Quotes by Banksy With Free Shareable Pictures
Welcome to our collection of quotes by Banksy
Wikipedia Summary for Banksy
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation.
Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the world. Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical group Massive Attack.
Banksy displays his art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces. Banksy no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti, but his public "installations" are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on. A small number of Banksy's works are officially, non-publicly, sold through an agency created by Banksy named Pest Control.
Banksy's documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film. In 2014, he was awarded Person of the Year at the 2014 Webby Awards.
I don't know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.
Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal.
Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.
The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a sh*t.
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.
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.
All I know about what people think of my gear is what a couple of my friends tell me, and one of them always wants to borrow money, so I'm not sure how reliable he is.
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.
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.
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.
This is a big surprise I don't agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I'm prepared to make an exception for the ones I'm nominated for. The last time there was a naked man covered in gold paint in my house, it was me.
If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you've made your own sculpture.
T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.
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.
Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
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.
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.
Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.
It doesn't take much to be a successful artist-all you need to do is dedicate your entire life to it.
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.
I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in -- like peace and justice and freedom.
Remember crime against property is not real crime. People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access.
If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.
You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
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.
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.
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.
When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.
The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.
Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.
We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.
Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people' affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
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.
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.
If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they'd be making Avatar, not painting a chapel.
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.
I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.
It's a very frustrated feeling you get when the only people with good photos of you work are the police department.
Graffiti ultimately wins out over proper art because it becomes part of your city, it' s a tool; I'll meet you in that pub, you know, the one opposite that wall with a picture of a monkey holding a chainsaw. I mean, how much more useful can a painting be than that?
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.
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.
I don't know if street art ever really works indoors. If you domesticate an animal, it goes from being wild and free to sterile, fat and sleepy. So maybe the art should stay outside.
A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey.
Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place.
Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don't like to use the word 'art' at all.
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.
The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.
My main problem with cops is that they do what they're told. They say 'Sorry mate, I'm just doing my job' all the fucking time.
At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity -- the lies, the corruption, the abuse.
Film is incredibly democratic and accessible, it's probably the best option if you actually want to change the world, not just re-decorate it.
You're mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity.
Your mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid.
You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation
at high speed with total clarity.
They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.
There's obviously nothing wrong with selling your art -- only an idiot with a trust fund would tell you otherwise. But it's confusing to know how far you should take it.
I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it.
All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.
I wouldn't want to be remembered as the guy who contaminated a perfectly legitimate form of protest art with money and celebrities.
You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something.
