The Always Bankable Banksy

You have to appre­ci­ate the para­dox of Banksy: A com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful anti-cap­i­tal­ist. A van­dal who adds val­ue. It’s the sort of amus­ing con­tra­dic­tion that appears often in the artist’s own work.

A case in point: In 2009 Banksy made a wall paint­ing on an indus­tri­al estate out­side Croy­don, South Lon­don, depict­ing a spike-head­ed punk rock­er puz­zling over a set of instruc­tions. Next to him is a box labeled “LARGE GRAFFITI SLOGAN,” with a jum­bled car­go of words–“SYSTEM,” “SMASH,” “POLICE”–spilling out, wait­ing to be assem­bled. The logo on the box is also dis­as­sem­bled, but eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able: IKEA.

The guer­ril­la artist had bare­ly fin­ished his mur­al when a pair of guer­ril­la busi­ness­men swooped in, sub­vert­ing the sub­ver­sive mes­sage. It’s an inter­est­ing sto­ry, nice­ly told in this nine-minute film pro­duced for Chan­nel 4 by Mar­tyn Gre­go­ry, shot and edit­ed by Paul Bernays and nar­rat­ed by Nick Glass.