Who is Banksy?
The million-dollar (or should I say pound) question. Who TF is Banksy? You know his work already if you’re a loyal reader of this blog but even if you aren’t you know it, he’s an icon of contemporary art. But who is he?
We have a bunch of different theories to unpack with this one so I’ll lead you through those and then we can chat about what seems most likely. Of course, I will be talking about some theories that don’t seem likely at all but come on, let me have a fun little conspiracy moment!
Theory 1: He’s a group
Some people think that Banksy actually isn’t an individual at all but an elaborate ruse created by a group of artists who act together. They say that one person couldn’t possibly create all these artworks and installations by themselves for so long without being exposed so it must be a collective of artists working together and fabricating this image of one person, Banksy, to throw people off the scent.
Theory 2: He’s a woman
Building from the last theory, some say that the leader of this group of artists is a woman. This theory is backed up by what Chris Healey, a Canadian media artist, says in the 2014 HBO documentary Banksy Does New York. He claims that Banksy is actually a blond woman who leads a team of seven artists to create all of Banksy’s pieces. He even goes a step farther saying that the blonde woman can be seen in Banksy’s documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, in scenes inside his alleged studio.
This one holds a bit of water for me because it would be easy for this woman to keep her identity a secret since everyone assumes that Banksy is one person and a man. Looking closer at Banksy’s art we can also see that women and girls feature often in his stencils and they’re usually not presented in a sexualized manner, unusual for street art.
I will say though, I COMBED through Exit Through the Gift Shop and I could not find a blonde woman in any of the scenes in Banksy’s studio so idk.
Theory 3: Banksy is the frontman of British band Massive Attack
And now in a complete departure from the previous two theories, we have this absolute wildcard. So, for some context (because I had never heard of Massive Attack either), they’re an electronic band formed in 1988 in Bristol, where Banksy is said to be from. The names of the founders are insane so I’m going to tell you for fun. It was founded by Robert "3D" Del Naja, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall. 3D, Tricky, and Daddy G are still members of the band.
The person who people think is Banksy is one of the singers, Robert “3D” Del Naja. What’s compelling here is that when he was a kid in Bristol (where Banksy is from) he was part of the graffiti collective The Wild Bunch and was emerging as a graffiti artist before founding Massive Attack and choosing music. But did he abandon graffitti?
As Massive Attack toured around the country and internationally, people, and one journalist in particular, started making connections between the locations of Massive Attack concerts and new Banksy murals. The journalist I mentioned, Craig Williams, offers this as proof of this theory: “Massive Attack appeared in San Francisco in late April 2010; a half-dozen Banksy murals appeared May 1. Just days later, the band played in Toronto and Banksy murals popped up in that city. The band took to the stage at the Hollywood Bowl in 2006; Banksy’s “Barely Legal” exhibition took place a week later” (Boucher, 2016).
Also a popular English DJ, Goldie, apparently “slipped up” on-air by referring to Banksy as “Robert”. Hmmm.
Would be a pretty good setup to be making a lot of money publicly from your music and also absolutely raking it in from being Banksy. No one would question why you’re rich. Though Banksy is known for not caring about money and donating a lot of it to good causes so….again idk.
Theory 4: He is Mr. Brainwash
So I mentioned the Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop before and it’s a great watch, highly recommend. It follows the story of this guy, Thierry Guetta, as he meets and becomes friendly with several famous street artists like Shepard Fairey who finally connect him to Banksy (who is featured in the film dressed in all black, looking like a silhouette, and with an altered voice). Thirrey captures all of these experiences on film because he is a filmmaker who loves to document every single second of his life and they use all this footage to create the documentary, very convenient. The culmination of the documentary is that through working with these artists Theirry decides he wants to start creating art too and calls himself Mr. Brainwash. He starts to create stickers and stencils and even hosts his first exhibit in LA at the end.
As a side note about the documentary itself, its authenticity and origins are a little shady. Lots of people don’t buy Thierry just organically capturing all the footage and it magically coming together to make a film, and they think his story and journey to become an artist is complete BS. There’s more to get into there but I’ll save it for another time.
Ther point that I’m trying to make here is that people think that maybe Theirry is actually Banksy and, as I mentioned, the documentary is a complete hoax or art piece. These people say that all the bad art is a ruse to throw you off the scent, same with featuring and interviewing “Banksy” about Theirry. I honestly doubt this one, it would be super bold to show your face throughout the film pretending to be someone else but I guess it’s possible! Also, unfortunately, Mr. Brainwash is still creating atrocious art so unless Banksy has a hidden plan and is playing the extremely long game, this is a long time to keep this charade going.
Theory 5: He is Robin Gunningham
Now I know what you’re thinking; “who the hell is that”. Don’t worry, it’s what I was thinking too. In 2008 The Mail on Sunday identified Robin as Banksy for a number of reasons; he is around the right age, he grew up in Yate (19km from Bristol) and later went to school in Bristol, he began calling himself Robin Banks (which later became Banksy) and a boy once helped him pick up some prints he had dropped, he rewarded this boy by giving him a print signed by Banksy. He also matches the description of white, scruffy, and casual (excellent description).
More recently, in 2016, researchers at London’s Queen Mary University claim that they have used science to verify this identification. Their project was using geographical profiling and start started by looking for a correlation between 140 artworks in London and Bristol attributed to Banksy and 10 commonly used names for the artist. The researchers say “The model takes as input the locations of these artworks, and calculates the probability of ‘offender’ residence across the study area” (Neuendorf, 2016). By doing this they were able to identify a number of hotspots for researchers to look into further. They then cross-referenced their list of locations with the 10 Banksy potentials they had and found that each of the hotspots had been either lived in or frequented by Robin Gunningham (who was on the list from the 2008 newspaper story).
So this was conclusive for the research team and they claim to have scientifically proven Banksy’s identity. But of course, some people still say that this is a coincidence and that the famous artist is a woman or a group or someone else entirely.
Thoughts?
I’ve kind of made my thoughts clear throughout, I think all the theories are intriguing in different ways. If I had to tell you which I thought were least plausible to me I would have to say the leaderless group or Mr. Brainwash, I just don’t think the group could stay organized and not have a leak and Mr. Brainwash is just so bad I can’t bear it even as a joke.
I like the theory that ‘he’ is a woman or that he is Robin Gunningham, I love a good study. None of these is conclusive and Banksy’s official team have either denied everything or, in the case of Robin Gunningham, have stayed silent to let people decide for themselves. So I guess it just matters what you think!
Works Cited
Boucher, Brian. “Is Massive Attack Founder Robert Del Naja the Real Banksy?” ArtNet News. 2016. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/massive-attack-founder-real-banksy-632879
Munro, Cait. “Could Banksy be a Woman?” ArtNet News. 2014. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/could-banksy-be-a-woman-156971
Neuendorf, Henri. “Mystery Solved? Scientists Reveal Banksy’s Identity”. ArtNet News. 2016. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/banksy-identity-revealed-scientists-441185