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Has anybody seen Banksy around lately? Banksy is an anonymous graffiti artist whose full and true identity is really unknown. His street art however, is well known. Satirical representations of everyday life and situations stenciled upon public property have become the ultimate Killroy Was Here, which is another famous image-icon ranging from WW II through the Korean War era.

Bansky art is valuable, often his fans rush to sites where new work of his appears. Often, it is removed by public officials but there are several of his works that, by public demand, have been permitted to remain. Wiki tells that enterprising auctioneers have attempted to sell genuine Bansky art in~situ, and leave the problem of its removal entirely to the purchaser. –Hey, -wanna buy a bridge?

If you have a statue in the city center, 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.

—Banksy

About Face

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This could be art after the fact but it entails a certain rigor that suggests it is could be meant for the illiterate. A similar thing is done if Africa for packaged/canned/bottled foods because of the illiteracy rate. There, it was a common practice to place mainly just images of the product that it contains on the outside of the jar/bottle, etc. to assist those whom could not read.

This was especially helpful for foreign products such as Gerber baby food products to bridge the immediate language barrier. It is also the reason Gerber Foods for Babies sold very poorly in Africa initially. Gerber products feature the prominent Corporate Logo caricature, -a happy baby’s face. It was feared by the illiterate and uninformed that the product contained babies and the rumor spread! Seriously! The marketing shortcoming was rectified quickly replaced with more prominent images of the contents instead.

Face in the Paint?

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It is cognitive process called “face perception” that causes humans to ’see a human face’ in things like clouds, patterned surfaces like floor tile, acoustic ceiling tile, tree bark etc. and here, in old peeling paint. Face recognition is important for psychological and social reasons to be able to relate to other humans and if certain parts of the brain are damaged in an accident, through illness or substance abuse, a condition called “prosopagnosia” can exist, which is a social impairment. This is an inability to recognize or understand faces and expressions derived from them.

Tut Face

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A rock painted to suggest the face of King Tutankhamen, at Kilcreggan Beach, Scotland.

King Tut is believed to have died in mid-January according to online sources, in the year 1343 B.C. and controversy of the manner of his death continues. It is believed that he may have been murdered because his skull was bashed-in, and with the hierarchy being such, only a person of high rank or importance could have gotten near enough to cause harm. It is also theorized that he may have fallen, striking his head fatally. Either scenario could account for the damage to the skull.

The so-called ‘Mummy’s Curse’ myth still lingers even today as a number of individuals associated with the early finding and unsealing of the tomb died some time afterward, but it is generally believed today bacteria was present in the tomb and fed upon the foodstuff offering left for the boy king, and it was this bacteria that got into people’s lungs and caused infection and death. The air in sealed tombs is not good. Even Zahi Hawass will tell you that!

Autobahn Emoticon?

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Do you see a face in the road here? I see an emoticon, a text-based computer-generated smilie.

An emoticon is a text portrayed image, -usually viewed sideways to be understood, that emote the user’s emotion. You see these used most often in chatrooms and in text-messaging, used to set a tone or mood as the cold stoic line of text emits no feeling. While the emoticon as used on the internet can be traced back to a proposal by one Scott Fahlman in a message of his dated Sept. 19th, 1982, the earliest emoticons go back to the 1880s! Humorous writing using these visual tactics was largely common.

From Wikipedia comes this:

“…A transcript from Abraham Lincoln’s speech written in 1862 appears to contain a ‘winking’ emoticon, but it is unclear whether it is an actual use, a typo or a legitimate grammatical construct.”

Stoned Faces!

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They all look as if they are sleep. –Faces in a college lecture, no doubt. Stoned and asleep? Sounds just about right to me.

Modern Graffiti comes in many different forms, from the scrawled message in a public bathroom stall to the spray-painted murals boasted on subway walls.

The simplest form of graffiti is scrawled message; “Sally loves Peter” or “James woz here.” Many regard these impromptu writings as vandalism, as they lack artistic merit, yet the point of graffiti is to send an expressive message to the reader, whether it is a political, social or personal view.

Some graffiti is used as a territory marker, called “tagging”. These can often be seen on street corners, street signs and suburban walls. It is simply a signature of the person who is laying claim to that area as being in their territory.

Stenciling is a popular form of modern graffiti, and is often used to convey political and social messages to the viewer in a pictorial form. A famous stenciling artist is Banksy, with his provocative and thought-provoking work that can be appreciated as more than just mere vandalism, as seen below.

Graffitti artists commonly utilize spray paint as their medium, using different size nozzles to achieve broader or more precise lines. However, some graffiti artists choose to use brushes or sponges, sometimes combining all three in their artwork.

Modern graffitti does not require that a certain style is used. Cartoons, caricatures and portraits are often used to convey a message, with decorative text styles and interesting uses of perspective.

Modern graffiti is true street art, appearing overnight on walls, in subways and on buildings. Graffitti artists often paint their murals illegally, working under cover of darkness with a team of sentries to watch for law enforcers or pedestrians. Because of the controversial material contained in many murals, graffiti is now considered to be a form of resistance art, in rebellion against common public beliefs and government laws. This example is of a statement made by Barack Obama, as expressed by the graffiti artist.

The ultimate achievement for many graffiti artists is to create their work in places that are dangerous to get to, or difficult to paint on. Spraying a piece on the side of a train, for example, is quite an achievement, as trains are often under close guard, and have a slick surface which causes the paint to run.

As with all genres of art, there are amazing graffiti artists, and those who attempt to be amazing, but fall far short of their goal, and end up being mere vandals.

However, there is a lot of amazing graffiti out there, and many graffiti artists are now being commissioned to decorate buildings and offices. As an art form, it requires not only technical ability, to use the tools required, but creativity and personal opinion.

Read More:

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Classic Subject Resurfaces in Urban Street Artworks