Agree, but that's what we know. The man in the statue is walking into a void from his perspective because he lacks knowledge of his true predicament and is blindly marching forward.
The position of the statue (notably the front foot) make it seem very much "walking unknowingly off the ledge of a tall pedestal" rather than marching into the void. I think there's a difference in that "marching into the void" can be seen as heroic, but unknowingly stepping off a ledge is generally seen as being stupid i.e. not using your senses to inform you about the world, but instead relying on nationalism (the flag) to guide you.
Keep going. Look at Matthew 7:6. "Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you."
That is (in this context), don't bother trying to give truth (or even have a reasonable conversation) with those who simply will not listen. Zealots, shill, propagandists... it's like talking to a brick wall. If anyone has a technique for getting them to stop being a brick wall and start actually engaging with what you're saying, I'd like to know what it is.
You can call it "transmit only mode" (hat tip Patrick McClure). When you realize that the person you're talking to is in transmit only mode, you understand how the conversation is going to go if you continue it.
i find that passionate certainty can be a good thing in some cases, especially when someone really does know what they are talking about.
but fanaticism is more often a problem than not. fanatics tend to not really understand what they're talking about, or twist it to fit what they want it to be about.
> Fanaticism: Excessive enthusiasm, unreasoning zeal, or wild and extravagant notions, on any subject, especially religion, politics or ideology; religious frenzy.
note -- not talking about any particular "thing" here. just commenting about passion vs. fanaticism in general.
I think it's a reasonable statue. But does anyone else think it's a bit obvious, more so than his other work? Like there is no doubt on the meaning at all, it's all right there on the surface level.
Strong disagree. First, like many of the other comments mention, Banksy is known for being clever and witty, but not particularly subtle.
But more to the point, while you may think the meaning is a bit obvious, the fact that the flag is unadorned (which/whose flag is it?), and the man is unknown, makes me think this statue could be the ultimate Rorschach test. I'm sure there are tons of people thinking "Ha ha, this is the perfect commentary on all those idiot <people on the other side who I disagree with> wrapping themselves up in their ideology of <patriotism/social justice/cause du jour> as they march <some particular country/society/the world at large off a cliff>".
In other words, I'm guessing you probably felt the meaning was "obvious" because you filled in the blanks in the above madlibs-style statement in a way that feels obvious to you, and I think folks on "the other side" would probably fill in the blanks with the exact opposite notions in a way that feels "obvious" to them.
The flag is unadorned and I think you can extend your interpretation to include the proliferation of flags which have a minimal "history".
Banksy is from Bris'l which is sort of north Somerset (Somerset keeps on morphing faster than a sci-fi shapeshifter).
Cornwall has had a white cross on a black flag since 18something. Devon decided to adopt a black edged white cross on a green flag. I remember seeing Devon flag car stickers in the '80s - its a little older than that. Somerset now has ... a flag. Yellow and red I think.
No idea why because people can't decide what it is! The land itself knows exactly what and where it is but the political boundaries ebb and flow with the phases of the moon. Is Avon included ... what is Avon? Ooh, BANES - Somerset? Not today thank you. It goes on. Anyway, do Devon and Somerset and co really need a flag? No of course not.
What we really need is a Wessex flag, which will take over Mercia ... and a few other regional efforts ... and end up as a red cross on a white background. Then we could munge that with a couple of other flags and confuse the entire world with something called the Union Flag.
Never considered that, but mentioning flags that have minimal "history" pushed me in a totally different direction about some modern political transnational movements lol.
Hah TIL. So it's the river Welsh river on the English side of the Bristol channel.
I often feel like I would understand a lot more names if I bothered learning Welsh. It's pretty popular for made up climbing route names too, because Wales is so good for it I guess. Allegedly some of the classics in the Avon gorge are Welsh derived but I could never figure them out to be sure.
> which is sort of north Somerset (Somerset keeps on morphing faster than a sci-fi shapeshifter).
The seats in parliament that represent it and the local authority structure have changed, of course, the same as everywhere else in the country, but the boundaries of Somerset have remained constant for a long time.
Bristol is absolutely not "North Somerset" as a general case (though certain suburbs do extend into Somerset counties, but on that basis Bristol is as much "South Gloucestershire").
> Ooh, BANES - Somerset? Not today thank you. It goes on.
Bath has always been in Somerset and "BANES" literally stands for "Bath and North East Somerset".
I'm often surprised that Bristol (a lefty city) is surrounded by very right-leaning areas, but I suppose that's the nature of a bubble. I don't think it makes a huge amount of sense to try to lump us in all together, at least politically.
As an aside, it still annoys me when websites put "Avon" as the county - it no longer exists and even the Post Office does this and they're the ones who should definitely know about it.
As far as flags go, I'm very much against the "flag-shaggers" who go around putting up England's St George Cross flag - most of the time, the flags are seen as threatening to minorities which is very much NOT the general Bristolian attitude. (I actually live in St George, Bristol, so somewhat ironic that I'm cross about that flag).
There's nothing subtle about the things Banksy attacks either, in this case flag-shagging. Yes, he's about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but so what? We are definitively not living in an age of subtlety. Why should opposition be subtle when power isn't?
If anything, I'm more surprised Banksy didn't depict literal flag-shagging.
The ambiguity - that this could apply to anyone, that people are so caught up in their belief of choice - is part of the obviousness, at least to me. I would expect more people to be aware of this, than to actually believe that it's talking about, say, Americans in particular.
I do agree that it’s obvious in the way that you describe. But I still think it’s a point worth making—that it could apply to anyone. Because I don’t think that thought is likely to occur to a lot of people, regardless of their particular belief of choice. And that is a problem.
One can’t say that proposition is obvious to the population at large. Else, “we” (as in Earth in 2026) would have very political dynamics. So maybe Banksy felt inclined to do a public service announcement.
I'm pretty sure the piece is a commentary on the recent phenomenon of people of a right-wing political orientation hanging up the England flag everywhere, to the consternation of local governments who have to spend money taking them down.
From a British perspective there's no ambiguity, flag shagging is a right-wing activity.
Is it? Most people I know who have flags proudly displayed are left wing and their flags are usually one of: the Palestinian flag, the ukrainian flag, the LGBT rainbow flag, or the trans flag.
He’s a British artist, the sculpture is in London and the phenomenon of raising of St George’s Cross on every lamppost on every roundabout is a recent initiative of the British right. Most people will be linking the statement of this sculpture to this activity.
(I’m more likely to see the white rose of the House of York in “opposition” to the flag shaggers than a rainbow or anything else, in my neck of the woods, but there’s only a few of these flying)
I do like the wider interpretation though, that any ideology can blind you.
Allright, I'll bite. Could you tell me if there's any meaningful distinction between someone hanging a Ukranian flag and a... Russian Federation flag? Circa 2026, do those flags stand for something, when hanging outside of either of those countries?
If they do, what do they stand for, and what would someone hanging one, versus the other, be communicating?
(What you call an "objective fact" here is - as you say - your report of your personal experience. Everyone else would probably use a word more like "subjective".)
Can’t help but notice the difference in sentiment between the flag that represents a people and a flag that represents a nation, especially historically.
Hmm? Which is which? Is this one of those British things people from normal countries don't understand? Like the difference between United Kingdom and Great Britain.
Perhaps I should have used the term “sovereign state”, as that’s more precise, even though when most people use the colloquial term “nation” (as in “nationalism”) they’re referring to a sovereign state.
A sovereign state has borders they can enforce to their own discretion (political gridlock notwithstanding), a stable and well-defined (non-transient) population, a single recognized government (both internally and externally), and ability to conduct foreign relations without being stopped by force or decree.
So, with that more precise definition out of the way, you can recognize that the flags in your links do not represent sovereign states, but rather peoples - who, coincidentally, are often fighting for their rights and freedoms.
Elsewhere in the thread are mentions of nation flags, like the Union Jack, which represent a sovereign state, and are instead often associated with national identity, xenophobia and oppression.
Your first comment was subjective in general, and suspiciously pro-right anti-left - in my opinion.
You could have left it at that.
Instead you decided on an emotional outburst due to being downvoted by "idiots" - giving us all an absolute textbook example of "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt".
Every single left-wing march flies a lot of flags as well, only they are different flags.
Political movements in general don't seem to be particularly immune to flag shagging, only the colors vary a lot.
But I am pretty sure that Banksy means right-wing flag worship as well. He is a master of "provocative conformism" and wouldn't produce anything that would get him into a real risk of controversy. His art is very fine-tuned to the sensibilities of the English and American chattering class; same recipe for success as Paul Krugman or Malcolm Gladwell.
I suppose it's true that the left-wing equivalent is the Palestinian flag, or the centrist equivalent is the Ukrainian flag, however this usually comes in the form of a sticker or the odd flag flown from a house window here and there, rather than a row of flags hung from every lamp post on a street.
Quantity has quality all of its own. Although many different causes use flags for promotion, the obsession that certain elements of the English right have with the English flag is at a completely different level.
> the obsession that certain elements of the English right have with the English flag is at a completely different level.
You may want to check the obsession that people on the left have with the Palestinian flag. Any situation is good to show it off even when it has nothing to do with Palestine.
> the fact that the flag is unadorned (which/whose flag is it?), and the man is unknown, makes me think this statue could be the ultimate Rorschach test
This is part of what's obvious. The whole thing, including this oooh aahh Rorschach part, is obvious. It's thoughts that we all had in high school, and it is hack.
Lol, right now this comment declaring "the oooh aahh Rorschach part is obvious" is literally just below another comment declaring that the sculpture could only reasonably be interpreted as being anti-nationalist. So thanks for proving my point.
That just means you're both wrong. "Its location - Waterloo Place, St James's - is an area designed to celebrate imperialism and military dominance in the 1800s", says the BBC. Banksy is from Bristol, where they threw a statue of a slave-trading philanthropist in the river. The statue is wearing a suit. It's not very interpretable. We can wonder whether it's about the Conservative party or the Reform party, but nobody's suggesting it represents Hamas or the CCP.
※ I admit that Xi Jinping wears a suit, but I'm still classifying that theory under "plausible deniability".
Every single comment that proudly declares "my interpretation is obviously the correct one and you other guys are wrong" only further serves to prove what an actual great piece of art this is. That is, it's art that makes you think and can be validly interpreted in many different ways, and more serves as a projection of the own viewer.
Who necessarily cares what the original design of Waterloo Place is for, it's also just a place in the center of London with lots of foot traffic, visibility and a ton of statues. Or that the place Banksy is from threw a statue into the river (that connection in particular is quite the stretch - are you saying all the things that happened in your home town are inherently reflections of you?).
The more I see people declare that their interpretation is "right" (just see the argument thread over whether right wing or left wing people are more likely to wrap themselves up in a flag), the more I think this is a pretty brilliant piece of art.
And yet here here we all are taking about it. Art is about inciting a response, and he’s done it. Whether we think he’s a hack or not is irrelevant - he has the world’s attention.
Where does the "art is about inciting a response" theory originate from?
I went and looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_art but couldn't find it there. The "anti-essentialist" section is good, though, I think. It has Berys Gaut listing ten properties of art, all of which are nice-to-have but none of which are essential. Then if a piece ticks lots of boxes it's a shoo-in, but if it doesn't tick many of them you can argue about it.
Some of those involve eliciting some sort of response, but you could also have a decorative piece with this combo:
Which would be 8 out of 10, to which we could add "completely ignorable" and it could still be art. I don't see why attention-grabbing and provocation is important, and it certainly isn't sufficient on its own, plus it's irritating.
You said, "Whether we think he's a hack", which fundamentally changes what is being discussed.
The only reason we're talking about this is because of Banksy. Not because it is a clever or "deep" piece. It's disappointingly surface level, and the fact that we're talking about that doesn't suggest otherwise.
> The only reason we're talking about this is because of Banksy.
Baloney. It's a guerilla sculpture put up in the center of London. My guess is we might be talking about it more if it were unsigned as a case of whodunnit.
But for me personally, I roll my eyes at all the ex-art students who always complain "it's a hack" for any piece of art that appeals to a wide audience and isn't some obnoxious 8-layers deep meaning. You literally see it all the time, and half the time it just strikes me as thinly-veiled jealousy, if not from the art student perspective than from the "I'm so much more sophisticated than the unwashed masses" perspective.
It happened on HN a few months ago in a post about Simon Berger, an artist who makes portraits with cracked glass. The artist has achieved relatively wide appeal, and many of the comments here were along the lines of "Meh, he's a talentless hack, he just stumbled along a 'cool' technique but the subjects are boring."
I'd have a lot more respect for folks that could just say "it's not my bag" and move on, rather than pretend they're so much more sophisticated than people who enjoy this art.
There's a well known theory on this exact concept! The Medium is the Message. Or, the very act of defacing a public building is meant to sledge-hammer the artist's work into the viewer's consciousness. Compared to say, some quiet exhibit most people would never encounter.
You are not supposed to get any attention and you are not supposed to have any say in how the city and the world looks. If you buy the building you still don't get to paint.
>Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.
- Creator of Black Mirror, 5 years before series premiere
I don't think most of his work is trying for subtle? First thing that came to mind: "Slave Labour" is pretty obvious, it's a kid operating a sewing machine to make Union flags and it was painted on an actual pound shop. Were you unsure of the message? Even something like "Silent Majority" isn't difficult, the comic book "V for Vendetta" makes the exact same point just Banksy painted it as a mural.
Americans manage a further level of confusion by referring to the "pound sign" as #, rather than £, which isn't in US-ASCII nor on the US-102 keyboard layout.
it gets people talking which many of those who like it consider to be the primary point. In other words, it's not great public art, it's basically government approved engagement bait or engineered pro-establishment viral messaging and it's very successful at that! (but it doesn't inspire and elevate that art should aspire to)
The statue in particular I think is not bad as art. Certainly it had a lot of people looking at it - a hundred of so when I visited, more than most public art. I thought it more inspiring as in suggesting rising above nationalism than most of the other statues in the area which mostly are of are general types who got the position by being born in the right class and fame by telling troops to kill people.
It was installed in the middle of a street owned by the government. Police are guarding it to prevent vandalism or removal. Both the Westminster City Council and the Mayor of London have praised the statue and called for it to be preserved.[1][2]
If the man holding the flag had been wearing a thawb instead of a suit, or if the statue had been of a woman, I think the establishment's response would be quite different.
1. From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9wlnwl85o "We're excited to see Banksy's latest sculpture in Westminster, making a striking addition to the city's vibrant public art scene. While we have taken initial steps to protect the statue, at this time it will remain accessible for the public to view and enjoy."
2. From https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/world/europe/banksy-londo... "Banksy has a great ability to inspire people from a range of backgrounds to enjoy modern art. His work always draws great interest and debate, and the mayor is hopeful that his latest piece can be preserved for Londoners and visitors to enjoy."
> If the man holding the flag had been wearing a thawb instead of a suit, or if the statue had been of a woman, I think the establishment's response would be quite different.
That's argumentum ad speculum[0]. You can speculate what the response would be if the statue was different in a way you imagine, but the thing is, it's not.
I would like people to be clearer what they mean by "establishment" here, because that sort of person tends to think of a stockbroker who went to Dulwich as "anti-establishment".
I think a small level of it is fine. It’s like sports teams. You can be a Giants fan and I can be a Yankees fan, and we’ll bicker & make fun of each other for supporting a different team. But we can still work together & be civil when it comes to lots of other stuff.
I disagree here. Local/regional chauvinism is funny and de-dramatize nationalism while being a very good point to start discussions. Seeing the Gwenn ah Du flag in the US or in other foreign country is basically a "come talk to me" call.
There are different sorts of regional chauvinism though: a distinction can be drawn between English flags erected in random US states by people who want to talk about their ancestors in the 1750s, English flags flown alongside the local coat of arms on tourist sites all over the UK, English flags hanging from English homes by all over England because of excitement for an upcoming football tournament and English flags surreptitiously hung on council property by far-right thugs who attack council staff tasked with removing them, on the basis of internet memes about needing more flags to show those immigrants who's boss. England has all of the above, but that last one has dominated flag erections recently.
As for Banksy who incidentally also likes making surreptitious additions to other people's property, he's never exactly been subtle about which school of politics he doesn't like
> I think the sheer number of people below arguing
That says more about "the people below" on HN to me. There's a strong strand of contrarian, pseudo-intellectual sophistry. I.e. it's "clever" to talk yourself out of seeing the obvious.
Have you seen his other works in recent years? It's hard to get any more obvious than a judge beating up someone with his gavel or a boy judo throwing Putin.
It's not like Banksy is known for being a sophisticated highfalutin MFA student anyway. Like it or not, appealing to the masses with simple and clear moral messages has always been his deal.
You're talking about a man who did a Simpsons intro that depicted the Simpsons behind the scenes as involving child labor, kittens thrown into a woodchipper, an enslaved panda, and various other atrocities, all in a dark compound with guard towers surrounded by barbed wire.
Banksy is sometimes interesting but he and subtle don't belong on the same planet.
If you want to make a political message it often helps to be obvious. This way the meaning of your message will not be misinterpreted either intentionally or un-intentionally.
His messages were always the same politically. He was always snubbing his nose at the crown, at the art world and other rich folks who would pay millions of pounds for his art. Back in the day when I discovered him, he came off as a rebel, as most graffiti writers do.
Now? He makes millions off his work while still thumbing his nose at capitalism? Doesn't ring the same any more. You can't claim to be fighting against the same system that you use to make millions.
There really is no winning when you become famous. When people liked you before and you are effectively still the same but just richer they call you part of the problem, if you aren't richer people just don't know you and you most likely arent actually famous. Usually money follows the fame and vice versa (unless you specifically use your money to remain anonymous).
> You can't claim to be fighting against the same system that you use to make millions.
It depends on what you do with that money, no?
I'll be one of the first to agree that most rich people have likely gotten where the are by doing at least some immoral or unethical things, and that many of those people try to whitewash their image with philanthropy. But there certainly exist rich people who got there as ethically as one can in this world, and use that money to try to change things.
Sure, there are many fewer of the latter people than the former, but I think it's unfair to automatically assume that "made some money" = "part of the system".
You can absolutely play within the rules to your advantage, while also vocally and electorally work for changing those rules (for both the better or the worse). Whether one way is the good and the other the bad can of course be discussed.
Example: "I'm rich and think I should pay more in taxes because I have it more than good enough" vs "I'm rich and think that I'm already paying too much in taxes". Neither is inconsistent or hypocritical.
Other example: "I got rich by extracting more from my workers than was justifiable compared to what they produced, and that should probably be regulated" vs "I got rich by providing value I got paid for, and created a lot of jobs, and we should have less regulation so I could do more of it".
If you're rich, you can't slag off your ilk because that makes you a hypocrite, and if you're poor, you're just envious. And if you're threading the narrow path inbetween, well that just makes you bourgie so in summary: get fucked. Convenient. Of course, this only works in one direction...
It's mostly about dismissing most of modern Western culture as "woke nonsense" whilst demonstrating fealty to the idea of it by showing they hate foreign cultures even more...
I appreciate that it allows people to engage with and discuss the work without immediately feeling boxed out by pretentious poppycock.
I also think obviousness is overindexed as the indicator of bad art because it's often the easiest property to articulate about something thoroughly bad. A lot of the tv and movies that make me quote the robot devil ("You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!") would not be improved by making the characters subtler. They could be the same level, or even more forthcoming, if the writing sounded like natural conversations real people have.
Did you look at his artwork of a judge hitting a protestor with a gavel while the protestor was bleeding on the ground and think “huh, I wonder what this means” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2z30p033ro).
By those standards a man wrapped in the flag walking off the edge is the height of subtlety. I guarantee you this - none of the people it should be offending will realise he’s talking about them.
This one definitely lacks ambition compared to other works. Probably because his other work had a subversive undertone, this one seems sponsored by the powers that be. I also suspect it was installed with cooperation from the local authorities.
The best art makes you think and/or feel, and engage with it in a personal way.
There's nothing about subtly in that claim, and all forms of art are equally valid, if not the same quality.
Bansky's art has always been blunt and whimsical, probably because he makes popular street art. It's meant to be "accessible" for your average passerby who might only engage with it for a fraction of a second, but maybe get a little surprise when they do.
I have the same reaction to Banksy, and figure he and his audience just have to be in on the joke? I can’t discount there’s some layered irony going on in conversation between the artist and the intellectual / capitalist / trend-setting elite that are his effective patrons.
“I remember when all this was trees” [1] is maybe the best example. Detroit hasn’t been “trees” in something like two centuries. Platitudes doused in treacle.
A better example of a knowing joke between artist and establishment would be the auction of a Banksy work on paper poised above and within the jaws of a paper shredder .. that was then half shredded on the fall of the hammer and sale.
For clarity, the shredder was part of the work and the sale was of the half destroyed piece along with shredder and chaff.
If this was the established doctrine of those in power, then why is the Iran war still going on, and why is the UK providing air bases for the Iran war? This is obviously a comment on the Iran war.
I have a hardhat, high viz vest, lanyard, and $600 toolbelt because I'm an industrial electrician, but they get me into a lot. My face becomes invisible; I become "The Electrician".
A while ago I read about Todd Lappin making his personal car look like a work truck as an urban camouflage project.
> This urban camouflage guise is very useful for parking in yellow zones, urban/industrial exploration, and crime deterrence. And the thing is… it really works!
I'm not sure what you mean by "Those in power" there are lot's of people who know, but recognise that he has chosen anonymity and see no value in putting a name to the person.
It's not so much a secret as it is simply not public.
Not sure what you mean by "not public", given that you can just search it up and find a Reuters article from March giving out his full name and background.
Good. I'm glad most of the media have come to a gentlemen's agreement to not blast his name everywhere. Adds a little more fun to the world. Even this statute is staying for now, the local council, bless them, have decided to leave it in place for the near future.
The piece states that it appears to be molded fiberglass. But is anyone aware of any more in depth analysis of its materials/possible production technique? Was the pillar barren on top before?
There's a (mostly terrible) documentary about a previous bansky "statue" deposited in London that,
in one of its better moments, tracks down the people who actually make statues for artists like banksy.
edit: I feel I should clarify that this is not an official Banksy documentary. He made "Exit Through the Gift Shop" which is an amazing film which I highly recommend to anyone.
The Wall Street Bull was a guerilla art piece too. It's a real bronze. Weighs about three metric tons. It's hugely popular, although it's been moved a few times.
Banksy's work should be replicated in bronze and stone and placed permanently.
I went to have a look at it. It appears to be one piece, probably fiberglass on a wooden frame, probably it was loaded on a flatbed truck with some sort of crane arm and put there. I don't know if it was just weighted at the bottom or fixed some how.
Banksy is peak redditor. Masquerading as a free-thinking activist who happens to agree with every talking point of the established media and global bureaucratic regime.
> Authorities on Thursday placed safety barriers around the statue as growing crowds of onlookers gathered
The fact that the statue was allowed to stay up means that the authorities approved it. So, Banksy isn't really counterculture, he's government approved counterculture.
Your assumption that government power will invariably be (ab)used to oppress messages the people in government do not like is a core tenet of fascism, not a universal truth.
It's nonsense. Reactionaries want to continue hamming up the bureaucratic power structure as the worst thing ever, so people won't focus on the fact that the only solution they are bringing to the table is bog standard autocracy. In reality, bureaucracy has been decent at tempering the exercise of authoritarian power and we've taken that for granted, now at our peril.
The statue is in Westminster, right by Whitehall. The heart of British government. It depicts a figure in a suit, marching off a ledge, completely blinded by a flag.
Who wears a suit and marches through Westminster under a flag?
- Businessmen? No. Merchants have no country.
- Officials? They wear suits but don't march
- Old-guard politicians? Rarely march or flag-wave with any conviction.
So who are we left with? The populist. The Nigel Farage archetype. The suited firebrand who wrap themselves in nationalist fervor, stoke the rabble, and blindly march everyone right off a cliff.
Banksy isn't known for complex, multi-layered messaging. He is popular precisely because he uses visual shorthand to say plainly what the general public is already thinking. There is no hidden 4D chess; it's just blunt satire about blind patriotism.
Edit: This also explains why the government is happy to keep this particular Banksy on display.
I tend to like Banksy a lot, even in things that are different than his "usual" style and type of work (graffiti), as in this case with a statue.
More generally, I am wondering if anyone has a good explanation of what makes an artist "click" with the world, become famous, and usually raise the price of his/her artwork. I can bet that today it costs a lot to own anything by Banksy, considering that most of his work is not even "detachable" from its original creation point.
What raised the price of Banksy initially was that he gave it a price; he was the only graffiti artist doing gallery exhibitions and selling art.
Before he put it in a gallery, nobody considered it have any value.
What is the emblem on the flag? Don't know. What is he fighting for? Don't know. How is he blind? What doesn't he see? What is behind or ahead? Don't know.
Being cynical that all effort is wasted is played out at this point. Fight for something real. Name what you're against. It should be easy in the UK.
It's an interesting piece. Makes one think about all those folks that have a lot of pride and vanity for a place that they had no control over being born in. The luck of the draw.
And very likely had very little to do with the current state of the place. Pride at age 21? Meaningless vanity, like being proud of being born with a silver spoon. Pride at age 80? Sure, if it was a life well-lived.
There's no luck involved in the fact that you were born to your parents, as they were to theirs. It is right to be proud of the achievements of your ancestors who have, over countless generations, toiled and strived to deliver the place that we were so fortunate to inherit from them. It reminds us of our responsibility to defend and improve that place for the coming generations of our people.
> There's no luck involved in the fact that you were born to your parents, as they were to theirs.
Are you claiming to have controlled where and to whom you were born?
You did not choose your parents, country, ancestry, class, era, genes, language, or inherited institutions. You may be inseparable from those facts, but you did not earn them.
> There's no luck involved in the fact that you were born to your parents
> we were so fortunate to inherit from them.
These two statements appear to be contradictory.
> It is right to be proud of the achievements of your ancestors
And what was your contribution to those achievements to justify this pride?
You have to be careful to not fall into the trap of borrowed glory: treating an ancestor’s achievement as your own personal merit, or using ancestry to rank yourself above others.
> toiled and strived to deliver the place that we were so fortunate to inherit
> our responsibility to defend and improve that place for the coming generations of our people.
Are you implying that the place belongs more fully to descendants of earlier inhabitants than to newer members of the community?
So then Native Americans have a stronger claim than European descendants? Or is that a standard to only be applied moving forward?
That's also like the caste system in India: only children of brahmins can be brahmins, children of shudras can only be shudras. One is superior to another by inheritance, not merit.
That's ugly and abhorrent.
> It is right to be proud of the achievements of your ancestors
>Are you claiming to have controlled where and to whom you were born?
My parents did. Their parents did. My children will.
>you did not earn them
My parents did. Their parents did. My children will.
Everything I have today has been hard-earned by my ancestors. Everything my children have will be hard-earned by my ancestors and I. We earned them.
>These two statements appear to be contradictory
Only if you believe such things to be due to purely random chance. I can feel 'fortunate' that my parents got me the bike I really wanted for Christmas, but there's no randomness in my parents working overtime and budgeting responsibly that made it possible.
>And what was your contribution to those achievements to justify this pride?
I am a part of the same collective, the long and continued story of my people. I am proud of those who came before me.
>You have to be careful to not fall into the trap of borrowed glory
You have to be careful not to fall into the trap of nihilistic individualism. You are part of something much bigger than yourself. Be suspicious of anyone trying to sever your connection to your people and your history.
>Are you implying that the place belongs more fully to descendants of earlier inhabitants than to newer members of the community?
That makes sense, yes. To your example, I would say that Native Americans have very little claim to the modern USA as practically everything was built by Europeans. They failed to defend their lands and were successfully conquered. In the same way, it would be absurd in my view for the majority non-White population of London (almost all of whom are very recent colonisers) to gaze around at the infrastructure and architecture and think "We made this."
>Are you then also ashamed of their crimes?
Sure, but not nearly as ashamed as our enemies would like us to be. Isn't it funny how we are supposed to recoil in shame and horror with the constant reminders of the worst parts of our people's history, yet we are condemned for also proudly owning our best?
You are encouraged to feel bad and apologize for things that you never did but people who look like you did in the past, or you’re a bad person.
You are forbidden from being proud of things you never did but that people who looked like you did in the past, or you’re a bad person. Doubly so on both if you’re of European ancestry.
Get with the program.
> I can feel 'fortunate' that my parents got me the bike I really wanted for Christmas, but there's no randomness in my parents working overtime and budgeting responsibly that made it possible.
Correct. But there is randomness, or luck, or whatever you want to call it, that you were born to parents who worked overtime and budgeted responsibly so that you could have nice things. You could just have easily been born to parents who were lazy and irresponsible, and couldn't give you nice things.
> I am a part of the same collective, the long and continued story of my people.
Sure, but you did not contribute to the achievements of your ancestors. You will (and/or have) presumably achieve things on your own, built on top of your ancestors' achievements, and pass that legacy to your children. But that's something different. Be (non-arrogantly) proud of your own achievements, because you had a hand in them.
> You have to be careful not to fall into the trap of nihilistic individualism. You are part of something much bigger than yourself.
I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. But being a part of something doesn't mean that you've personally done something. I didn't do the things my ancestors did to get me to where I am today. I'm grateful, as I would probably not be happy doing many of the things they had to do. And I hope any children I may have will be grateful to me for the same reasons (but that also would depend on me actually being a good parent to them; I don't just get it for free).
Re: that penultimate paragraph... oof, I'm struggling with what to say here. While yes, the vast majority of the modern USA was built by the colonizers and not the natives who came before, we need to temper our enthusiasm for our achievements with an acknowledgement of the barbaric actions of our ancestors who came to the New World and deceived, sickened, and slaughtered those who already lived there.
> Isn't it funny how we are supposed to recoil in shame and horror with the constant reminders of the worst parts of our people's history, yet we are condemned for also proudly owning our best?
I don't think that condemnation is as strong as you think it is, and your aversion to it is worrying. As I said, our best is tempered with acknowledgement of our worst. Be proud, if you must, of what you, personally, have accomplished. Look on the accomplishments of others (both contemporary and long-dead) with awe and respect, as appropriate. Acknowledge that many of those accomplishments involved slave labor, murder, and other atrocities. Vow to work toward your own future accomplishments in only moral and ethical ways.
You correctly state that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. Some of that "something" is good, and some of that "something" is bad. And everything in between. We have to live with all parts, and learn from both the good and the bad.
>But there is randomness, or luck, or whatever you want to call it, that you were born to parents who worked overtime and budgeted responsibly so that you could have nice things...
I disagree with this view and I think it's harmful. Look at it from the perspective of the parents. There is no luck or randomness involved in their responsibility and discipline to build a happy and stable home, and of course there's no randomness or luck involved in them doing the action that created me. It is impossible that I could have been born to a broke drug addict in Bolivia. I could only ever have been born to my parents.
>but you did not contribute to the achievements of your ancestors
Why should this exclude me from being proud of my people and our history? Why shouldn't I be proud of who I am, as part of that great story, and where we are and where we are headed? Every part of my modern life is a result of wars won, famines survived, breakthroughs achieved, phenomena discovered, nature harnessed, etc etc. Consider, too, that I am literally an achievement of my ancestors; my DNA carries all of this history and progression within me.
Why shouldn't I be proud of who we are? It seems that only people who hate us want me to abandon my identity for deracinated nihilism, which only motivates me further towards the opposite extreme.
Go tell a Native American to completely abandon their ethnic identity, sever connection with their ancestry, and forego any sense of pride in the history and culture of their people on your basis that they had no direct role in its creation. Remind them of the shame and horror of their crimes against my people: the scalping, pedophilia, gang-rape, torture, cannibalism, etc.
Of course, you would not dare. This is a propaganda that you reserve only for my family. We unapologetically reject it. You should too.
I think that kind of pride is pointless and unproductive.
I think it is right to be grateful to your ancestors for their achievements in ultimately giving you the life that you have.
But proud? Hubris lies down that path.
Re: luck, yes, it is absolutely luck that you were born to the parents you were born to, located in the place you were born in. I think you have the sense of the luck direction flipped from what GP meant. If you look at it from the perspective of your ancestors, then sure, your birth wasn't luck: it was a choice (or an accident, I suppose).
But from the perspective of you, it's luck: you didn't get to choose the circumstances surrounding your birth. You got lucky in that sense; you could have instead had bad luck and been born on the streets in a third-world country to a drug-addicted single parent with no money and no prospects.
>you could have instead had bad luck and been born on the streets in a third-world country to a drug-addicted single parent with no money and no prospects
No I couldn't, it's totally impossible for the embryo formed by my mother and father to have teleported into the womb of a junkie on the other side of the world. I was always and only going to be born to my parents.
I do agree that it feels like we're arguing different things, as I know you know this. And I am very suspicious of people who argue the "luck" angle here as it is usually an attempt to erase my entire history and assert that some random "unlucky" starving Ethiopian has just as much right to be in my shoes instead. When zoomed out, this can clearly be weaponised as a justification for mass migration.
And of course, your viewpoint, when zoomed out, can be weaponised as a justification for getting rid of orphanages. Those kids aren't unlucky, they should be ashamed of being parentless, as an extension of those parents that decided to give them up. How dare my tax money be used to feed them, that I and my ancestors worked hard for?
Had this statue been erected in 2006, it would’ve been an immortal masterpiece. Had it been sculpted in 2016, it would still have been a great statue but flawed. But it was made in 2026. Alas, what can one say?
Westminster City Council has told the BBC it did not grant permission, as it was not given advance warning that Banksy's team was planning this installation.
Pretty much what we learned as student when we were doing something which we technically had no permit for (like digging out some stuff, using it for a theme party and putting it backs few days later). Put on some hiviz and nobody is the wiser.
I live in Westminster and we are officially supposed to put our rubbish on the pavement and there are usually no police around. They are just lucky it wasn't taken to recycling in the morning.
It doesn't make sense in the City. Waterloo Place, where he put this, has a bunch of statues already for tourists to gawp at, just now as well as "Bloke on a Horse who was an important military leader" there's this guy stepping off his plinth because the flag blocks him from seeing what's in front of him.
The City is dead at night. If an artist wants to put art there, they'd just as somebody else said, dress up like they are workmen and be fine.
Banksy is the Taylor Swift of art. Mainstream and banal, but with mass market appeal. Both have talent, obviously, but do not create anything profound or original. I'm aware of both through cultural osmosis, but mostly indifferent towards both - I'm not sure how you read anger from my post.
I buy the Taylor Swift comparison but both are quite original. Who did a guerilla blinded by the flag statue before? Who wrote "Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane" before?
One of my favorite contemporary musicians is a Socialist Filipino rapper who lives in LA. I can enjoy the music while finding the ideology abhorrent because they are two separate things.
Reminds me of this great Steward Lee quote (paraphrasing from memory): "When I was young a lot of people accused me of being a champagne socialist. If they only knew how wrong they were. I was a cocaine communist!"
Criticizing someone of being popular is just a way to silence them. If they are popular then they are "cringe", and if they are unpopular, they can be safely ignored and that statue would have been removed by the police and forgotten without any news coverage.
Banksy may be popular, but he is not completely establishment, because well look at the statue. Its an obvious critique of the Iran war, and yet the Iran war still grinds on and UK bases continue to be used for Iran war operations. So apparently there is someone in the establishment that does not agree with Banksy. Someone boldly stepping into the void.
Not just him, but all the people in his cultural sphere. I've been to a Banksy exhibition, and it also had videos of "critics" commenting on his work. The overtone was how inspiring and brave it is to protest things like war and injustice nowadays in a western country. It's repulsive how ignorant these people are towards their own privilege, while taking the moral high ground and lecturing others.
And of course there was a fucking gift shop at the end.
> The concept of the 'blindness' of justice is antithetical to blind patriotism.
exactly. i mean only to point out that the Banksy work intentionally invokes the figure of Blind Justice to inform the work, however you may interpret it.
England has a long history producing artwork against some institution, only for that institution to get worse over time. George Orwell wrote about the dangers of authoritarianism and surveillance, and since then the UK government has only ratcheted up their surveillance and authority. They also made a movie called This is England which straightforwardly depicts young English nationalists ruining their lives with nationalism, and 20 years later there are more nationalists in England than at any point after WW2.
England has gotten more liberal over time, not less. I'm not following your logic here. It seems you're wanting to criticize the government of the UK for being authoritarian and ratcheting up the surveillance state, but simultaneously criticize nationalists and link them to this government, but nationalists and right-leaning groups haven't really been in charge of the UK.
No, I didn't. But I wouldn't claim that a referendum that was voted on by the people of the country to be the same thing as right-leaning groups being in control of the government of the UK.
No it doesn't. If the right was in charge of the government of the UK they wouldn't have needed to have a referendum or drum up support for it.
Here's perhaps a concrete example to help piece this together. I live in Ohio. Our state government is right-leaning, and controlled by the Republican Party. The Republican Party has an anti-abortion platform.
A couple of years ago, citizens got together, created, and then passed an amendment to the Ohio Constitution providing abortion access as a legal right.
The right is still in control of the government, and that is true regardless of who paid to support the referendum, or how it was voted.
This is such an odd comment. People in arts and letters warning about some element of society or culture and then that element growing in strength is something that can be found in most countries, and doesn't seem more prevalent in England than elsewhere.
It's not in a park. It's on the pavement area of a road. For better or worse they don't arrest many people for leaving stuff in the street in London. A fine maybe.
Presumably Banksy and associates would have been arrested too if they had been caught. This whole thing relies on doing it in a way that people don't question it while it's happening.
This contradiction at the heart of it does a lot of work and is a very valuable part of the art. This contradiction has led me to think a lot about rules and their role in society and to what extent pure strict rules based societies are a worthwhile goal and on the other hand what it means of we make exceptions.
If Elon Musk did this because he wanted to (not make a statement, just to achieve some other goal he has) then that‘s not really art. If he did it to make a statement about how different rules apply to billionaires and he wanted to point that out then that to me would be an interesting artistic expression, sure (though he probably wouldn’t do that).
For well more than a century artists like Duchamp (e.g. Fountain from 1917) have been playing around with what turns something into art and makes it valued and where then line between art/not art is and what that has to do with explicit and implicit rules.
To me graffiti in its contemporary form in general but also specifically Banksy is a pretty natural continuation from that discourse that fits right in. That to me has always been the additional layer to any work by Banksy, whatever other (often obvious) statement the artwork might make.
I wish Banksy put the statue a block away at the roundabout at the end of Pall Mall instead. The current spot he picked already has several other statues there. The roundabout at the end of Pall Mall is empty, presently rather dull, and would look much nicer with a statue.
I can assure you that they would not have gone through all this enormous effort to quickly install a statue without very careful consideration of the most effective place to do so.
It's a monument style sculpture. The kind raised with public money. I think that carries part of the meaning with it versus graffiti or some other medium. It's also depicting the blinded walking off the edge, making the comment based on both the figure and the form of the statue.
Every criticism levelled at the St. George's Cross can be levelled at the Union Jack. It is time people in England had a healthier relationship with their flag, more like Scotland and Wales, and less like Northern Ireland.
Every parish church in England (more or less) has flown the St. George's cross traditionally for as long as I can remember. There is nothing wrong with that. Conversely, Union Jacks are a major symbol of Loyalism and Orangeism in Ireland, and parts of Scotland, which is an extremely aggressive and "hands on" movement. Union Jacks can be seen in pictures of every far right movement going back a century or more.
The Union Jack is a symbol of empire and colonialism which the St. George's Cross isn't.
However, the football thing is more recent. If you watch "the Italian Job" from the 1960s, the England fans wave around Union Jacks instead of their own specific flag (as Scotland and Wales fans would). Clearly in the intervening years, England fans have discovered the England flag.
Scottish and Welsh people seem to be a lot more comfortable with their identity than English do. And that includes their flags. I have seen countless bits of research which suggest that ethnic minorities happily identify as Scottish and Welsh in Scotland and Wales, but in England, they identify as British rather than English. I suggest you read Billy Bragg's "the Progressive Patriot". He is an English socialist who has tried to reclaim English identity from the far right, which he is entitled to.
England has a unique position in the Union, and indeed much of the world, where it is seen as an historic and current oppressive force, and our attitude to flags has to acknowledge that context.
In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the Union Flag is a reminder that the UK countries are ultimately run by England, where there isn’t a true acknowledgement that the countries are culturally different, let alone able to rule themselves.
Within England the St George’s Cross has become a symbol of exceptionalism and superiority, not least because it is prominently flown on nationalist and supremacist marches. Since the Union Jack includes the other countries in the Union, use of St George is often seen as a snub to the other countries.
So England can’t win? No. Correctly so, IMO, because of history and context (I am English).
I do not consider myself English, but Scottish. I remember ?fifteen years ago defending the St. George's Cross from English people arguing against it. The irony!
We do occasionally get billboards with company X saying they support England, but other than that it isn't an issue in Scotland.
Like Billy Bragg says, there is a strong case for reclaiming the English flag from the far right.
The Union Jack in Scotland has a much more complex history, particularly in and around Glasgow where it is connected with extreme loyalism and Orangeism (which is where a lot of the Scottish Reform party vote will come from.) In Northern Ireland, it is hated by a large section of the population. In Wales and Scotland, some independence supporters hate the Union Jack too.
The Union Jack has a strong association with the far right and loyalism, not to mention imperialism and somehow gets a free pass.
It was the flag of the British Empire with all that entails. It is to be found all over the loyalist areas of Northern Ireland and on Orange Marches. It has appeared in umpteen far right demos, and in fact if you look at 1970s far right footage you can see it is the flag they most commonly carry in the UK not the St. George's Cross.
Oh, and you'll find it at plenty of football matches, notably Glasgow Rangers, who fly it while singing songs about wanting to be "up to our knees in Fenian blood".
The ambiguity is part of the charm. Something that reveals more about the beholders than the artist makes for stimulating conversation and discovery.
Even the new positioning of the art on a plinth in some open space is enigmatic. If it were a critique of the powers that be, why would officialdom collaborate in propping it up?
They don't at all. Consider for example that every single city, county and local council in the UK has a flag. There are flags for the United Nations, the European Union, Esperanto, every major football team and most political movements including the CND and anarchism.
> Teachers and doctors are blinded by trans ideology and its flag.
Interesting fact: the creator of the trans flag, Robert Hogge (later known as Monica Helms), used to steal his mother's underwear, then moved on to stealing random women's underwear for sexual reasons, and wrote fantasy fiction about a man marrying a child who doesn't age.
> Five years later, he declared himself a ‘transgender woman’ and lesbian. In his 2019 memoir More Than Just a Flag, Helms describes how his obsession with presenting as a woman led to the breakdown of his marriage to his wife, Donna, after she had discovered he was hiding away family finances to purchase estrogen, women’s clothing, and to pay to attend cross-dresser conferences.
For me, nothing has been more clarifying about the trans debate than learning about autogynophilia and realizing that most males who think they are trans are actually straight. Until recently, I had assumed they were mostly males attracted to other males, and I suspect most of the public still thinks that too.
I appreciate the extra time you invested to let me know.
So to return the favor, I’ll add a couple of sentences too.
A year ago I would never have made such a comment.
My understanding about the issues boiled down to approximately:
- queer theory is some sort of reasonably academic pursuit that has something to do with gay people
- trans is just gay rights 2.0; clearly anyone who has any concerns is a raging bigot
Neither was a core interest of mine, but they seemed reasonable enough. However, eventually, I started reading about the topic. (I’d recommend Trans by Helen Joyce) and now I feel differently.
I now think JK had it right all along – we all should (and do) have the basic human right to wear whatever we like, and to sleep with anyone who will have us. But what’s being demanded by activists and taught in schools goes far beyond that and involves real contradictions, real risks to children and zero sum trade-offs with hard fought sex specific rights for women.
These issues are things we could talk about so that we all come to a better understanding and make better decisions. But instead wide swathes of officialdom are “blinded by the flag” and have decided, as I once did, that anyone who has concerns is a raging bigot.
In the UK there's been a recent spate of nationalist flag flying. Given the artist and location, "blinded by nationalism" is the most likely intended meaning.
Is it though? This can mean anything. Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag? Where do we draw the line between harmful and productive nationalism? Who exactly is blinded by nationalism?
It is vague enough to appear deep to those trying to find something deep but not concrete enough to appear as anything that will stick in people's minds for more than a week. Unfortunately a lot of modern art is like this.
> Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag?
Waving a flag is not a problem in itself. You can be proud of being part of whatever group you like and not hurt anyone. The problem is when the flag becomes the prism through which you see the world. Or, as the statue puts it, when you’re blinded by it.
> Is it though? This can mean anything. Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag? Where do we draw the line between harmful and productive nationalism? Who exactly is blinded by nationalism?
Clearly it depends on your actual object-level position on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Or in general, what specific nationalisms you mean when you talk about being "blinded by nationalism".
And that's the main reason why I think this is a mediocre piece of art. Very few people actually are genuinely anti-nationalist for all possible human groups that have some sense of themselves as a nation. All anti-nationalist rhetoric is implicitly aimed at a specific nationalism that someone has a problem with - and also everyone knows this. So everyone wants to use the blank slate of bansky's featureless flag as a canvas upon which to paint a nationalism they don't like in order to discredit it. And I personally think that's boring. Maybe engendering that reaction was itself part of Bansky's artistic vision, but I still don't think that makes for good art.
It was an extremely funny aspect of the Scottish Independence referendum to see people denouncing "nationalism" from in front of a Union Jack background.
Resistance to illegal occupation and colonization isn't ethnic cleansing, it's a legal right as ruled by every international body since Israel was formed. Totally false equivalence.
If you want to remove a certain set of people from land (people who were born there btw.) you are engaging in ethnic cleansing. The definition is clear here.
When one is a colony of the other the flag of the colonized has added symbol of decolonization. The flag of the colonizers has no such symbol, quite the contrary in fact. These two flags are clearly distinct.
When one is an organization terrorizing the other the flag of the terrorized has added symbol of anti-terror. The flag of the terrorists has no such symbol, quite the contrary in fact. These two flags are clearly distinct.
Your attempt to paint me as a hypocrite fails because it assumes I don’t consider the flag of Palestine to be distinct from the flag of Hamas. But I do consider these to be distinct flags.
Are you from the UK and know what the piece is a reference to? It’s topical and unpretentious and comes at a time where the country is splintering. Feels a like a bit of a distant midwit take to take shots at the appeal it has.
Splintering? You have two zombie parties that are really the same in different colours. Of course people are going to vote for other parties that seem more left/right wing. Predictable consequence.
He wasn't objecting to that. He was saying the "point" is about as sophisticated as "we should just, like, all agree not to fight wars man".
Personally I don't mind it. I think it would be difficult to convey well thought out points in art (the world is too complicated) and it's fine that they're just fun visual wordplays.
You wouldn't criticise a newspaper political cartoon for taking liberties with reality; these are basically the same.
Most galvanizing statements have been pithy and comprehensible to 13 year olds. The general population is not doing a deep dive in to something like Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” contemplating the proper role of government, and then getting fired up to act. We need CliffsNotes, slogans, and visible art like this.
Actually it’s a great example of something different, where the person who was original and eventually becomes ubiquitous and groundbreaking and widely imitated to the point where it's hard to understand just how original they actually are.
There are many examples of the same thing: Andy Warhol and the soup cans and screen-printed portraits with different color backgrounds or Led Zeppelin and English folk hard rock songs that have hobbits in them are two of them.
Eventually, it's hard to even process their work in the context of how predictable and trite it seems to be a few decades later.
Maybe, but in 100 years, people looking back on the current era will easily understand the work. It symbolically communicates something about the spirit of the age.
I disagree. There's plenty of adults going around plastering England's St George Cross flag on lampposts to project their love of the flag (along with the not so subtle messaging that immigrants and anyone non-white aren't welcome). If adults are going to behave like adolescents, then the art needs to go to their level.
(I'm a fan of Banksy because he isn't afraid to speak out against the blatant murder carried out because of flags and nationalism)
He's also king of the "I'll criticize the west but I'll turn a blind-eye to non-democratic countries' wrongdoings". A trait shared with virtually all intellectuals and artists in the west.
There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing of 1200 young civilians who were enjoying life at a music festival "because it's resistance".
Applauding the killing of young unarmed civilians, genitally mutilating women and turning a blind-eye to a regime slaughtering 30 000+ of its own unarmed civilians is where I personally draw the line and consider there are maybe more important things to complain about than, say, "the patriarchal western society built by heterosexual white men" or some other woke non-sense like that.
Now to be honest Banksy did art criticizing war overall, not just war started by the west. So a generous reading could consider that he also criticizes things like the 800 000 deaths during the Hutu vs Tutsi war.
But still overall: lots of balls from western artists when it's about criticizing the west, but tiny tiny nuts when it's about, say, attacking the ideology that is responsible for 300 people enjoying music at the Bataclan and then getting slaughtered.
But these people can live with their own conscience: I speak up and I've got mine.
That's a lot of imaginary flaws in imaginary people, with imaginary numbers as scaffolding.
The moral posture you're criticising is not actually a thing, I personally don't know of any Western intellectual who criticises the West but is fine with FGM for example. But it seems that the fault you find in them is that when they criticise the West, for example, they don't also add a list of grievances against all the other countries (but surely they'd have to speak for 10 hours every time they open their mouths?).
It's also funny how you take the 30,000 Iranian civilians killed at face value, but don't talk about the wrongs of the British empire. And you didn't even mention North Korea once. You see the issue with your reqs?
He's a Brit mostly putting art in Britain and so it's naturally that way focused. I've no info what his views would be on forced genital mutilation - probably against but not his area of art like most people.
> But these people can live with their own conscience: I speak up and I've got mine.
Not sure there's much conscience in Banksy making anti-national chauvinist memes whilst not identifying as any sort of nationalist, but there's even less in dismissing all criticisms of one's own society's treatment of, say, women because some other societies treat them worse.
For all that I don't think posturing graffiti artists are the saviours of humanity, it's difficult not to notice that the groups that actually are tackling FGM are practising Muslims and super-liberal NGOs (in that order) and that the people who raise it to deflect from criticisms of their own society are not represented at all in those efforts. Or are actively campaigning to get women's escape routes from those countries shut down.
Can't really lecture others on losing their sense of perspective about the magnitude of injustices either when a week ago you were expressing outrage at checks post history creatives depicting certain characters in LOTR as non-white!?!
So how do you fix a situation, where one party relentlessly attacks all the time? Israel, does what ukraine does- a strip of death around the country- getting wider as the technology to attack it matures.
Are you making art to fill that perceived gap, or just lodging your objection to people doing their own thing? No artist owes you a curriculum of your design.
Oh yes the classic problem of 'the west' always bettering themselves. If they would actually start focusing on the rest of the world, maybe the world would be a wonderful place. Right?
Or maybe, we should look at the problems in our society and try to make it better, instead of just shouting into the void about things we, as nations, can't and wouldn't be and perhaps, shouldn't able to change?
There's a lot wrong with the world, but it seems not unreasonable for people to more strongly critique things 1) they feel they have some responsibility for or 2) that directly impact them or 3) where their criticisms are more likely to result in positive change.
What do you want the artists to do about it? Part of art's power is shining a light on something we don't notice day to day. Most westeners are against mutilation, what would the art say?
Art will always be about speaking truth to power, and that power will usually be the one closest felt. There's not much value in a swede speaking truth to Nigerian warlords.
You're being downvoted but honestly the "everyone is twelve now" meme explains our collective societal dysfunction perfectly.
There's no point to complexity or subtlety in art anymore, or even any kind of symbolism at all. Anything that needs to be interpreted, that doesn't have a single objective meaning which gets spelled out for you. Flag man is silly. Everyone is twelve now.
Huh. I hadn't thought about how the "Red Pill movement" would feel for the Wachowskis, yeah, there's truly no limit to how oblivious people can be and this thread is illustrative.
I think the deeper dynamic is that any time anyone experiences a red pill, it's akin to a higher energy state and they become extremely receptive to sliding right back down into a different blue pill paradigm. In fact it's natural to eagerly crave it, as turning the deductive-reasoning crank forwards yields a whole batch of new fresh "insights" without having to do much work to obtain them. In the context of the movie, imagine - shortly after Neo takes the red pill, acclimates to the real world (rough), starts his training, says "I know Kung Fu", and then refuses to leave the training sim because it is so damn stimulating in new ways he isn't used to.
100%. One can't advocate for the dismantling of the Dept. of Education, the tearing down of "educational elites", and the wholesale banning of books, while at the same time crying foul when people say they have the intellectual capacity of a 12-year-old.
He, or his team, post about the art on instagram. Same with this one. When I first heard about this statue I went there to find it. I guess they can post about any art though but this is how I try to fact check.
There is a lot of tributes to Bansksy - signed "3anksy" - he don't have to and didn't use to.
Banksy has some specific and not random sense, this one.. shallowly could be considered IMHO ? (..and being installed Banksy style too). Convenient. "Attributed" could be second-order too (Memex). ?
holding such a large flag with one hand so high up on the pole? could easily be corrected with a lower holding position, two hands. if it did happen, the walking would cease immediately
both the blinding and defiant fist are intentional. there is only one way to die and he controls it
The final desperate shivers of a dying worldview, thats financially and socially so detached from the rest of the nation they couldn't even grasp when they got colonized.
A lot of Americans like Musk et al get upset that we have some muslim immigrants. You get a lot of this weird we're colonised stuff when it's actually about 7% of the population and we used to do a lot of real colonisation the other way around with British India and the like.
Remember kids. Don't believe in anything. Don't join anything. Don't give even a small part of yourself up to anything. Don't be part of anything bigger than yourself.
I had to check your other comments and now I get it that you still regard flags as having some sacred meaning in the great national past, but for me they always were about gathering as much human expendables underneath.
Sure, they might have had generated enough sacred reverence, those bloodbaths of past.
... that blinds you to any alternative; that indoctrinates distrust in different perspectives; that elevates the humanity of fellow believers above others.
It took me a minute to figure out why I think it's lame.
I suspect that Banksy and his fans are sure that it's "the other" Britons that are blinded, it's not a self-reflection prompt for them. Maybe I am wrong.
Maybe a more powerful piece of art would have that self reflection effect across the board. As is it feels about as nuanced as "fuck trump" and similar. If you already agree you already agree, if not then you just think it's stupid. So ultimately feels like impotent art unless I am totally misunderstanding.
the fact that it has many different interpretations in this thread suggest it's more nuanced than that. Though it's not some super subtle thing you have to be an art expert to understand, I'll give you.
So many people connect this to political topics... For me this is the genius thing about the statue. Seems to be, that quite a lot people are so wrapped up in political debates and political positions, that it has to have political meaning. Maybe this statue is the exact opposit thing of a political message.
> It took me a minute to figure out why I think it's lame.
> Maybe a more powerful piece of art would have that self reflection effect across the board. As is it feels about as nuanced as "fuck trump" and similar. If you already agree you already agree, if not then you just think it's stupid.
So close. Based on your own statement, it appears that you disagree with the proposed thesis by this piece of art.
> So ultimately feels like impotent art unless I am totally misunderstanding.
Maybe you should re-examine why you think it is stupid/lame. Is it because it calls you out and you don't like that feeling?
"Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best Poetic Terrorism is against the law, but don’t get caught. Art as crime; crime as art." -- T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, 1985
If someone was to deface this statue would they face legal action? It’s kind of an interesting thought, side if it really was just put up without the city’s authority it would be okay, and if it wasn’t it defeats the entire point.
“Rage against the machine” by doing what the machine wants type thing.
The only thing that we know about the flag is that it a fiberglass flag, so he must be obviously criticising the allegedly benefits of fiber in the diet.
As seen by the raised fist, the man is angry because the operation Epic Fiber has caused a blockage just in the strait of Trump, so is a metaphor about the dangers of having too much nuts in the world. Banski has planned also that the flag ends totally white by seagull activity; so this, always evolving and deceivingly simple piece of art, gives us hope for a future restoration of the blockage soon before we end nuking everybody on the process.
Denouncing the raise to nuttionalism while providing hope for the future. A powerful message.
See?, this is art, everybody can sell anything with a little practice. If they can sell a banana taped in a wall, so you can too.
I can't get over the flag itself… It's a black flag. Not a British flag, not a white flag,… A BLACK flag.
Historically, the black flag is strongly associated with anarchism, anti-state politics, revolt, and rejection of national authority.
Had he colored it in the union jack, then I would've said it was nationalism, and the person is blinded by nationalism.
But. This is Banksy, black-and-white Banksy, so there may be no symbolism behind the black flag, but it's just very interesting. I can't accept that he would not have considered the color of the flag.
It's styled after other bronze statues that are all one colour because of the material. Given the context in which he put this up, it's a pretty clear commentary on nationalism in general, so using a specific country's flag wouldn't work.
My take is that it's not specifically black; that's just the monochrome nature of the artwork. The fact that it has no design or color on it means that it can be a stand-in for anything, depending on who's looking.
How would you say your numbers compare to the amount of business leaders who are marketing themselves with messages of liberation, but actually want to usher in an era of unfettered corporate authoritarianism? I was not saying an anarchist wearing a suit cannot exist. Rather I was pointing out the current pop culture abuse of the concepts of anarchism/libertarianism.
I’m not sure; lots of people self-identify as anarchists while holding beliefs that are diametrically opposed to my own, and lots of people who are much closer to my own beliefs call themselves other things because they’re either afraid of the word “anarchism” or understand it to mean something else.
If I had to ballpark it, I’d guess something like 1:5 people in tech are broadly aligned with me politically (meaning “less extreme, but directionally similar”) while maybe 1:100 would self-identify as an anarchist and 1:500 both self-identify and align fully with me.
Not really, as you keep missing my larger point about authoritarianism marketing itself as anarchism/libertarianism. And that dynamic seems to be quite prevalent in Surveillance Valley.
Black flags are never depicted being wielded in this way. The stance and the clothes of the person carrying the flag are two more artistic shorthands that makes it very clear that this is a national flag, not a black flag of solidarity.
It's kind of cheap. Obviously saying "Reform bad." without addressing why so many people think it's not bad. Banksy forgets that humans are humans and do human things.
This seems like more bigotry against marginalized individuals and shouldn't be celebrated. The message here is that (the few) elites helping build a progressive society are doing it wrong.
Well, for a failing artist he is quite impactful, isn't he? News around the world reporting about it. People discussing it. This seems to be quite inspiring and anything else but failing.
Who decides that this is from Banksy? I could make a stencil graffiti in my village and claim it's from Banksy and noone could prove me wrong. Or is he using a digital signature as proof of authorship?
People are waking up to the decades of
gaslighting and lies about failed immigration. It can't be stopped now. Nobody cares if they are called a "racist" because the word has been overused and is meaningless.
Much of the media relentlessly continues with its gaslighting of course because the establishment wants and needs immigration.
But people know they barely hear English in many parts of England, see high streets full of criminal fronts [0], know that many are a net tax drain, know an increased population is straining services and housing and so on.
It's about failed immigration - regardless if they're from Poland or from Pakistan.
It is ironically many on the left who are stupid and manipulated by the presence of some far right loons, which gives them a convenient excuse to listen to nobody except themselves. They are blinded by their own smugness and have been manipulated by the pro-immigration establishment sadly
There's no definitely about that at all. The city of Westminster issued a statement that seems fairly clear that they were as surprised as everybody else but are taking steps to protect it.
Yeah, one of my distant friends is a councillor in a borough where Banksy did a mural years back and it was definitely much more about ensuring the standing "Send in workers to paint over any graffiti" reaction doesn't happen than some sort of "That's nice, the committee which issued the permit for this didn't tell me when it would happen". So far as she told me she heard about it the same way most people did, it was on the local news that morning.
Is it? The flag is black, so could be a variety of things, not necessarily even a national flag. Just a flag in a march. (Anarchism uses a black flag.)
The guy is walking off a cliff and he is blinded by the flag. I assume it is a commentary on Brexit. It is just short of a decade since that vote. Nationalism blinded people and they did something stupid. Not dissimilar to what is going on in the US too.
The Brexit vote was a decade ago and though many mourn the outcome, it’s a bit late to be erecting artwork about it. References to being blinded by a flag now are probably about the particular far-right organizing of the last year or so that employs the English and UK flags in a very particular way. [0]
More likely a commentary on the flying of flags. Since late 2025 and throughout 2026, the UK has seen a surge in flags (the Union Jack and St George’s Cross) being tied to lampposts, bridges, and roundabouts.
This campaign, which has been highly visible on social media and in physical neighborhoods, claims to promote patriotism. However, it has been deeply polarising, with critics and anti-racism groups arguing it is being used by far-right groups to mark territory and intimidate immigrant communities.
This is a weird one, some of the posts are obviously a human, some are a mix and some are AI entirely. Maybe I just don't understand the point in posting AI generated content at all in this scenario.
I feel more that it is a commentary on "blind nationalism" of which Brexit is one example, but not the only one, or the most recent. Brexit may be "over" now, but the mindset is still very much with us in the UK and elsewhere. In other words, any successful art relates to more than one specific situation, and allows more than one reading.
It probably is partly about Brexit. (I voted Remain by the way!!!) But he has made the blank flag so general that it could be interpreted to be so many other things like a NATO flag, an Esperanto flag, the flag of Essex or an autism pride flag.
To me, the blank (not black) nature of the flag is the point: it's about being blinded by any ideology, even one that the artist or beholder might agree with.
He has made his point so general, that I think it undermines it. It could just as easily be an Esperanto or a CND flag (although we know it won't be either.)
Despite the denials, the answer is most likely this was all coordinated with LEAs.
Some artists have questioned if Banksy, once considered anti-establishment, now enjoys special treatment from Britain's powers that be.
In 2014, Vice Media asked: 'Why Is Banksy the Only Person Allowed to Vandalize Britain’s Walls?' The story quoted David Speed, a street artist who ran a British graffiti collective. "It's very much one rule for him and another rule for everyone else ... When street artists do it, it's vandalism. When Banksy does it, it's an art piece."
Contacted by Reuters, Speed praised Banksy as "a really important artist of modern times." Yet he still wonders why "one artist should be able to have carte blanche and everyone else would be subject to penalties."
Not sure I agree it’s “most likely” when the linked article presents no evidence of LEA awareness or complicity, just one person speculating.
I know firsthand what can be done with a hardhat, clipboard, and high-viz vest. IMO it is far more likely that Banksy is just really good at social engineering in ways that other street artists are not.
I imagine this just isn't that difficult to get away with. Most areas are basically empty in the early hours of the morning (even in the middle of the city). And people doing some kind of engineering or installation work at that time would also not be that unusual.
Just goes to show the power of his art. I don’t find that bit the least bit surprising but this inconsistency always has been at the heart of his art for me and to a large extent also what his work is about.
Yes, London is famously free of surveillance and the Met is famously tolerant of political speech. Certainly, if someone had put up a statue of a pro-Palestine protester being blinded by a flag Sadiq Khan would just stand around being puzzled and letting things be. No question about it.
Oh, if you’re moving the goalposts from “Banksy had official support putting it up” to “the authorities reacted differently after the fact than they would have for others”, then I actually agree.
> The idea that Banksy's identity is unknown is a complete myth perpuated by the popular press.
I know saying RTFA is supposed to be against the HN guidelines, but it takes an amazing amount of confidently ignorant chutzpah to declare something "a complete myth perpetuated by the popular press" when the subtitle of this article literally states:
> less than two months after a journalism investigation into Banksy’s true identity was published
It's pretty obvious once you look at the art - it has a very specific political leaning, which also happens to have been the predominant one in the UK since Blair.
I’ve been on this for 20 years. The guy has coffee table books! He cashes checks! He took something that was previously done anonymously and for free, put his name on it and started charging for it. Good luck to him, but anonymous he is not.
Israel should give up on the apartheid, genocide, and the war crimes. No one but the worst of the worst Zionists want to see the continuation of the last 80 years.
Sure he can. Both of them have flags, and all flags are bad. They blow in your face and make you dumb. Why can't world be less dumb? So many dumb flag people. I do art.
So anyone can now place whatever they want in public space in UK or some people like Banksy are more equal than the other people? I find this statue offensive for double standards.
This should go quickly away unless they confirm he had official permit and he is just "anti-establishment" hipster.
