Street Smart for Street Art?

Has Banksy’s latest New York stunt proven that we are all slightly ignorant to culture?

An old man laid out his art stall this weekend and sat through a bright, yet slightly chilly autumnal day in New York.

His stand, much like those that lined not just the same street, but boulevards and promenades in London, Paris and around the world, presented a hot-pot of artistic pieces of intricate detail, selling at just $60 (roughly £38).

Few people took notice of whatappeared to be an ordinary stall. It took hours to sell his first painting. Even then, it was at a discounted price of 50% off.  Total takings for the day only came in at $420, not even £300.

But this was not just a street vendor. These were 100% originally Banksy paintings. It is estimated their true value may be in the region of £20,000. A bargain for the savvy few that bought the pieces; for the rest of us, this is a truly saddening indictment of society.

The questions raised by the experiment are just as interesting as the spontaneous sale itself: “Are we too busy?”, “Are we ignorant?”, “Are we uncultured?”. And, seemingly, the answer would be a yes. At least based on Banksy’s approach.

A similar experience befell world renowned and talented violinist, Joshua Bell, a few years ago at a Metro station in Washington DC. The musician, who had but two nights before sold out a theatre in Boston for an average of $100 a seat, earned just $27 in the stunt, which saw thousands of naïve commuters pass by unawares.

Such unusual tactics obviously catch us by surprise. But is the reality that we are becoming less observant and increasingly driven by a busy society? We no longer give time to consider the value the art in front of us until a bystander informs us of what we have missed. The old school of thought that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has never rung truer, yet been so underappreciated.

If an artist paints his work, but no one stops to consider it; does the painting remain true great art? Of course it does. The legacy and testament of artists such as Van Gogh proves this. But in the modern world, with internet, mobile technology and greater access to information, it strikes as ignorance that so many could walk past unaware as to the achievement in front of them. It goes to show that increasingly, it is not talent, but marketing and reputation that sell artwork: a sign of a culture that has become dependent on others to tell them what art is, and by extension, how to think and live.

Seneca noted the problem over two millennia ago: “There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living” he mused. He concluded that it left little space for man to successfully consider everything because his mind was too busied. The sentiment was echoed last century, when W. H. Davies penned the immortal words “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare”.

Now, with television adverts, billboards, the internet, social media and an increasingly diverse number of mediums by which to disseminate information and opinion, are minds have never been so busy sifting through information. The result is that we are immune and numb to art and talent, because we have become hardened by the apparent need to strive for achievements in work, glamorised by society.

The art debate has raged fiercely throughout history: is art representing fact or an opinion or an emotion or all of these?

The Banksy project does not show that we are incapable of recognising beauty. Rather, people have the wrong priorities: the art seems irrelevant to them at the time. If it were housed proudly and resplendently in a museum or gallery, then we can be sure that people would queue eagerly to snap a photo and admire the detail up close. If we took time to stop, would we realise we have been missing a wealth of culture every day?

Society will have to pay for its ignorance several times over before the month is out. Banksy’s ‘Better Out Than In’ project promises new street art in NYC each day throughout October. And whilst art buffs and fans alike race the streets of Manhattan to find the artwork each day, they have already found the works defaced and altered by other taggers, artists and property owners, unaware they are covering a thousand dollar masterpiece.