Banksy

London, Lazarides Gallery, Stench, 2006

Since 2000 Banksy has built a reputation through his street art to become one of the most talked about, popular artists of the present day. Often compared to 1980s American street artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, the content of his work covers a variety of political and social issues including war, corruption and inequality with a head-on directness and tongue-in-cheek rebellious humour.

The present work belongs to his most celebrated series to date called the 'Crude Oils' - modified oil paintings in which he applies his street graffiti to fine art paintings by other artists. "If you want to survive as a graffiti writer when you go indoors," Banksy explained, "I figured your only option is to carry on painting over things that don't belong to you there either." (Banksy, Wall and Piece, Century 2006, p. 158) The 'Crude Oils' tackle with similar subversive intent and visual humour the themes of political and social commentary found in Banksy's street art, and like his carefully placed, stencilled graffiti, the idea of context is all important. Over the last few years, a disguised Banksy has succeeded in placing his corrupted oil paintings onto the walls of the world's most respected museums and art galleries including The Louvre, The Tate, The British Museum and New York's Museum of Modern Art. These light-hearted gestures of 'art terrorism', many of which hung for several days before being noticed and removed, poke fun at the closed and elitist nature of the art world as it is perceived by many. In this, as well as in their use of another artist's work as a readymade, Banksy's crude oils draw clear parallels with works like Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., Robert Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning Drawing, and more recently Jake and Dinos Chapman's Disasters of War in which they reworked an entire series of Goya's original prints.

Already a household name in England, Banksy's first exhibition in the U.S last September was held in a disused Los Angeles warehouse. Over its first three days it attracted more than thirty thousand people. Many waited for hours in the five-block long queues that formed outside; queues remarkable even by Hollywood's standards - even more so when one considers the show's location was only revealed on the opening day. This overwhelming response to the work of an anonymous, media-shy street artist from Bristol is indicative of the extent to which his work has captured the cultural zeitgeist at the beginning of the new century.