LONDON (AP) — Years before the rise of Instagram, Banksy figured out that the key to real influence lay in not being famous, exactly, but in being anonymous.
The mystery of his identity has long been part of the value of his art, which for decades and across continents defied authority from public walls and self-shredded on the auction block. Now, Banksy’s has generated talk about whether the works themselves retain their cultural and financial value.
It also raises the question: Why pop the red balloon of his mystique in the first place? Many Banksy fans mourned the loss of the mystery and lashed out at the news outlet. One said it was like being told without warning that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
“I feel like they are telling me how a magic trick is done,†said Thomas Evans, a Denver-based artist on Instagram. “Sometimes I just want to enjoy the magic trick.â€
But some art experts say the murals and the message will survive Banksy’s naming because his appeal wasn't driven solely by his anonymity. He and his works — mischievous and also dark — stand as witnesses to injustice, oppression and inequality around the world, from the artist's native England to and war-ravaged Ukraine. Subtract his anonymity, they say, and the work still inspires reflection and discussion.
“People buy his works because they absolutely love it,†said Acoris Andipa, director of the Andipa gallery in London. “The main feedback that I get is that they really, frankly, don’t care if they know who he is.â€
Naming the ghost — and the backlash — is engagement, too
Banksy, long thought to have been born Robin Gunningham around 1972, grew out of a tradition of street artists who viewed the undercover act of posting their art in public as a subversive form of expression. The postindustrial landscape of his native Bristol was his canvas and gallery. The walls of London, New York and elsewhere gave him a global stage just before the rise of social media.
Banksy's apparent identity has been an open secret among protective fellow artists, and long been easy to find online for those who wanted to know. in 2008 “compelling evidence suggesting" that was the artist's birth name. It has been published by other news outlets, including by , as part of their coverage of the detective work.
Reuters reported last week that after The Daily Mail's story, Banksy changed his legal name to David Jones — the second most-popular name in Britain. It's also the given name of another rock star, the late David Bowie, whose Ziggy Stardust avatar inspired a 2012 Banksy painting of Queen Elizabeth II.
Bansky's lawyer didn't respond to a request for comment, and the artist's spokeswoman declined to participate in this story.
Reuters pieced together that a David Jones traveled to Ukraine with a well-known associate of Banksy's in late 2022 — just before the artist's work began appearing on buildings that had been bombed by Russia. Banksy that he'd created seven murals in the war zone, including flipping over a grown man who is wearing a black belt. Russian President Vladimir Putin practices judo.
There's evidence that even some in the establishment he was protesting have accepted Banksy. They didn't arrest him, for example, after the Royal Courts of Justice depicting a judge in a traditional wig and gown beating an unarmed protester with a gavel. Some street artists groused that they might be arrested for creating such graffiti — but when it's a Banksy, it's art.
Robin Gunningham wasn't always so elusive
On Sept. 17, 2000, a Robin Gunningham was arrested for defacing a Marc Jacobs billboard atop a building on Hudson Street in New York.
In a handwritten signed confession, he described the work on the night in question: “I had been out drinking at a nightclub with friends when I decided to make a humorous adjustment to a billboard on top of the property,†he wrote in court records unearthed by Reuters and confirmed by the AP. “I painted eyeshadow a new mouth and a speach(sic) bubble†on the photo of a male model. He was charged with a misdemeanor.
The artist doesn't need an alleged naming to make news. He created just in , and for having or . But Banksy has courted a public image centered around morality, justice and guerrilla tactics — he's often likened to Robin Hood or Batman.
“Banksy woz ere,†he wrote with his animal murals at the London Zoo, which were .
Still, along with the sadness, there's ample speculation in the art world and on social media that the artist himself orchestrated this round of naming. He didn't deny the Reuters story.
That “would be very much in line with his practice of stunts and satire,†observed Madeleine White, the senior sales and acquisitions consultant at London's Hang-Up Gallery, “As they say, ‘all publicity is good publicity.’â€
She noted, however, that the backlash is directed at the media — not the artist, or the potency of his work. Reuters says it opted to publish some, but not all, of the information its reporters uncovered about Banksy's identity, because he is a public figure, whatever his name — and he's had an outsized influence on public events and discourse. What's more, much of his work has been done on other people's property.
Banksy's star power is about far more than anonymity
Named or not, Banksy's stardom lives, art experts say.
It endures in the wonder of his ability to erect new art under the noses of authorities well into the age of closed-circuit television and social media. It appeals because his spectacle and wit draw people in and the settings — the hulk of bombed buildings, for example, or Israel's towering wall at the border of the West Bank — invite them to reflect. Now, fans are on the lookout for how and whether he'll respond to the news of Robin Gunningham and David Jones.
Joe Syer, a Banksy expert and founder of MyArtBroker, said that the artist has always responded to world events. “And that’s where the real relevance, and value, sits.â€
“If anything, Banksy’s anonymity has functioned less as a celebrity device and more as a way to keep the work universally accessible, detached from personality, ego, or biography,†he said in an email. “It allows the work to sit in public space, politically and culturally, without being anchored to an individual in the way the mainstream press often frames it.â€
Christopher Banks, founder of the New York-based Objects of Affection Collection, reads Banksy's naming “not as a biographical event, but as a structural stress test†of the artist's system of managing his absence.
“Banksy's best works carry their meaning without the author. He was there,†Banks wrote, citing the artist's murals in Ukraine and his solidarity with the war's victims.
"The name matters less than the presence. The presence was always what the work was about.â€
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Michael Sisak contributed to this report from New York.
