Street art, sometimes called "post graffiti", is a genre of fine art that is created in public places, mostly on the street. Street art artists do not only create in their own country, but often travel abroad to spread their work around the world. But very often they are met with misunderstanding and therefore their works are painted over and thus suffer irreversible damage. Among the leading representatives of this genre is the British artist Banksy, whose unauthorized exhibition entitled The World of Banksy – The Immersive Experience is currently underway in Prague's Mánes.
Banksy, a global phenomenon that no one has ever seen and no one even knows who he actually is, does not authorize his exhibitions around the world, because he promotes the idea that art is here for everyone and, according to him, copyright should not exist at all. Even the organizer of the Prague exhibition, the German company Heinen Handels, does not hide the fact that half of the works you will see at the exhibition are replicas created according to the originals by students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. The real originals are hidden only among the graphics in the second part of the exhibition, but the organizers allegedly do not want to reveal which ones they are for security reasons. Banksy is even opposed to his works being traded, as evidenced by the incident that took place in 2018 at the London auction house Sotheby's, where immediately after the auction of his famous work Girl with a red balloon, it was converted for 29 million crowns, the painting began to shred itself. Banksy mounted a remote-controlled shredding device directly into the frame. In the end, however, the horrified collector does not have to regret at all, because the painting was not completely destroyed, and by acquiring a new story, its value on the art market increased even more. However, even Banksy's street works are traded. His graffiti, which appeared on the wall of a garage on the outskirts of the Welsh city of Port Talbot before Christmas in 2018, was sold by its owner to gallerist John Brandler for 3 million crowns. The gallery fenced off the work, and the place became a sought-after attraction for tourists from all over the world. Banksy usually sprays his works on walls through stencils, so-called stencils, and they appear in unconventional places, such as on a wall in the Gaza Strip. His works are mainly about provocative content that draws attention to some problem characteristic of our time. In Venice, in Saint Mark's Square, for example, during the Venice Biennale, he exhibited a set of paintings with a huge cruise ship that had just sailed into the city under the name Venice in Oil, which he probably wanted to draw attention to the impact of mass tourism on culture and the environment. This "happening", however, was ended by the local police because they expelled Banksy from the square because he allegedly did not have a paid place. He did a similar action, in which he tried to draw attention to the relativity of the value of art, right on the street in Chicago, USA, where he let an inconspicuous elderly man sell the originals of his paintings for a symbolic price of 60 dollars each. Passers-by hardly noticed the painting stand, and the fictitious salesman basically had nothing to do all day. In the end, some paintings were bought by a gentleman who furnished an apartment, an old woman who liked them as an interior decoration in her own house, but demanded a half discount on them, and a New Zealand tourist who wanted a souvenir of Chicago. The total revenue for the whole day ended up being only $435. However, the new owners certainly had a lucky day when they finally found out what a treasure they bought on the street. Unfortunately, Banksy's works have not escaped unconscious destruction, such as the sneezing rats in the London Underground, which were removed by the cleaning service along with other graffiti, but also theft, such as the grieving woman on the door of the Bataclan club in Paris, which was stolen by an organized group in 2019. This is also proof that this original artist, who came out of the Bristol underground school of street art and who continues to hide his identity, will constantly surprise the world with his work and at the same time document the time and society in which we live. The exhibition in Prague's Mánes Gallery will last until the end of September 2020.
Vladimír Dubeň