Peter Conrad 

Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall by Will Ellsworth-Jones; Seven Years with Banksy by Robert Clarke – review

A sceptic and a devotee Robert Clarke struggle to reveal much of note about the elusive, camera-shy graffiti artist, writes Peter Conrad
  
  

Banksy Sweeping It Under the Carpet painting
Banksy's 'Sweeping It Under The Carpet' in Chalk Farm, London. Photograph: Dave Etheridge-Barnes/Getty Images Photograph: Dave Etheridge-Barnes/Getty Images

When Robert Clarke first caught sight of the then unknown Banksy in a New York flophouse in 1995, it was like one of those revelatory occasions in Hollywood biblical epics when the shadow of the saviour, whose face we are not permitted to glimpse, falls onto the ungodly. "Lo and behold," says the quivering Clarke, "he was framed in the office door and a radiant light was coming off him."

"No, no really!" he adds, but the disclaimer doesn't dispel the religiosity of the encounter. Clarke rises and follows this nondescript fellow from Bristol, who dematerialises so mysteriously and leaves behind him only prophetic daubs on the sides of buildings – anti-capitalist slogans, stencilled caricatures of greedy corporate rats, the Mona Lisa wielding a bazooka and Queen Victoria being orally pleasured by a lesbian attendant. The first writing on the wall, inscribed by a bodiless hand at Belshazzar's feast, announced the imminent fall of a city. Banksy too, for his disciple Clarke, is prophetic or "prescient", foretelling an apocalyptic future that "manifests through the walls".

Will Ellsworth-Jones is a less worshipful follower, but even he attributes a "redemptive power" to Banksy: teaching the low-born and oppressed how to assert themselves with cans of spray paint, he gives them a sense of what therapists call self-worth. Ellsworth-Jones interviews a Banksy wannabe who "explains the call of graffiti in an almost messianic way". The apostolic Clarke is content to scamper along behind Banksy, but Ellsworth-Jones's sacred narrative takes a sinister turn when Banksy sells his soul to an agent called Steve Lazarides. Ellsworth-Jones explains their association, now ended, "in biblical terms". Like Satan offering Christ the kingdoms of this world, "Lazarides took Banksy up to the mountain top, tempted him with … fame, money, success", and even threw in the alluring incentive of Angelina Jolie, a customer and a devout fan.

Banksy, who sends the credulous Clarke off to march against global commerce and the wars it foments, is shown by Ellsworth-Jones to be as capitalistic as his hero Damien Hirst. Banksy once wondered whether an artist should make money from work that was intended to draw attention to world poverty, and solved the problem by calling it ironic. He was wearing what Clarke calls his "invisibility cloak" at the time, but I can imagine lips curling in a devilish smirk as he contemplated the credulity of those who pay a premium for ephemera that were meant to mock the notion that art can be valued, traded, treated as wealth.

Clarke has the advantage of a casual acquaintance with Banksy. Together they tramp through the mud at Glastonbury, go skateboarding in Manhattan, invade London Zoo under cover of dark. But Banksy takes care to say nothing of significance and to do nothing memorable. Mostly he appears to Clarke in dreams, like Christ after his disappearance from the tomb: in one woozy reverie Banksy "writes an oath with his finger on the sacred ancestral stones" of a monument like Stonehenge. Clarke is forever regressing from the urban jungle to the rustic homeland of Merrie England, so it's good to be reminded by Ellsworth-Jones that Banksy doesn't share this new-age nostalgia. His own reconstruction of the circle of boulders on Salisbury Plain is called Boghenge, and consists of portable toilets arranged in a formation that has no astrological puzzle behind it.

Using aliases and accomplices while he remains out of sight, Banksy is a control freak. Ellsworth-Jones demystifies him by identifying the intermediaries who work on his behalf – the PR firm that publicises him by misleading the media, the organisation that authenticates his work and exposes fakes. Ellsworth-Jones also exposes his image as something of a fallacy. Clarke subscribes to the myth of Banksy's working-class roots; Ellsworth-Jones has ascertained that he attended Bristol Cathedral Choir School, which makes him a faux-prole. Banksy's first name, according to Clarke, is Robin – hardly an appellation favoured by families on council estates.

Breaking the promise of its subtitle, Ellsworth-Jones's book catches no glimpse of the man behind the wall. All he can do is contribute to his mystique. Having never been photographed – or only from behind, by Clarke's mum – Banksy has a thousand faces. He is sometimes described as a latter-day Robin Hood, though it's not clear that he's redistributing wealth as the sylvan bandit did; he is more aptly likened to the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel. But as in the case of Father Christmas, the legend, as Ellsworth-Jones says, is "better than the real thing".

Ellsworth-Jones writes perceptively about the "ethical dilemmas" created by Banksy's marketing techniques, yet still communicates the excitement of a "treasure hunt" for traces of his work in the scruffier purlieus of London. Clarke can't compete. His most eloquent tribute to Banksy's work is to call it "cool-as-fuck". Whatever you think of the aerosol guerrilla, he deserves better than that.

 

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