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Title: An art-killing machine. Author: Horowitz Date: 2022-08-29 Language: en Topics: Art, Banksy, Graffiti, liberalism, neoliberalism, anti-liberalism, essays
A very short editorial on Banksy, tokenism, and the veneer of liberal
rebellion.
Banksy is an incredibly well-known artist. His work exhibits a
recognizable style, and the mystique surrounding his identity and the
illegality of his artwork provide an additional layer of mystery, which
only serves to heighten his status among the liberal masses. Banksy is
often paraded as a “good street artist,” a moniker which seemingly
exists only to denigrate all other forms of self-expressive vandalism.
The tokenization of Banksy’s work is incredibly indicative of a larger
systematic issue within liberal political spaces: the co-opting of
features from subversive media or subcultures in order to reaffirm the
neoliberal’s self-pleasing and massively privileged concept of identity
as a rebellious force for good, rather than a monolithic, unmoving and
oppressive system of hierarchy acting to quell any potential legitimate
systematic change through dilution into tokenized imagery with mass
consumer appeal.
An example of the kinds of artistry harmed by this tokenism is the case
of DUSTER UA, the pseudonym of one of the most respected graffiti
writers within New York city and the wider community. Duster, despite
being over 60 years old, and painting graffiti since the 1980s, has
never reached a larger commercial audience or obtained any kind of
larger fame. This is largely because Duster’s work, despite requiring
immeasurable talent, does not represent an appealing and concise piece
of imagery for the wider liberal art zeitgeist. Duster’s art represents
a direct challenge of the status quo, wherein he paints his pseudonym in
enormous quantities across private and public property. This challenging
of the delicate systematic balance upon which liberalism rests in it’s
laurels is strictly the antithesis of the art it seeks to tokenize in
order to legitimize its claim as a purveyor of justice and positive
change.
Addendum: “Liberal” in this context, refers to the philosophy of modern
neoliberalism, a philosophy which seeks to enact change and achieve
goals without disrupting the status quo, often being associated with the
American Democratic party, the Canadian Liberal party, and
performatively-progressive mega-conglomerates. It does not simply refer
to the average, somewhat-progressive, middle-class citizen.