Comment by tommica

19 hours ago

Yeah, definetly had the city agree to it, no way in hell to sneak a statue like that without the cops getting involved.

Apparently not:

  Westminster City Council has told the BBC it did not grant permission, as it was not given advance warning that Banksy's team was planning this installation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4pvyw82exo

Council permits are usually quite public (in my country). Sneaking it in becomes part of the artwork.

I live in Westminster and we are officially supposed to put our rubbish on the pavement and there are usually no police around. They are just lucky it wasn't taken to recycling in the morning.

The trick is not to sneak it. Hi Viz and some yellow flashing lights. Couple smooth talkers.

Agreed. Also why it's totally inoffensive

(Though it's not in /the/ City of London. That wouldn't happen in a million years! City of Westminster is way more culturally flexible)

  • It doesn't make sense in the City. Waterloo Place, where he put this, has a bunch of statues already for tourists to gawp at, just now as well as "Bloke on a Horse who was an important military leader" there's this guy stepping off his plinth because the flag blocks him from seeing what's in front of him.

    The City is dead at night. If an artist wants to put art there, they'd just as somebody else said, dress up like they are workmen and be fine.

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  • The 2nd level of Banksy’s pranks is how angry they make self-appointed arbiters of what is counter-culture or cringe.

    • Banksy is the Taylor Swift of art. Mainstream and banal, but with mass market appeal. Both have talent, obviously, but do not create anything profound or original. I'm aware of both through cultural osmosis, but mostly indifferent towards both - I'm not sure how you read anger from my post.

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  • Reminds me of this great Steward Lee quote (paraphrasing from memory): "When I was young a lot of people accused me of being a champagne socialist. If they only knew how wrong they were. I was a cocaine communist!"

    Criticizing someone of being popular is just a way to silence them. If they are popular then they are "cringe", and if they are unpopular, they can be safely ignored and that statue would have been removed by the police and forgotten without any news coverage.

    Banksy may be popular, but he is not completely establishment, because well look at the statue. Its an obvious critique of the Iran war, and yet the Iran war still grinds on and UK bases continue to be used for Iran war operations. So apparently there is someone in the establishment that does not agree with Banksy. Someone boldly stepping into the void.

  • Perhaps, but he’s also a talented artist.

    One of my favorite contemporary musicians is a Socialist Filipino rapper who lives in LA. I can enjoy the music while finding the ideology abhorrent because they are two separate things.

  • Not just him, but all the people in his cultural sphere. I've been to a Banksy exhibition, and it also had videos of "critics" commenting on his work. The overtone was how inspiring and brave it is to protest things like war and injustice nowadays in a western country. It's repulsive how ignorant these people are towards their own privilege, while taking the moral high ground and lecturing others.

    And of course there was a fucking gift shop at the end.