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I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it.

Banksy

I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said ‘that’s clever it’s an anagram of art’ and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.
BANKSY

Art Clever Years
Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie.
BANKSY

Apples Pie Sick
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don’t do that so much anymore.
BANKSY

Art Encourage Much Used
Brandalism Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It’s yours to take, rearrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
BANKSY

Giving Rocks Space
Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums.
BANKSY

Art Bus Stops Museums
If you want someone to be ignored then build a life-size bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town. It doesn’t matter how great you were, it’ll always take an unfunny drunk with climbing skills to make people notice you.
BANKSY

Climbing Drunk Skills
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
It’s a very frustrated feeling you get when the only people with good photos of you work are the police department.
BANKSY

Feelings People Police
Nothing is black and white, and there is no purity and there is no such thing has justice.
BANKSY

Black Justice Purity White
All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars
BANKSY

Graffiti Levels War
When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.
BANKSY

Art Cabinets Tourists
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 wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website – but on the internet, people only look at pictures of kittens.
BANKSY

Internet Looks People
Fight the fighters, not their wars.
BANKSY

Fighter Fighting War
Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a f**king sharp knife to it.
BANKSY

Inspirational Inspiring Life
The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.
BANKSY

Art Holy Grail People

I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it.

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Popular Authors

I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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