Say the name Banksy, and many different thoughts could rush through your brain. You may know him as the British street artist world-renowned for his subversive public art displays. You may have seen his fantastic 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. You may have seen everyone from The Simpsons to Doctor Who reference him.
Although many ideas immediately come to mind, what you can't picture when you think of Banksy is his face or his voice or any sort of physical characteristics associated with the man. If he is a man, that is.
As famous as Banksy is for his art, his social disruption and his influence on pop culture, he is perhaps most famous for being unrecognizable. In this day and age of constant surveillance and connection, where anyone with a phone can snap a photo or video and post it online for the whole world to see within seconds, Banksy's true identity has somehow remained anonymous. Other than the fact that he is from Bristol, England and that he has a distinct style of street art, we just don't know much else about him.
The mystery just adds to the whole allure of the Banksy phenomenon. So when Banksy announced that he would be coming to New York for a month-long residency in October 2013 with the objective of unveiling a new piece of street art every day, many New Yorkers were excited to catch a glimpse of his new work and maybe even a glimpse of the artist himself.
The new HBO documentary Banksy Does New York, which premieres Nov. 17, chronicles the artist's time in the city, but the film is really about how the public interacted with his work. People traveled all over the city to hunt down Banksy's latest piece after he posted a photo of it on social media. Graffiti artists put their tags over his work to signal how unwelcome he was in their city. Some people tried to get rich off of Banksy originals.
Unfortunately, this film doesn't so much uncover who Banksy really is as it gives us greater insight into how he operates. What's most illuminating about the artist is the enormous scale of his endeavors and how many people are involved in each of his stunts. For Banksy's "The Sirens of the Lambs" piece, someone drives around a meat truck full of mewing, animatronic stuffed animals around the city. In another work, a man shines the shoes of a Ronald McDonald statue with comically large feet. For another piece, a man with a Grim Reaper mask drives around in a bumper car as Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" plays in the background.
It's unclear whether these people are part of Banksy's team or were just hired for these one-off performances. Beth Stebner from The New York Daily News notes in the documentary that the accordion player at the site had to sign a confidentiality agreement to be a part of the work, suggesting that Banksy is more than just an artist; he's a businessman who highly values keeping his image covert.
That's about as much light that Banksy Does New York sheds on the true identity of the artist. Banksy had no involvement with the film, so unlike Exit Through the Gift Shop, which Banksy directed, we don't even get a shadowy figure with which to speculate who may be behind the hoodie. One photographer claimed to snap a photo and video of the real Banksy during his New York residency, but it has not been confirmed by the artist.
So maybe Banksy's time in New York didn't reveal too much about his identity, but what about previous theories about who the artist really is? Do any of them seem clearer now with all of this new information?
Inspired by Banksy Does New York, CityLab's Kriston Capps makes a case for why Banksy is probably a woman. For instance, Capps claims Banksy's fellow street artist Shepard Fairey, who refers to Banksy as a "he," is an unreliable narrator in Exit Through the Gift Shop as the entire premise of the film is to put expectations and reality into question. There's also the fact that Banksy incorporates women into his work more than other street artists.
It's well known that Banksy does have people working with him to get his art out there and protect his identity, such as his agent Jo Brooks and his handling service Pest Control. But there's also people like Canadian media artist Chris Healey, who Capps also mentions in his piece, who asserts that Banksy is a team of seven artists led by a woman, which he has maintained is "legit and reliable information." If nothing else, Banksy Does New York has shown that the amount of work that went into planning each of the pieces, scouting locations and actually creating the works could not be done by one person alone. Who's to say Banksy isn't just one artist but a collective of several?
Banksy has said that he doesn't plan to ever reveal his identity, according to The New Yorker. "I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is."
And really, what would Banksy have to gain from revealing his identity, anyway? His image is that he has no image. Sure, his art is thought-provoking, but that's not what makes him so fascinating. It's his democratization of art that people love, the fact that anyone can stumble upon and see his art anywhere for free. And Banksy could be standing right next to you, and you wouldn't even know it.
Image: Spencer Platt / Getty Images
