It’s hard to say which artist best sums up our age, because there
are so many different facets of life here in the beginning of the 21st
century. We have a huge variety of lifestyles, cultures, beliefs, and
attitudes, and it would be impossible for one artist to document our age
without leaving something out. One artist whose work documents a unique feature
of our time, however, is the British street artist Banksy.
Banksy uses
stencils and spray paint to create images on walls, billboards, and sidewalks.
His work is a lot more sophisticated than common graffiti, but all of it is
done illegally and it usually ends up being painted over by local governments. Some
of Banksy’s artwork is simply meant to be humorous or visually pleasing, but a
lot of it carries a political message. For example, on piece done by Banksy
featured a rioting protester throwing a bouquet of flowers, another one a rat
wielding an RPG.
What Banksy’s
artwork shows about our time is the strong current of counter-culture and
political activism that exists now more than any time in the past. From the
Hippie movement in the 60’s to the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria;
protests, riots, and revolutions have become an almost everyday occurrence in
modern times. Banksy represents this cultural thread not only through the
content of his work but by how it is executed: as willful acts of vandalism.
