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Grading Banksy: A Look At All 31 Pieces From His NYC Residency
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Gothamist Staff
Published Nov 1, 2013
Modified Nov 1, 2013
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By
Gothamist Staff
Published Nov 1, 2013
Modified Nov 1, 2013
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Are you feeling that post-Banksy depression? The street artist's month-long open-air show is over, and here's a look back at all 31 pieces. Click through and you'll also find Jake Dobkin's grade for each piece, in which he used the factors he outlined in this piece to power rank each one—we'll recap those again here:
- Artistic Skill: if the graffiti artist uses paint, does he have good can control? If he's doing words, is his hand style original, consistent, and beautiful? If he's doing stencils, paper work, or some other "street art" style, are the pieces well executed in their medium?
- Placement: has the artist gotten up in impressive, high-profile, illegal places? Or is she just doing boring legal walls? Has she gone "all-city" or does she just stick to one block like a toy? Does the work speak to the location, and respond to its context, or is it just something that could have been stuck up anywhere?
- Message: Does it make you think about something larger than the piece itself, like how terribly unjust our society is, or about the nature of art, or the vapidity of our popular culture? Does it elicit a strong emotional reaction from you, like the desire to beat a financier?
Overall Dobkin gives the residency a B+, saying, "The standouts were the three dimensional pieces, the ones with strong political messages, and the ones that were very well placed, like the beaver. The ones that were bad were generally quickies, with silly or cliched messages, which didn't speak to their surroundings. Overall, i'd say he did pretty well for a foreigner, since he didn't get arrested or shot, and put up something interesting almost every day."
So, now what?
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