WHO says crime doesn’t pay? In his quarter-century career as a graffiti artist, Banksy – whose first solo show in 14 years opened at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Glasgow yesterday – has managed to transform himself from unknown vandal to the most successful artist of the public space since Keith Haring.
Indeed, the choice of the GoMA as the debut venue for the show is, appropriately, connected to another example of transgression transmuted into art. Banksy opted for the GoMA because his favourite work of art “The Duke” – Glasgow’s famous equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington with a traffic cone placed, permanently and satirically, on his head – sits immediately outside the gallery’s front door.
As many Glaswegians will tell you, in the early years of this public art piss-take, the authorities used to remove the cone. However, so tenaciously was the comedy hat replaced by pranksters that the great and the good had to give up, eventually adopting the image as a signature of the city (indeed, pop into the GoMA shop and you can buy all manner of cards, fridge magnets and coasters emblazoned with pictures of the “Iron Duke” looking very silly).
However, the political significance of opening the show at the GoMA goes deeper than the obvious similarity between the satirised statue and Banksy’s own work. Prior to its current function, this grand building was the Royal Exchange, where traders dealt in commodities. Even more ironically, it was initially built as the home of the tobacco baron and slave owner William Cunninghame.
All of which makes the gallery the perfect place to display works of anti-racist art such as the first draft of the Union Flag stab vest that Banksy made for Stormzy’s iconic appearance at Glastonbury in 2019. This prototype – which is exhibited alongside a short video clip of Stormzy delighting in the item when he received it – was ultimately set aside by Banksy for being “too patriotic” in its reference to the flag (in the end he went with the powerful white on black design that was adopted so enthusiastically by the rapper).
The anti-racist theme is a strong one throughout the show. The artist has recreated the image that he famously painted on an external wall of the Barbican arts centre in London ahead of an exhibition of the work of African-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
In this piece, one of Basquiat’s figures (a highly-stylised, pop art representation of a black boy) is stopped and searched by two cops.
One finds this kind of melding of comic and political intent throughout the show. Another case in point is the image of archetypal spies listening in on a real telephone call box. Originally painted in Cheltenham (home of GCHQ, the UK government’s “intelligence and security” facility), it makes for an artwork that is as neatly satirical as it is accessible.
Of course, in these days of so-called “Culture Wars” – in which right-wingers on both sides of the Atlantic, from Nadine Dorries to Ron DeSantis, seek to distract us from food banks and homelessness by pointing towards chosen pronouns and children’s entertainers who dare to be drag queens – Banksy is a target of the ire of many in the “anti-woke” brigade. Indeed, many conservative commentators sneer at the supposed hypocrisy of the artist being both left-wing and commercially successful.
Predictably enough, he cares not a jot about such criticism. In the room dedicated to his political placards and the like, Banksy is quoted saying: “I’ve always felt it important to stand up for what you believe, especially if there’s a chance that doing so might get your art in the newspapers.”
It’s weird, of course, to be viewing Banksy’s work in an art gallery. As he says himself, “graffiti is essentially art made to be viewed from a moving vehicle.”
Yet, this beautifully presented exhibition – in which one wends one’s way through 25 years of the artist’s impressive oeuvre – succeeds in giving a strong sense of Banksy’s methods and his personal artistic history. You can take or leave recreations of his studio (complete, I’m told, with his actual desk) and his teenage bedroom in Bristol (resplendent with posters of The Specials).
However, it’s difficult not to be fascinated by the exhibit showing us how he created his famous self-destructing picture frame. Here we can see the hardware that enabled him to shred his picture Girl With Balloon just seconds after it was auctioned for £1 million at Sotheby’s in London in 2018.
Sharply political, as distinctive as the work of Warhol or Haring, and, very often, laugh-out-loud funny, Banksy is one of the great popular artists of modern times. A fact to which this excellent show attests brilliantly.
Banksy – Cut & Run: 25 Years Card Labour is at the GoMA, Glasgow until August 28: glasgowlife.org.uk
