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New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#71

Post by garyfirestorm »

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote: post #59
TehCorwiz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blinded by nationalism" I don't know, seems like a clear concise message that has relevance in today's world.

Is it though? This can mean anything. Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag? Where do we draw the line between harmful and productive nationalism? Who exactly is blinded by nationalism? It is vague enough to appear deep to those trying to find something deep but not concrete enough to appear as anything that will stick in people's minds for more than a week. Unfortunately a lot of modern art…

waving any flag and thinking its us or them is equally blinding. the world is not vacuum and to coexist we need to put flags behind and work together.

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#73

Post by [deleted] »

teekert wrote: post #38
nickthegreek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> engineered pro-establishment viral messaging I don’t understand this. What speaks pro-establishment in this piece?

If one can read this as pro-establishment, it's proof that the the art is indeed not so obvious as suggested above :)

[deleted]

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#74

Post by MattGaiser »

miketery wrote: post #68
TehCorwiz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blinded by nationalism" I don't know, seems like a clear concise message that has relevance in today's world.

Why nationalism? A flag can represent more than a nation. Can be blinded by any "flag" / ideology.

Flags overwhelmingly represent nations, groups considering themselves nations, that were nations or have some kind of individual governmental status.

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#76

Post by tialaramex »

gib444 wrote: post #21
tommica wrote: post #10

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

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.

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#78

Post by [deleted] »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #61
periodjet wrote: post #33

Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality.

He's also king of the "I'll criticize the west but I'll turn a blind-eye to non-democratic countries' wrongdoings" . A trait shared with virtually all intellectuals and artists in the west. There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing o…

[deleted]

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#79

Post by Lerc »

krapp wrote: post #58
vkou wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This criticism would carry more weight if the people this statue criticises had the intellectual and emotional maturity beyond that of a teenager. Unfortunately, they often don't meet that bar, so the message has to be in a form they can understand.

You're being downvoted but honestly the "everyone is twelve now" meme explains our collective societal dysfunction perfectly. There's no point to complexity or subtlety in art anymore, or even any kind of symbolism at all. Anything that needs to be interpreted, that doesn't have a single objective meaning which gets spelled out for you. Flag man is silly. Everyone is twelve now.

Lana Wachowski has said that the Red Pill movement taught her that no matter how unsubtle you are, it's still too subtle for some people.

Re: New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag

#80

Post by Fezzik »

periodjet wrote: post #33

Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality.

Most galvanizing statements have been pithy and comprehensible to 13 year olds. The general population is not doing a deep dive in to something like Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” contemplating the proper role of government, and then getting fired up to act. We need CliffsNotes, slogans, and visible art like this.
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