The meaning behind Banksy’s latest London murals? His brand needed a boost
Banksy’s London murals have found many searching for a hidden meaning, but a look at the artist’s declining value suggests it’s just needed marketing, writes Andy Blackmore
For weeks now, I’ve been trying to solve a partially perplexing riddle: just what do a gorilla, a goat, a rhino, some fish and a whole menagerie of zoological specimens have in common?
Ok, so you got the first bit: they are all new artworks by Banksy. But like everything by him, it goes much deeper – at least I hope it does.
I must first confess I am a humdinger of a fan of his work. I love the style of his stencilling, the dichotomy of his ephemeral attitude at odds with the art world and his acerbic wit that laces his works with so many layers they are political mille-feuille. One day, if I win the lottery, I might own one.
Mind you, that’s not for want of trying. Like numerous others, I was one of the unlucky fanboys attempting to buy a Banksy “Met Ball” – a disco glitter ball fashioned from an old Police riot helmet – after Banksy filled a shopfront in Croydon with new artworks for sale, announced on social media as his new venture “Gross Domestic Product”. Turns out, it was more of a lottery than a marketplace itself, with fans unable to enter the shop and instead redirected to a website, where you could “apply” to win an item. Gross Domestic Product “may prove to be a disappointing retail experience – especially if you’re successful in making a purchase,” the website duly warned.
If you think that was one of the greatest attractions to ever visit Croydon, you are probably going to agree with me when I say I think Banksy is a genius. I have no doubts that history will look back and judge him so, too.
However, as my mind goes into overload trying to solve the latest instalment in the da Banksy code, something is nagging at me. My heart always says he is an artist and genius, yet my head nigglingly keeps suggesting that he is something else – merely a genius at marketing.
The source of the disagreement betwixt head and heart is this: when looking at a graph of the value of Banksy’s over the last six years one can’t help but notice that it resembles the flight path of NASA’s zero gravity “Vomit Comet” and that’s the bit making me sick.
You see, for the last couple of years, Banksy’s artworks have been going down like a lead zeppelin. According to My Art Broker, the average selling price of a Banksy in the print market has dropped from a peak of £59,550 in 2021 to £32,413 in 2023, roughly a 45 per cent plunge.
Now one of the things that my head and my heart do agree on is that Banksy is a brand as well as an artist. A very good one. And like all other such brands it too has dips in its brand awareness, so what better way than the events of the last two weeks to blast Banksy back into the public consciousness?
Why now? Call me Mr Cynical, but personally, I don’t buy the cheer us up after the riots line. Looking back at that flightpath-come-graph, perhaps, like me, you catch the correlation between the 2019 upsurge in Banksy’s value and the creation of his shredded masterpiece “Love is in the Bin” – itself a perfect branding stunt.
This ensued when his painting “Girl with Balloon” unexpectedly self-destructed immediately after it was sold at auction. The half-shredded artwork, now renamed “Love is in the Bin” sold at auction for £18,582,000 – a record for the artist. According to Sotheby’s, it was “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.”
So, rather than tear my hair out searching for hidden meaning in his animal enigma, perhaps the solution has been slapping me in the face all the time. Maybe, like some fading band needing a hit, Banksy has simply decided to remind his adoring fans he is still here.
So even if it turns out to be the one answer I didn’t want it to be – that there is NO hidden meaning, that it’s merely a publicity stunt – does this mean I value Banksy or his works any less? No. For it reminds us that the real value of art is not what it’s worth to others, but what it’s worth to you.