The forces of taste, fashion and regard have long colluded in a disconcerting way around Banksy. He is an ‘artist’ that the great and the good of the auction world take as seriously and reverently as your more common or garden fan who gazes upon his grim graffiti and feels they really ought to like it. In a saner world, in which everyone had not colluded on the premise that Banksy is Important and Good, he would be seen mainly as a vandal and a nuisance. 

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At any rate, his vandalism is lucrative in part because it is a parade of ‘subversive’ clichés, so saccharine and obvious they hurt. Thus, we have little black stencils depicting policemen kissing, the House of Commons filled with chimpanzees, or a girl reaching after a heart-shaped balloon. His art is bad in large part because it is so openly political. He is a robo-lefty; this was his response to the proscription of Palestine Action – grafitti of a judge beating a protester. Roger Scruton’s idea that beauty is art’s purpose is in permanent violation by Banksy. 

At any rate, his main selling point is the secret of his identity. But his........

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