'It's not like they're going to be hanging in the Louvre....'

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I think this is kind of cool. It probably isn't.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200503/s1331780.htm

Last Update: Saturday, March 26, 2005. 0:49am (AEDT)
Prankster smuggles art into top NY museums

Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, "I could do that," but a graffiti artist has gone one step further.

A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" smuggled in his own picture of a soup can and hung it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed.

The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day.

The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was an oil painting, 61centimetres by 46 centimetres, of a colonial-era admiral to which the artist had added a can of spray paint in the admiral's hand and anti-war graffiti in the background.

The other two targets were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, where he hung a glass-encased beetle with fighter jet wings and missiles attached to its body - another comment on war, Banksy said.

"It was just an outsider's view of the modern American bug, bristling with listening devices and military hardware," he said.

A picture of the artist, wearing an overcoat, a hat and a fake beard and nose, hanging up his work at the four museums attracted the attention of the New York Times.

Banksy said he conducted all four operations on March 13, helped by accomplices who filmed him and provided distractions where necessary.

"They staged a gay tiff (lovers' quarrel), shouting very loudly and obnoxiously," he said, declining to give his real name or any personal details beyond his occupation as a professional painter and decorator.

It is not the first time he has staged such stunts. Last year he smuggled work into the Louvre in Paris and London's Tate, attracting attention in the British media.

"My sister inspired me to do it. She was throwing away loads of my pictures one day and I asked her why. She said 'It's not like they're going to be hanging in the Louvre.'"

He took that as a challenge. "I thought why wait until I'm dead," he said.

His preferred creative outlet, graffiti on trains, was growing more difficult due to greater security so he decided to branch out into infiltrating museums. "I tend to gravitate to places with less sophisticated security systems," he said.

Officials at the Natural History Museum declined to comment on security. Museum of Modern Art officials said only that the offending picture was taken down on March 17.

He said the painting in the Metropolitan Museum, a small portrait of a woman wearing a gas mask, had been discovered after one day, while the others stayed up for several days.

The paintings were fixed to the wall with extra-strong glue.

-Reuters

― kate/thank you friendly cloud (papa november), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:34 (twenty-one years ago)

I am very surprised at how quickly this story is making the rounds.

― bro dudely (deangulberry), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Best art prank ever.

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I've been into Banksy's stuff for a while, he funny and pretty.

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Banksy

*yawn*

― who's asking? (nordicskilla), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Sorry for boring you Adam.

― kate/thank you friendly cloud (papa november), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:44 (twenty-one years ago)

it wasn't you, it's just...

― who's asking? (nordicskilla), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Best publicity stunt evah.

― mouse (mouse), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 01:18 (twenty-one years ago)

the art is really great, its graphically inspired, and wicked in the most swiftian sense of the world

― anthony, Tuesday, 29 March 2005 01:20 (twenty-one years ago)

ha. another art world prank. imagine: docents being paid $8 / hour who don't know the curators / management, may have noticed, don't give a fuck either way. art museums are such easy targets for things like this...it's just...(*yawns along with Adam*).

― paulhw (paulhw), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Oooh, the stuff on this Banksy site is... worse than yawnsome.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:17 (twenty-one years ago)

We did this thread somewheres.

― Jimmy Mod Has Returned With Spices And Silks (ModJ), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:17 (twenty-one years ago)

his pix are always such fun to find when you come across them in places which are actually really GENUINELY hard to imagine how he got them there, so i think it's nice that Art Gallery Types can now get to feel the same frisson w/o actually leaving the building!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:18 (twenty-one years ago)

is he more boring than neckface?

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:18 (twenty-one years ago)

i tried to find the pulp fiction plus bananas one - which i see every time i go go to a FAP in town centre - but it's not on the net i don't think

east london is full of them, obv

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:21 (twenty-one years ago)

he is a good thing, as far as fun art you can see off the bus goes

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:22 (twenty-one years ago)

i dig banksy, i'm shocked spencer and adam don't.

― mark p (Mark P), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:25 (twenty-one years ago)

if you come at him via these museum pranks being much of a big deal then being all jaded's not so surprising a reaction: also a lot of his stuff which is great in situ looks very generic in photos (esp.if some nitwit is yelling "subversive" at you at the same time)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

there's a rat w.sunglasses i want to link but it keeps crashing explorer

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

The stuff on the web looks kind of eh, but the concept of the museum thing sound amusing enough.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 22:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I overheard (it was kind of impossible not to) an elderly British woman talking about how wonderful this was this afternoon. She gives me hope that old age won't suck completely.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 01:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Has anybody got pictures of the stuffed birds he put everywhere?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 03:43 (twenty-one years ago)

old age only doesn't suck if yr british milo!

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 08:14 (twenty-one years ago)

There was a bit in that re-search book, "pranks" about some guy who couldn't get his art exhibited, so he bought a bunch of electrical outlet sockets, painted pictures on them, then dressed up in overalls and replaced all of the gallery's electrical outlets with his. I seem to remember he even held an opening!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 31 March 2005 14:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow, his stuff looks good, only got a quick look as I've got High Heid Yins in the office today, but I want to see more.

― Rumpsy Pumpsy (Rumpie), Thursday, 31 March 2005 15:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow, I missed this thread until I started doing the categorisation thing.

I still really like Banksy, despite the countless copycatters in Hoxditch now, the originals still really have something of the unexpected, the genuinely bizarre and eye-catching.

I'm kind of tired and jaded when it comes to art pranks, but the fact that it's *him* that did it really does make it seem kind of cool.

― Masonic Cathedral (kate), Thursday, 31 March 2005 15:31 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.woostercollective.com/2005/03/wooster-exclusive-banksy-hits-new.html

the rest i can take or leave but i love that soup can

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 1 April 2005 13:57 (twenty-one years ago)

i quite like the bug also but the very fact this is found on a "culture jamming" site injects way more smugness than his work can carry

i still heart his real actual graffiti mostly

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 1 April 2005 14:08 (twenty-one years ago)

An LA artist did something similar a few years ago - he added to a freeway sign, and it went unnoticed for a while.

Story and pics here.

― nickn (nickn), Saturday, 2 April 2005 00:01 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah i quoted his siter in a random thread last week ago, i forget the thread or reference but ile needs more modern art threads. i like jet-pack and his 16bit stickers.

― kephm (kephm), Saturday, 2 April 2005 00:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Has anybody got pictures of the stuffed birds he put everywhere?

http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/the-birds.html

― kephm (kephm), Saturday, 2 April 2005 00:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Gah. I know who you mean, but can't remember his name. He wrote a piece for Fortean Times about it. I think he was possibly called Jeffrey Vallance, or something along those lines.

― caitlin (caitlin), Saturday, 2 April 2005 06:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Funny, my start page posted me this fact today:

1935: A highly artistic and creative prankster named Hugh Troy wanted to see which was more compelling—van Gogh’s paintings, which were on display at the Museum of Modern Art, or the artist’s severed ear. So Troy fashioned a fake ear out of meat and set it on a table in the gallery with a note describing it as the very ear van Gogh cut off in the depths of his despair. Before long, more people were busy going gaga over the ear than over the artworks.

― absolutego (ex machina), Sunday, 3 April 2005 03:00 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

they were talking about Banksy on radio 4 this morning. he has a new exhibition in LA oe bit of which is a live elephant painted with a wallpaper pattern in a makeshift room also covered in the same pattern. the presenters and the art correspondant on the spot and the american one they also spoke to all seemed to completely miss the joke. (or maybe that was a meta-joke on the listeners?)

no mention of elephant here either:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5335400.stm

oddly, 10 minutes later whilst talking about a proposed new reservoir, someone on the 'phone used the phrase 'elephant in the room'. was this a coincidence or had he been listening?

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Thursday, 14 September 2006 07:27 (nineteen years ago)

exploitative cunt. hope the elephant is getting paid.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Thursday, 14 September 2006 07:37 (nineteen years ago)

that elephant in full: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5344676.stm

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Thursday, 14 September 2006 08:55 (nineteen years ago)

ELEPHANTS!!!!!!

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42085000/jpg/_42085606_pinkelephant_416.jpg

COme on, it's brilliant.

And it's pink, too. I'm a sucker for pink elephants on parade.

― Angel In Love With Her Own Pedals (kate), Thursday, 14 September 2006 09:01 (nineteen years ago)

It's a bit Roy Walker's Catchphrase, I think.

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Thursday, 14 September 2006 09:03 (nineteen years ago)

Bansky more like Wanksy

― Breean Weldrick (weldrick), Thursday, 14 September 2006 09:17 (nineteen years ago)

amirite

― electric sound of jim [and why not] (electricsound), Thursday, 14 September 2006 09:19 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.bojates.com/albums/davidblaine/blaine1.jpg

^^^^
ART!

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 14 September 2006 11:27 (nineteen years ago)

what precisely does 'an elephant in a warehouse in los angeles' draw attention to other than Banksy himself?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 14 September 2006 11:28 (nineteen years ago)

Elephants. Baby elephants. Baby Elephant Walk. Henry Mancini. The theme from Peter Gunn. Gun control.

― S- (sgh), Friday, 15 September 2006 05:16 (nineteen years ago)

Ah come on guys! "There's an elephant in the room!"

as said by me on the Mercury Prize thread!

as in "It's obvious and yet everyone is pretending it's not there"

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 15 September 2006 06:39 (nineteen years ago)

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