We exited through the gift shop: Encounters with street art...

In late March, I and my Encounters Students visited the Art of Banksy exhibit in the theatre district. It was one of a couple of art exhibitions that looked interesting...the other being an immersive Van Gogh exhibit called Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, which was around the same price. Both exhibitions don't feature new works and aren't put on by the actual artist, and in retrospect the Van Gogh thing might have been worth the price more than the Banksy thing. However, I chose the Banksy exhibit because we began the semester with Exit Through the Gift Shop, a film production by Banksy that I highly recommend. It's a subtle critique of the modern art world, and a good introduction to Encounters in Humanities, in which students are supposed to consider the value of art in society. 

The Banksy exhibit was valuable however, because it helped articulate some of those same critiques about what the art world is becoming or has become. The selection chosen by the curator is effective in examining the role of art as subversion, and in particular the way that this brand of art of is subversive in both form and function - as in this print that combines a fetish photo with an iconic portrait of Queen Victoria.

Something important I try to impart to students is the fact that making art is a privilege. Art most often gets created either by those with means or those who have support from those with means. Street art, particularly that which repurposes the work of others, changes this dynamic to some degree, usually not only working without the support of the ruling class, but often against the interests of the ruling class.

The works selected by the curator also contained a lot of critique with regards to capitalism, which is again important to any questions students might pose about the state of art in our society. Not only does it take money to create art most of the time, it is often driven by the market and by profit, and what does that mean for the quality and purpose of art? 

One question I would love to ask students is...did you buy something at the gift shop? Or did the message implied by the exhibit make you rethink doing so? What do you think Banksy would say about the offerings there (and the prices)? Did it ever occur to you that art (and other) museums do in fact always make you exit through the gift shop for the obvious reason?

This is one of the ten pound Diana notes of which Banksy made thousands. According to the film, because a person could actually spend it in places where the clerks weren't paying attention, it was potentially a counterfeiting issue. Most of what Banksy does is it what he calls in the film "a legal grey area," not only because it uses pre-existing images, but because it disrupts public spaces.

This piece is called "Devolved Parliament." It's the House of Commons but with apes. This is a print, but it was actually done with oil on canvas, possibly using a photograph to trace. 

"Rude Copper" and "Smiley Copper." I also appreciated the way the exhibit articulated Banksy's relationship with police. In a world where police exist to protect the property of the ruling class, art will continue to be the province of the ruling class or those working to maintain their interests.

As my friend Craig said on my Insta, point Banksy!

Something I would also like my Encounters students to consider is the role marketing and advertising plays in providing opportunity for artists. This exhibit is also a critique of the ubiquity of ads in our world. You can't avoid marketing even if you want to, which affects our liberty. Taking liberty with these images and the spaces they occupy is a way of subverting that relationship between corporations and consumers.

If you want to make street art a part of studies in Encounters, and I really think you should, there are opportunities beyond exhibits like this that charge money. London features a number of different street art tours, including a free one. If I had it to do again, I would book one of these as a bookend to compliment Exit Through the Gift Shop. (Actually, we did see an Invader tile on our bus tour, though I didn't get a photo because of the rain.)

This art, which looks to me like a spin on Shepard Fairey, was in Spitalfields, and this looked like a pretty good tour.  

This was the Happy Cafe in Ealing, which featured some Banksy prints on the wall. Great coffee and breakfast, by the way. For more on street art, see the upcoming post on our excursion to Brixton, and for more on cool eating places, see my upcoming post on being out and about in London.