# In praise of Banksy
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** arts-crafts
**Created:** [December 9, 2005, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831 "2005-12-09T04:35:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2005, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/1 "2005-12-09T04:35:31Z")
Yes, I’m not all that hip, and I did just come to his art through last month’s Esquire article, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been really excited about an artist, let alone a graffiti artist. [Banksy’s](http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html) work is just the thing I’ve been waiting for. Andy Warhol meets T-shirt pop art in a totally free public gallery. I love the range, I love some of it’s scathingly political and other is scathingly fun and free. There’s a wonderful scope and impishness to all of it, and I’m damned glad to live in a world that includes this kind of work.
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### Author:  [@jellyblue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jellyblue)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2005, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/2 "2005-12-09T08:24:34Z")
Banksy is truly the bomb. I recently saw one of his gas mask mice stenciled on an electrical box in town, I was so excited. I notice sticker art and stencils all the time now.
You maybe want to check out the Wooster Collective webpage for more artists:
[http://www.woostercollective.com/](http://www.woostercollective.com/)
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### Author:  [@Armilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Armilla)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2005, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/3 "2005-12-09T12:38:17Z")
He, or his imitators, seem quite active in the area around where I live.
The pavement outside my front door currently bears a multi-coloured “Sin City” stencil spray, which I think is kind of appropriate.
Some are just perplexing though. Until it was painted over there was a wall around the corner that was covered with a bizarre equation. Apparently a number of rats divided by bottles and multiplied by the square root of a rat raised to the power of three bottles equaled Miles O’Brien’s face from Star Trek.
I puzzled over that one for some time, and now wish I’d had the forethought to have photographed it before the vengeful hand of Camden council obliterated it.
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### Author:  [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2005, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/4 "2005-12-09T13:08:43Z")
I’m not a true Bristolian, but I hear Banksy is. There’s a big mural of a teddy bear wielding a molotov cocktail on Cheltenham Road here, but I think a lot of the stencilled stuff has been removed; I’m sure there was more down by the dockside before it’s utterly bland redevelopment… ☹
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### Author:  [@Chairman\_Pow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chairman_Pow)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2005, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/5 "2005-12-11T10:31:30Z")
Banksy’s one of those people that makes me wonder if graffiti isn’t simple vandalism - that is, maybe it should be protected by some Free Speech laws. Of course, it is still affecting someone’s property (someone who hasn’t given their permission of course). He does make quite a statement though.
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### Author:  [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2005, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/6 "2005-12-13T15:52:49Z")
I used to see a lot of his little rats stencilled on walls around the Farringdon/Barbican area when I lived there (they would be waving protest placards, selling watches from inside their coats, taking a spanner to a telephone junction box, etc.). They were indeed very cool, and actually pretty subtle (they’re quite small).
Shame most graffiti ‘artists’ are just talentless tossers who get a hardon from spraying their ‘tag’ on everything in sight over and over again.
Hot Damn! - [This](http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/Banksy/Banksy_rat_london_work.htm) is just opposite the old Whitbread brewery on Chiswell street. Walked past it many many times!
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2025, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/7 "2025-09-10T12:47:37Z")
It’s twenty years later from when this thread was started and Banksy is still going strong.
However it seems the HM Courts & Tribunals Service is not a fan:
[ ](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/4227/live/3cdd6360-8e38-11f0-b919-bb47c15c5954.jpg)
> **[Banksy 'judge' mural scrubbed from Royal Courts of Justice wall](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2z30p033ro)**
>
> The artwork of a judge hitting a protester with a gavel has been removed from the listed building.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2026, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-praise-of-banksy/334831/8 "2026-03-18T03:18:20Z")
Has he been identified?
> **[Banksy unmasked? Here are the people thought to have been the famous street...](https://www.aol.com/articles/banksy-unmasked-people-thought-famous-005719289.html)**
>
> Before he was definitively IDed, these were the leading suspects in the mysterious case of the international tagger.