Who is Banksy? (E)

0:00The most recognizable modern art of the 21st century comes from three people. Jeff Koons, Shepard Fairey, and Banksy. Shepard Fairey and Banksy regularly risk jail time to put their work in public. Jeff Koons regularly risks bankruptcy to create complicated works of art that cost millions of dollars to fabricate. But only one of the three is anonymous. Who, exactly, is Banksy? Konnichiwa! It's Nick in Fukuoka, Japan, and this is a special archived episode of Akimbo.

0:48Before we can talk about who is Banksy, we need to talk a little bit about Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, arguably one of the most important pioneers in science and math, The person who calculated Newton's laws, the person who helped us understand calculus, the person who figured out that Kepler's calculations about gravity and the motion of planets were correct, was a loon. He spent almost all his time working on things like the precise measurements of the Temple of Solomon so that he could calculate when the apocalypse would come. And he spent most of his time working on alchemy, which is not a science at all.

1:34The fact that Newton was a little bit nuts doesn't change the fact that gravity can be predicted. It doesn't change the fact that calculus works. Or Kepler. Kepler worked for Tycho Brahe, who was one of the richest people in Denmark. He owned 1 % of all the assets in the country, and he was the court astronomer. He's the first scientist to identify and explain a supernova. Tycho, of course, had a pet moose. Not only that, but he got in a duel and had his nose shot off, so he fashioned a replacement nose made out of gold, which he held on with putty. He probably died of mercury poisoning. we're not exactly sure who killed him.

2:26We do know that he gave the moose, the pet moose, a lot of Danish beer, and that one day the pet moose got so drunk he fell down a flight of stairs and died. That doesn't change anything about the fact of the supernova. Or Einstein, the great Albert Einstein, spent decades of his life arguing about quantum mechanics. It couldn't possibly be correct, he said. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what scientist discovers something. It doesn't matter if a mathematician who proves something is a little bit of an odd bird or even a not particularly positive member of society. It doesn't change the truth of what they came up with.

3:19This couldn't be more different when we think about culture. When Stephen King wrote the Richard Bachman novels, they didn't sell very well. And then after it was revealed that that was his pen name, and there on the cover, it says, Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman, the sales of the book went up. Did the book suddenly get better? Yeah, maybe it did. Because in culture, we care a great deal about where it came from. That's why it's so problematic as we re-examine the history and behavior of people who have come before to decide whether or not, it's going to change the way we think of who created it and the item they created.

4:15Is it okay to enjoy listening to a Michael Jackson song? When, as my friend Brian asks, is it okay to laugh at a Woody Allen joke again?

4:28The moose is furious. He and the Berkowitzes lock antlers in the living room. And that brings us to Marcel Duchamp and the Baroness Elsa von Freitag Lieringhoven. Duchamp spent a lot of time hanging out with people on the edge of the art scene, people that today would be called punks. And the Baroness was certainly the inventor of a certain New York punk ethos. It's also true that in the 1910s, there weren't a lot of opportunities for artists, particularly conceptual artists in New York, who were female. The Baroness created a work of art, something called a ready-made, as named by Duchamp, which involved buying an industrially created item and then entering it into an art exhibit and saying, here, this is art.

5:21At the time, this was radical and important. It was also more difficult to pull off than you might think. Nobody wanted a piece of art already made from the Baroness, regardless of how talented she was, regardless of how eagerly and aggressively she was living out the ideal of what it means to be a culture creator. So Duchamp entered it in the art exhibit under his name, with a letter vaguely alluding to the fact that it was created, in fact, by a woman down the hall from where he lived. Well, that piece of work called Fountain became one of the foundational pieces of modern art. It completely shifted the way art was seen.

6:07And that only happened because Duchamp put his name on it. And shamefully, over the years, as he spent more and more time playing chess and less and less time making art, he took more and more credit for its invention. But it was the Baroness that did it. the origin of the work matters in culture. It wouldn't have mattered if it was science, if she had written a paper and proven a fundamental law. Not if science is working properly. But it matters a lot in culture. So now we get to the idea of secret identities. What is Batman's secret identity? Well, that's easy. It's billionaire Bruce Wayne.

6:57What is Bruce Wayne's secret identity? Also easy. It's Batman. There are two sides of the same coin. Why does Batman need a secret identity? Why does he even wear a mask? Well, the answer is simple. Because as long as the secret identity is a secret, Batman is an idea, not a person. He is an icon. Somebody else can put on the mask, and become Batman after Bruce Wayne is done being Batman. The mystery surrounding Batman, what he does in his off hours, amplifies the fear he strikes into the hearts of the criminals that he fights. But what about Superman? Superman came first. Clark Kent is Superman's secret identity, but Clark Kent's secret identity is not Superman.

7:53Who disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper? Superman doesn't wear a mask. Superman is Superman. Why does he need Clark Kent? Well, one reason he needs Clark Kent is that the things that Superman does in his off hours, flirting and failing with Lois Lane, might besmirch the reputation of Superman. Superman as a pure ideal, as a creator of culture, is safer, more powerful when we don't have to deal with Clark's insecurities. Plus, if you want to market Batman to 12-year-olds, it certainly helps to help 12-year-olds believe that with just enough preparation, maybe they could have a secret identity too.

8:43Maybe they could bring out their best or their angriest and become a hero. So it serves that purpose as well. It's a bridge between the normal person and the hero. Which brings us to Robert Gunningham and Banksy. Banksy, a street artist, a man of mystery, somebody who for years has been creating art for anyone to see, and only recently has been selling it at astronomical prices, has a secret identity. His secret identity is Banksy. And Banksy, like Batman, has a secret identity, and his secret identity is Robert Gunningham. And it serves a really useful purpose. Once you know who Banksy is, it shouldn't change anything.

9:36And I think it doesn't. That's why I'm sharing this name with you. It doesn't really matter. What's really fascinating is how much power we have given the persona of Banksy, how much we enjoy talking about who Banksy might be. then there aren't supposed to be any rules. So I don't really know what a moral is. I mean, I always used to encourage everyone I met to make art. I used to think everyone should do it. That our perception of art, whether it's a fountain or a drawing on the side of a wall, changes based on who we think the artist is. Years ago, countering the hundreds of years of misogyny in the art business, making it harder and harder for women to exhibit and be respected, a few artists started a group called Guerrilla Girls, and they appeared in guerrilla masks talking about the fact that art exhibits were shutting out half of the population.

10:40It's only now, 40 years later, that that's finally starting to shift. The great artist Hilma von Klimt, who you've never heard of, painted 10 ,000 paintings between, I think, 1900 and 1920. In her will, she asked her heirs not to show them to anyone for 20 years after her death. Why did she do these things? She was extraordinarily talented. She was painting in styles and pioneering new ways to do art before anyone else. But she didn't show it because she didn't have a secret identity. She simply had a secret. And her secret was that she was a painter. I think that was a mistake. I wish she had acted a little bit more like Banksy.

11:32The fact is that in our culture, we judge all the time. We judge the origin of where it came from. And now without gatekeepers, now with the fact that anyone can put music on Spotify, that anyone can put a video online, on Vimeo, it matters less where it came from. And so an extraordinary talent like Billie Eilish doesn't need a permit or a license or a record label to bring her music to the public. My Invisalign has... I have taken out my Invisalign. I have taken out my Invisalign and this is the album.

12:45That day-by-day, what we are doing is moving away from where did this come from and moving toward what does this do for me? There's been speculation that I was involved in the events that occurred, the freeway and the rooftop. I'm sorry, Mr. Stark, but do you honestly expect us to believe that that was a bodyguard in a suit that conveniently appeared despite the fact that... I know that it's confusing. It is one thing to question the official story and another thing entirely to make wild accusations or insinuate that I'm a superhero. I never said you were a superhero. Didn't? Mm-mm. Well, good, because that would be outlandish and fantastic.

13:27I'm just not the hero type, clearly, with this laundry list of character defects, all the mistakes I've made, largely public. Yeah, okay. Yeah. The truth is...

13:49I am Iron Man.

13:55Each one of us has the chance to contribute something to the culture, particularly when we are talking to people who are looking for the truth, Newtonian truth as opposed to simple cultural relevance. You could die. At least tell me your name.

14:19It's not who I am underneath but what I do. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Hey Seth, it's Maria. Hey Seth, my name's Kyle. Greetings, Seth. This is Stephen out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. Hi, Seth. This is Anupam. Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi, Seth. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey, Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey, Seth. This is Rex. Hey, Seth. Hi, this is Vasilis from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is... And that completes my question. We got one really juicy question this week that has elements of coincidence, of origin story, and architecture all in one.

15:03So here we go. Hi, Seth. This is Liz in Juneau, Alaska. Thanks so much for the work you do. I was just listening to your episode about norms, and I don't have a question, but I have a comment that I wanted to share and hope it won't be a waste of your time. I am from Palo Alto, California, which you used as an example about the four-way stop and how the norm there is to actually stop. Well, the only time I've ever been pulled over, well, for such a thing, was in Portola Valley, right near Palo Alto, when I was going to visit my 95-year-old grandfather. I haven't lived in the area since I could drive, though I visit that region fairly often.

15:47But sure enough, going through a four-way stop, I did the roll and was pulled over immediately after. So I suspect that your example of Palo Alto, where the norm is to actually stop, wasn't just something you pulled out of the hat. And I got a chuckle. Thanks so much. Thanks again for all you do. Bye. There are just too many coincidences in this question for me to let it go. Yes, in fact, I did live in Portola Valley briefly. Yes, in fact, I did go to school in Palo Alto. And I did, in fact, get pulled over for rolling a stop sign. So here's the story. At Stanford, there's a huge vacancy problem for off-campus housing.

16:30There isn't any. And my friend and I finally found a shared room in a house in Portola Valley, which is this beautiful rolling farmland right near the Stanford campus. It was a house we could never have afforded, but we were lucky enough that they had a couple spare rooms and we were able to rent them. About a week into school, I was driving down the windy road to get to school for my first class. And the car in front of me, I think it was a 1967 Mustang, instead of taking the next curve, just went straight off the road, down a ravine, straight into the woods. It was right out of a movie. So I pulled over and, wearing my shorts and my Birkenstocks and my little t-shirt, scrambled down the hill to find upside down the car with the driver semi-conscious and the motor still running.

17:25Well, having seen enough cars explode in enough movies, I somehow reached in, turned off the ignition, and then clambered up to the side of the road to wave down somebody who could get help. The police came, turned out the driver was fine, but it made me late for class. So as I was racing to get to class, because it's only a few weeks into the semester, I rolled a stop sign. Well, you guessed it, cop pulled me over. I explained to the cop that I had just saved somebody's life from almost certain death through a car combusting by my heroic actions. The cop did not believe a word I said. He went back to the car, called Central Control, and they confirmed my story.

18:11So with a stern warning, I headed off to class. Now on to the architecture and origin story part of our tale. The architecture at the time of the classrooms at the Stanford Business School was that the doors were in the front next to where the professor was teaching, which meant that if you walked in late to class, you couldn't walk in in the back of the room and quietly sit down. you had to walk into the front of the room and interrupt the whole thing. Well, I was late enough and brazen enough that I decided to just go for it. So I walked into class, interrupting the whole thing. The professor gave me a stern look.

18:48So, of course, I told my story. And that's part of my origin story. Part of my origin story is having the guts to show up at class, even though I was late, because I didn't think it was my fault, and then to speak up and to tell a story. And it was a story that my classmates appreciated. And the final part of my riff here, which is sort of irrelevant but makes me remember the story in a different way, is about two hours later, I started feeling really itchy. And later I discovered I had a horrible case of poison oak covering my body from top to bottom. My scramble down that ravine had covered me with poison oak.

19:31So if there's a lesson here, it's to know that now there's good drugs at the drugstore, over the counter, that you can put on as soon as you know you have poison oak, and that I probably should have gotten a steroid shot. Anyway, there you go. Thanks for teeing this one up. We love to get your questions. If you've got a question about something I've actually talked about on the show, I would love to hear from you. Just visit akimbo.link, that's A-K-I-M-B-O dot L-I-N-K, and press the appropriate button. There's also show notes there for every one of our previous episodes. We just counted up and we've had more than 7 million downloads so far since Akimbo started.

20:10So please feel free to listen to the back episodes. Feel free to tell your friends. Go make a ruckus. We'll see you next time.