When was banksy born

His work became more widely recognized around Bristol and in London, as his signature style developed. Banksy's artwork is characterized by striking images, often combined with slogans. His work often engages political themes, satirically critiquing war, capitalism, hypocrisy and greed. Common subjects include rats, apes, policemen, members of the royal family, and children.

In addition to his two-dimensional work, Banksy is known for his installation artwork. One of the most celebrated of these pieces, which featured a live elephant painted with a Victorian wallpaper pattern, sparked controversy among animal rights activists.

Other pieces have drawn attention for their edgy themes or the boldness of their execution. Banksy's work on the West Bank barrier, between Israel and Palestine, received significant media attention in He is also known for his use of copyrighted material and subversion of classic images.

An example of this is Banksy's version of Monet's famous series of water lilies paintings, adapted by Banksy to include drifting trash and debris. Banksy's worldwide fame has transformed his artwork from acts of vandalism to sought-after high art pieces. Journalist Max Foster has referred to the rising prices of graffiti as street art as "the Banksy effect. There he pledged to create a new piece of art for each day of his residency.

As he explained to the Village Voice , "The plan is to live here, react to things, see the sights — and paint on them. In late , Banksy received a slew of media attention for a show at a gallery in London's Notting Hill area that featured live rats scurrying about as part of the art-viewing experience. To eliminate any health risk, the vermin had been specially bred to be free of disease. The artist explained the reasoning behind the rodents in an interview with Times of London journalist Morgan Falconer as an attempt to be "deliberately entertaining.

I wouldn't cross town to see an exhibition of paintings, but I would cross town to see rats. Banksy's works have appeared in several places outside of England, including the Palestinian side of a wall in the troubled West Bank. His nine images were a commentary on what would probably expand to become the world's largest manufactured human barrier, with one of them depicting youngsters digging to get to the other side.

In September of , Banksy—likely with the help of some trusted associates—inserted fake CDs of Paris , hotel heiress Paris Hilton's debut release, at music retailers in several major U. Unwitting buyers bought his remixes of Hilton's songs, which were tagged with new titles, such as "Why Am I Famous?

Both that and another prank seemed to be advance-publicity stunts for Banksy's first major show in the United States, held in September of Just before "Barely Legal" was set to open at an undisclosed Los Angeles warehouse space, the artist managed to install a large blow-up doll inside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California.

The inflatable figure was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, identical to those worn by detainees at the U. It remained there for an hour before Disneyland officials learned of it and shut down the ride. The Los Angeles show was attended by several celebrities, among them Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Christina Aguilera, and Macaulay Culkin, and received an impressive amount of press coverage—even a feature on Good Morning America —but the artist was, if present, incognito on opening night.

He chose Los Angeles as the site of his first major U. It seemed like a great place to come and be ambitious. Times London, England , October 11, , p. Like many street artists, he adopted common recurring motifs such as apes, policemen, soldiers, rioters, children, and the elderly to mark his stamp in public spaces, which quickly began to garner a following.

By proliferating these iconic-stenciled images around Bristol and London, he rapidly gained the attention of the street art community and the general public. A prototypical street artist, Banksy justified his vandalism of public space, and his use of the city as canvas, as being a direct response to what he called "Brandalism," or, "any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff.

They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you're never allowed to answer back. Well, they started the fight and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back. Banksy also frequently used rats in his art, as did his predecessor, the street artist Blek le Rat, who once stated, "I began to spray some small rats in the streets of Paris because rats are the only wild animals living in cities, and only rats will survive when the human race disappears and dies out.

Banksy said, "If you feel dirty, insignificant, or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.

Rats also happen to be rare vermin that resist deep hatred by humans, and have the survival skills to get by — somewhat like Street Artists that evade authority and operate often under the cover of darkness. In the s he met Bristol photographer Steve Lazarides, who began photographing Banksy and his work, and then went on to become his agent until Lazarides recently stated, "When I first met this scruffy, grumpy guy back in , I would have never guessed that 20 years on he would be the most famous artist of his generation, and that his work would be studied on school curriculums.

He has since gone on to become a global superstar and has retained his ability to shock and make people chuckle. After Banksy's professional relationship with Lazarides ended, he created his own organization, Pest Control, which acts as sole representative and contact liaison for his work, in charge of verifying authorship of his pieces and issuing documents of provenance to buyers.

In the early s, Banksy evolved from stenciling the streets to creating prankster projects, staging public interventions within well-established art institutions, and organizing exhibitions in addition to continuing with his unsanctioned public works, all the while retaining his carefully cloaked invisibility within the public eye. Much of these efforts poked fun at art as commodity, or made specific statements on the way we are force-fed popular culture through mainstream mass distribution, and challenged our common culpability in consuming marketing, political, or media messages as truth.

In the early s, Banksy began holding exhibitions and performing interventions within well-established art institutions, in addition to continuing with his unsanctioned public interventions. In September , Banksy dressed an inflatable doll in an orange jumpsuit, black hood, and handcuffs in resemblance of a Guantanamo Bay detainment camp prisoner.

He then placed the doll below the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, where it remained for 90 minutes before the ride was shut down and the figure removed.

By placing a harsh symbol of political reality within a noted escapist environment, Banksy was remarking on our propensity for keeping our eyes wide shut.

At his Barely Legal exhibition of in Los Angeles, which drew a celebrity crowd including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Banksy rented a live year old female Indian elephant named Tai, painted in the same red and gold floral pattern as the wallpaper behind it.

In London, over the weekend of May , , Banksy hosted an exhibition titled The Cans Festival a play on words of the famous French film festival Cannes. Stencil artists from around the world including Faile from Brooklyn, Bandit from the Netherlands, Run Don't Walk from Argentina, and James Dodd from Australia were invited to paint their original artwork, as long as it did not cover or interfere with anyone else's.

It took place in a road tunnel formerly used by Eurostar underneath the London Waterloo station. The location was kept secret while the works were completed, and only then revealed to the public. Eurostar agreed to leave the works intact for at least six months following the event. In August , three years after Hurricane Katrina and the associated levee failure disaster, Banksy produced a series of work in New Orleans, Louisiana, mostly on buildings that had yet to be repaired.

He said, "Three years after Katrina I wanted to make a statement about the state of the cleanup operation. On June 13, , the Banksy vs. The show featured more than artworks 78 of which were new works , including animatronics, sculptures, and installations. The show drew over 8, visitors on the first weekend, and over , over the course of twelve weeks. In December , Banksy marked the end of the United Nations Climate Change Conference by painting four murals on global warming.