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Central Park (Banksy)

banksyny.com

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Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#31

Post by vacri »

grinich wrote: post #20
Zoepfli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that message is "art is as much about the object itself as it is about its sociological context." Put something into a museum and everybody will look at it reverently. Sell it on the street and most will ignore it. Sad. But human.

The famous violinist Joshua Bell once played in a DC metro station for nearly an hour. He played six Bach pieces (some of the hardest ever composed) on a $3.5MM violin. Over a thousand people rushed by, unperturbed. He made $32 and some change. I still don't know how this makes me feel. You can say it's human to ignore things on the street, but there were more children who stopped than adults. I think it's moreso tha…

In the context of a street performance, the difference between a bad musician and a good musician is much greater than that between a good and a world-class one, particularly if you're only briefly exposed to it. For the most part, you're just not focusing on the music - it's not like sitting in a hall intending to be entertained.

Should people at a metro station even be able to tell the difference between a violin worth $3.5k and one worth $3.5M anyway?

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#32

Post by prawn »

vacri wrote: post #29
Zoepfli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that message is "art is as much about the object itself as it is about its sociological context." Put something into a museum and everybody will look at it reverently. Sell it on the street and most will ignore it. Sad. But human.

In this case, not sad at all. As abat says above, these pieces look flat and boring. Usually Banksy's work melds with the environment it's in, often in clever ways. Taken out of that environment, it's just stencil art. The special essence has left, and it does become boring.

It's basically a Threadless t-shirt design in concrete or canvas rather than fabric.

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#33

Post by reubenmorais »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #27
Rimpinths wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post set this up and wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning article about it. It's a great article, "Pearls Before Breakfast": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04...

Wow, that is one hell of a smug article. >As metro stations go, L'Enfant Plaza is more plebeian than most.

At least give the author the benefit of the doubt. I've never lived anywhere near Washington D.C. but a quick search reveals the station is anything but "plebeian":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Enfant_Plaza_%28WMATA_stat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Federal_Center,_Wash....

In other words: woosh.

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#34

Post by yetanotherphd »

reubenmorais wrote: post #33
yetanotherphd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is one hell of a smug article. >As metro stations go, L'Enfant Plaza is more plebeian than most.

At least give the author the benefit of the doubt. I've never lived anywhere near Washington D.C. but a quick search reveals the station is anything but "plebeian": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Enfant_Plaza_%28WMATA_stat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Federal_Center,_Wash... . In other words: woosh.

Did you read the article? Is the smug tone some kind of joke that I'm not getting? Because based on my own reading the author really does judge the commuters for not stopping, and the use of "plebeian" was not in jest.

I think you're going out of your way to sound sophisticated by pretending you "get it".

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#35

Post by hkmurakami »

vinceguidry wrote: post #9
quchen wrote: post #3

Very rarely is a picture or painting interesting just by looking at it, but the story behind an image is much harder to sell on the street. As to "people don't recognize art when they see it" type of posts, there are plenty of Banksys out there you've never heard of. In addition to that, what would the appropriate reaction have been according to the poster? People fast-food shopping art at a street corner, like that'…

Reminds me of that time when Joshua Bell played in a subway with an incredibly expensive violin. They showed people just walking past, not knowing at all what they're missing. When I saw that I thought, "what the hell is he trying to prove?" You always need to adapt your art to the medium and provide contrast. To do otherwise is to argue against reality. Your average run-of-the-mill street performer is always going t…

Hmm I had heard that the $20/hour or so he made was significantly more than what the average street performer would have gotten though?

So even the commuters in a rush could tell that he was something.

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#37

Post by showerst »

grinich wrote: post #20
Zoepfli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that message is "art is as much about the object itself as it is about its sociological context." Put something into a museum and everybody will look at it reverently. Sell it on the street and most will ignore it. Sad. But human.

The famous violinist Joshua Bell once played in a DC metro station for nearly an hour. He played six Bach pieces (some of the hardest ever composed) on a $3.5MM violin. Over a thousand people rushed by, unperturbed. He made $32 and some change. I still don't know how this makes me feel. You can say it's human to ignore things on the street, but there were more children who stopped than adults. I think it's moreso tha…

This is a great piece of writing, but before you take too much of a lesson in human nature realize this was also in a commuter station at 8am on a work day. Even if people had wanted to stop, they had somewhere to be.

I've seen musicians on the level of a talented high schooler draw a big crowd and rake in cash at chinatown a few stops away. If Bell had done that experiment in Dupont Circle at 6pm on a Saturday night he'd have probably started a riot =).

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#38

Post by shapiro »

Banksy is just the remainder of an unbalanced equation in the matrix. Marketing has triumphed over Art. The rebel artist is an anomaly, but it is not unexpected. Which has led you, inexorably, here.

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#39

Post by 001sky »

nrivadeneira wrote: post #24
jberryman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another conclusion you could draw is that when you remove the hype Banksy's work just isn't very compelling (anymore, or perhaps just on canvas). Or perhaps this is evidence of the opposite: a fair number of people were willing to pay $60 for a small monochrome, hastily-sprayed stencil piece.

When it comes to street art/graffiti, the context is just as, if not more, important than the art itself. For example, massive roller paintings on the sides of buildings or pieces on trains are interesting partially because of the danger involved in putting up the work in the first place. When the context is removed and it's just put on a piece of canvas, it loses a lot of its significance. It's a similar reason why…

This. part pf street art is the 'vandalism' aspect. in banksy's case there is almost always an ironic play on this. in others, we've seen thinkgs in the uk like using "powerwashers" to do grafitii, as a relief of light (clean) against normal (dirty). oh, and this selective washing was "illegal", and deemed "vandalism" even though by most sane standards washing a wall (however selective) would seem in the public interest. But the marking of the wall (claiming it as your own) is the inherent social transgression...sad statement on our modern world. Yes, and none of this gets communicated with the same techniques ex-situ.

Re: Central Park (Banksy)

#40

Post by Lerc »

showerst wrote: post #37
grinich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famous violinist Joshua Bell once played in a DC metro station for nearly an hour. He played six Bach pieces (some of the hardest ever composed) on a $3.5MM violin. Over a thousand people rushed by, unperturbed. He made $32 and some change. I still don't know how this makes me feel. You can say it's human to ignore things on the street, but there were more children who stopped than adults. I think it's moreso tha…

This is a great piece of writing, but before you take too much of a lesson in human nature realize this was also in a commuter station at 8am on a work day. Even if people had wanted to stop, they had somewhere to be. I've seen musicians on the level of a talented high schooler draw a big crowd and rake in cash at chinatown a few stops away. If Bell had done that experiment in Dupont Circle at 6pm on a Saturday night…

>Even if people had wanted to stop, they had somewhere to be.

The prison of modern life in a nutshell.

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