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.
BANKSYI originally set out to try and save the world, but now I’m not sure I like it enough.
More Banksy Quotes
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Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie.
BANKSY -
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 -
The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. 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 -
People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it’s more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army.
BANKSY -
The grumpier you are, the more assholes you meet.
BANKSY -
People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.
BANKSY -
All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars
BANKSY -
When he time comes to leave, just walk away quietly and don’t make any fuss.
BANKSY -
There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex and revenge.
BANKSY -
The art world is the biggest joke going. It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace – never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little.
BANKSY -
Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else.
BANKSY -
Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don’t need an education to understand it, and there’s no admission fee.
BANKSY -
I don’t think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it.
BANKSY -
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 -
Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a f**king sharp knife to it.
BANKSY