–based street artist Thierry Guetta directed by Banksy]. We select the quotes per exhibit and layout because the layout changes for each building, and we are often not in a standard situation. A lot of people talk about the value of Banksy or just about another record-breaking sale in the auction, and it’s all about money for them, but what I hope people get out of the exhibit is finding out what makes them feel happy, what makes them feel something and think, what makes them laugh – and also the inequality of it all. And, of course, the duality of Banksy’s world and his quotes about social inequality slap you in the face.
How do you choose the artworks, and how do you convince the owners to lend them?
With some of the collectors, we don’t need to convince them at all – it’s just about giving them the opportunity to get the art to a wider audience, which is one of the reasons I’m involved in this; a lot of art comes from private owners, is treasured in their houses or warehouses, and this is an opportunity to show it to a wider audience. When we started out in Melbourne in 2016, we had a range of audiences who wouldn’t normally go to museums, and a lot of collectors were first-time collectors, like people who are normally hesitant to go and see an art collection. But they still want to see Banksy, they want to see the beautiful things with their own eyes, instead of from a screen, a documentary or a newspaper. You know, I’ve been involved in producing The Art of Banksy since 2016 – I am a theatre producer with a background in theatre, concerts and family entertainment, and I got the opportunity to get involved with creating this exhibition for Melbourne first. And so I did Melbourne, Miami, Tel Aviv, Auckland, Toronto, Sydney, London, Chicago and San Francisco – it’s global.
Banksy has always made free of charge street graffiti; why should people pay to see his art on display?
If you remember, in a certain part of this conversation, I said that he has sold the art to collectors, and that is the thing that the general audience doesn’t get. There is a world behind free art. It is like your free Facebook and your free… whatever it’s free. With Banksy, the collectors are paying for your free art. He sells prints and unique pieces, and whatever else he sells to collectors on a daily basis. And that’s the business of Banksy, but people don’t want to see it. The thing other than wanting to know who he is and not knowing is not wanting to know that there’s also money involved, exchanging hands. So, this is where I could normally get defensive, and I go like “Okay, wait for a second, it’s a risk to put together a collection like this, it’s a huge risk: the building, the security, the insurance, the promotion, all that stuff. It’s an expensive thing to do, and it’s not sure that it will make money, but it is like any for-profit museum: there’s money that needs to be returned and made by the same Banksy himself”. Banksy doesn’t live on the streets, let’s be clear about that. He has sold each part of his art, each piece of this exhibition has been sold to the collectors by the real Banksy, and we haven’t taken anything that’s on a wall for free and ripped it off and then shown it to you and then asked people to pay for it.
What is the difference between street art and vandalism, and how does it affect young people?
In a way, it’s like terrorism: who determines if somebody is a terrorist or a freedom fighter? It all depends on how you see life. Then, of course, there’s a slight difference between having street art and graffiti just for the sake of defacing something, which is not what we’re talking about here. But beautiful graffiti really make the city come to life; graffiti art makes the dull corners of a city completely transformed by something beautiful that comes out of a brain and makes you smile, makes you happy, or makes you think. So I don’t think graffiti art is vandalism, but I think another person will say, “Oh, it is, and then blah blah blah”. But just think about terrorism as opposed to fighting for freedom, and you’ll get the inner duality of Banksy. I think the thing that Banksy has done is to open up more seriousness to graffiti art, because apart from all the Robin Hood feeling, he’s part of the art establishment, whether he likes it or not, and everybody can have their own opinion about that one. I think he opened up graffiti as an art form, and it does inspire kids, too, because a simple £ 10 spray paint can make you an overnight hero. I do believe there are a lot of young kids around who are inspired by the feeling of “this is possible, and this is beautiful”. I can be cynical about that, but it’s the same thing I think when I organise family entertainment: when kids are coming to the exhibition, I do really genuinely hope that this will help them use their brains. I don’t care if they get a hammer or a marker or whatever, but please use your brain instead of just hanging on your phone; go and be creative. And I hope that exhibitions like ours, but also other museums, will open up their minds and then they will go like “Hey, yes, I can do this, too” and get their own spin.
Rude Copper by Banksy ©
But graffiti is still considered illegal, for the most part.
Here’s, once again, the duality with Banksy: how illegal is it? Nowadays, in most cities where there’s suddenly a mural or Banksy and Banksy puts it on Instagram, the city councillor in charge of that city will protect the Banksy in their city, and so the glass goes in front of the graffiti, and blah blah blah. So, it’s not illegal; well, for Banksy, it’s not illegal. And that’s the duality, it’s like he’s one of us, but then when you and I pick up a paintbrush… in court – because we will end up in court if we do that – then for us it is obviously illegal. I think street art is something from the ages; it’s not something that suddenly happened in the 1960s or 1970s. It was there in the Middle Ages, it was there in caveman times, and so was it illegal at the time? Can you picture a bare-skinned person getting arrested for doing that in the Stone Age? Do you know what I mean? There’s always going to be a part of society that looks down on it – but what I like about Banksy is that the larger part still likes and enjoys it.
The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything by Banksy ©