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 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.
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.
> 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".
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.
It’s lovely isn’t it? There’re a good few of these things around: notably Torpenhow Hill (which killjoys dispute); and ones like Pendle Hill (which they don’t).
Makes sense given Welsh’s evolution from Britannic. Much to my shame, I only started visiting Wales in later life, and there’s really something in the language that grabs me quite deeply. Once I’ve got my Polish down to pat, I tell myself.
Never considered that, but mentioning flags that have minimal "history" pushed me in a totally different direction about some modern political transnational movements lol.
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).
I'm tempted to agree, specifically because of the depicted flag waver. That person embodies the leadership of the status quo, and nationalism is a core component of that.
Flags are literally a statement of identity, but I think that comes in two distinct flavors:
1. The national flag which is planted in a state of ownership and assimilation
2. A protest flag to state to others that they are not alone in their protest.
I could be missing something but I think it is effectively this simple.
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 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.
That's not brilliant, and it's not important to art. It's more like clickbait.
The statue is blank because deliberate ambiguity is the arty thing to do, because provocation is supposed to be a praiseworthy aspect of art.
But it's paper-thin ambiguity, and ambiguity isn't praiseworthy anyway. Inexplicit meaning is praiseworthy, but that's something else. This statue just has a veneer to suggest that it might possibly be saying something other than what the artist obviously thinks, if you know all about him, as we do.
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.
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.
I would agree that "it's not my bag" is a fine thing to say about some art gallery piece that fails to inspire you, but when a statue is foisted upon the public square, with possible state cooperation, we're allowed to criticize it. He has inserted it into the conversation.
Moreover, the main complaint about this statue isn't coming from some expert artiste perspective, saying that it's somehow unsophisticated as art. The complaint here is that it's making a truly banal political statement. The entire piece consists of making that statement, with little else to recommend it. (Indeed, most political art is hack, unless it's saying something really original or really well, and it's even worse when it tries to be cute about it.)
So here, the complaints are coming from everyday onlookers who might not be qualified artistically, but who are able to say which sorts of statements are tiresome and overplayed in the culture we all live in. We are all qualified to ask ourselves whether this predictable statement advances or degrades the conversation.
Anyhow, FWIW, I just looked up Simon Berger's portraits based on your comment, and I really like them. Thanks.
Thanks for drawing the distinction. For the record, I do not think Banksy is a hack (noun), and he has done good stuff in the past. I'm merely saying that this piece under discussion is hack (adjective).
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.
It's an idea, it describes something real. We can all make our own guesses and our own assertions about what that is, and then we can critique them and try to make them agree. There's no point just saying "we can all think whatever we like about anything" and leaving it there.
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.
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.
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?
It’s amazing how everyone thinks this sculpture’s message doesn’t apply to them. “My side’s flags are different, it’s the other side’s flags that are bad”. So many people here making this argument. It’s beyond parody, yet really so predictable. Amazing lack of self awareness. I thought this place was more rational than Reddit, but apparently not!
> It’s amazing how everyone thinks this sculpture’s message doesn’t apply to them. “My side’s flags are different, it’s the other side’s flags that are bad”
The sculpture's message isn't "flags are bad" - it's using a flag as a metaphor for nationalism/blind patriotism (based on the rest of the statue, the location chosen, what it's a response to, and Banksy's other works).
(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.
There's not a lot of difference there. Citizenship COULD be used, but now you're talking about two different domains of language. A person who is British but now has an American citizenship, still talks with a British accent and identifies as British is still British. The same way a trans person with XY is still a woman if she identifies as a women, even though that person is also a male in another domain of speech.
Humans who identify as "humans, not animals" are just stupid and wrong in the scientific domain of speech, but absolutely correct and reasonable in the colloquial domain of speech.
I’m not following your argument at all, could you try to word it differently?
The distinction I’m drawing is that flags that represent peoples are usually more ideologically pure: people seeking justice or rights. They may be co-opted over time by more actors who deviate from the original intention (e.g. Gadsden Flag).
Nation flags, on the other hand, are by definition exclusionary towards an outgroup that exists by legal distinction. In the historical record, nationalism rarely works out well for anyone who sits outside the definition of a nation. Nationalism is a useful tool during wartime, especially during the early years of a nation (e.g. colonial revolutions) or when facing an existential threat (e.g. Ukraine), but it’s an ideological debt that may end up being paid by future generations when someone comes along and wraps themselves and their ideology in the flag and paints their opposition as “unamerican”, for example.
Is your point that all flags have the same ideological utility no matter what they represent? Or is your point not talking about flags at all and instead focusing on the difference between “sovereign state” and “nation”?
> Nation flags, on the other hand, are by definition exclusionary towards an outgroup that exists by legal distinction
I did notice how extremely specific that was. Because the current LGBTQ+ grouping have been quite exclusionary towards even LGB for quite some time now. Your point that they can be coopted is something I absolutely agree with.
> In the historical record, nationalism rarely works out well for anyone who sits outside the definition of a nation.
"What did the Romans ever do for us?". Pax Americana has been ENORMOUSLY beneficial for billions of people starting in 1943 arguably. And obviously the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages. You're cherry picking.
> Is your point that all flags have the same ideological utility no matter what they represent?
I think my original point when posting that there's a lot of flag waving on the left, is that... well.. the post before that claimed there isn't which is just wrong. Now I would say that my point is that ALL movements/nations/corporations/whatever are co-optable. There's absolutely no difference between nations or movements.
It's not a left vs right thing. It never was. People who say it are are historically ignorant, naive, willfully ignorant, or a combination of those. "Right" and "left" are pretty much meaningless anyway. We have to look at individual movements, people, policies, and actions individually without falling back to our own group identity to judge the moral character of the thing.
I've seen people claim that since "the left" were right about women's rights, then it must be ok whatever "the left" is doing now because historically "the left" is always on the right side of history. Just ignoring the 100+ million dead from communism.
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".
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
Im familiar with who he is. At the time his claim to fame was coming up with Nathan Barley, which is why I suspected there was more than a little jealousy there.
He got more famous and acclaimed since black mirror.
I get the jealously part, but the highbrow part seems off to me. Brooker has always shown much more interest in distinctly lowbrow art forms such as video games. I don't think he is sneering at Banksy because he thinks we should be looking at the paintings of the Old Masters instead.
Right but he knows guardian readers think that and he's pandering to their snobbery with his comments about Banksy rolling around in the pop culture mud.
At the same time it's painfully obvious it riled him up being a more obscure and less famous equivalent of banksy.
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.
Good point, historically British currency wasn't decimal. "Decimal Day" in which the pound was divided into 100 new pennies happened just a few years before I was born. So I grew up with the physical coins often still denominated in shillings or old (pre-decimal) pence, but knowing (since it was true from before I'd been born) what their actual value was in the only currency system I had ever experienced, so e.g. I see a shilling, I know it's actually 5 new pence. By the time I was a teenager there were very few actual shillings in circulation and lots of new 5p coins and then the coins were deliberately reduced in size anyway, obviously if you still had a shilling it was now obsolete because it was the wrong size.
My mother grew up with the currency around her not being decimal but by her teens the government were explicitly warning that this was coming and she learned that e.g. a pound has 100 new pence in school ready for a career where this would soon go from theory to practice, when she finished school the poster campaigns were running IIRC.
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)
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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...
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.
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".
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...
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".
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.
Do we stop talking about the Jewish holocaust because, well isn't it obvious that genocide is bad?
If we don't remind ourselves of these situations to be aware of we can easily get mired in our daily lives and forget these important matters. It becomes easy to ignore. Especially if the bad stuff does not effect you. If one becomes complacent, one becomes part of the problem in the hope the problem won't come after them.
This same thing goes for anything that needs to stick whether its programming, therapy, or playing a musical instrument. The more you practice something the more it sticks.
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.
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.
Considering that line is supposed to be written by a young child in-context (who couldn't actually "remember" anything more than a decade earlier, I'm pretty confident the intent was not to reference the actual recent history of urban deforestation in Detroit. So this attempt to fact-check the art doesn't actually work at all here.
Off the top of my head, I'd guess the message is closer to an observation about being disconnected from history in the modern world leading to vaguely defined feelings of angst and alienation.
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.
