Ryan and his friend Bansky

The British artist Bansky has become quickly well known for his pranks and his works of graffiti art. In this New York Times piece on the show “Barely Legal” it becomes a bludgeoned point that this artist is one that avoids the so-called spotlight. Although Bansky’s works create a wide array of publicity as do his thought provoking pranks, the artist himself has another reputation that follows in the shadow of his pieces. This is the fact that Bansky is an artist that has decided to keep his identity out of the public and quite top secret, a decision that can be said to draw even more attention to his identity. It is also one that can bring about many question of why the artist would do such a thing.

Within the article, featured in the New York Times journalist Edward Wyatt writes that the artist keeps his identity secret as “part survival technique and part publicity ploy”. Mr. Munnery then goes on to say that Bansky insists on remaining silent. Here is where the piece seemed to get interesting. As an artist and one that is very interested in commenting on the positions of modern society, Bansky is almost anything, but silent. And as an artist who is becoming more and more of a household name, he is also anything but lacking an identity. It seems that, in fact, the only thing the artist is lacking is a face. It was this statement about silence that brought up these contradictions and the irony of an artist saying that he would like to remain silent, for in the field of the arts it seems that the common theme is for an artist to use their works as a channel to shout their ideas upon the viewing public. With stunts that swarm with media attention it also seems that Bansky is following the same trend. So it becomes more of a question as to why an artist wouldn’t want their face to be divulged to the public and why they would speak of such a silence in such a demanding manner.

As artists, it can be easily recalled that art is an almost direct channel to the public world surrounding us. It is one that can cause awe, anger, and envy, but also one that carries strong messages and thought provoking ideals. It seems that the last thing an artist would want would be silence. That one would desire a piece to stand in complete lack of message and meaning, unless this was to inspire some other message, seems quite contradictory to the essence of what art is in today’s society, a society where the question “what does it mean?” falls all too easily off the lips of the public. So it was this call by Bansky for silence that intrigues me, and not the want to keep a private identity. Like it was said above, Bansky has already created an identity for himself with his pranks and artist messages, what he has not created is any sense of silence and lets hope that art keeps striving to create constant noise as well.