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The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it’ll be paraded round Sotheby’s by people wearing white gloves.

Banksy

Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot
BANKSY

Believe Punishment Should
If you don’t own a train company then you go and paint on one instead… it all comes from that thing at school when you had to have name tags in the back of something… that makes it belong to you. You can own half the city by scribbling your name over it.
BANKSY

Cities Names School
But there’s no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We’re not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it’s hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.
BANKSY

Artist Self Views
Stencils are good for two reasons; one – they’re quick; two – they annoy idiots.
BANKSY

Annoying Idiot Two
It’s impossible to predict which paintings will last and which won’t. In New Orleans I painted on a dilapidated shop in a street littered with abandoned cars and rotting mattresses, then two hours later the piece was gone. It turned out I’d picked the side of a crack house and the proprietor didn’t like the attention.
BANKSY

Car New Orleans Two
I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.
BANKSY

Art Dissent Guilty House Plead
Gaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons – they don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.
BANKSY

Air Cutting Drinking
I’ve never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn’t seem very appealing to me.
BANKSY

Night People Sleep
Although you might have to creep about at night and lie to your mum it’s actually one of the more honest art forms available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the price of admission.
BANKSY

Art Lying Wall
Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.
BANKSY

Art Graffiti Littles
I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached. There’s no gallery show or book or film. It’s pointless. Which hopefully means something.
BANKSY

Art Book Mean
Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
BANKSY

Mind People
I love the way capitalism finds a place – even for its enemies.
BANKSY

Capitalism Enemy Way
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don’t do that so much anymore.
BANKSY

Art Encourage People Used
Live as a villain, die as a hero
BANKSY

Dies Hero Villain
The grumpier you are, the more assholes you meet.
BANKSY

Graffiti Negative People

The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it’ll be paraded round Sotheby’s by people wearing white gloves.

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The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it’ll be paraded round Sotheby’s by people wearing white gloves.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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