Against all expectations, the elephant was not in the room. Come Friday evening, at the end of its first full day as an art object, the elephant had probably gone for a lie down, drained by all the attention it had received.
The previous night, at the glamorous opening in the decidedly un-Beverly Hills setting of a disused warehouse at the end of a cul de sac nestled close to a downtown freeway interchange, the elephant had upstaged some of Hollywood’s finest. Painted red, adorned with gold fleur-de-lis, the elephant merged into the wallpaper behind it. There was nothing that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie could do other than gawp.
The stars, who also included Jude Law and Keanu Reeves, had gathered for the first LA show by the British prankster, provocateur, graffiti artist and general meddler, Banksy. Known for his street art and interventions in Britain, his show in LA, Barely Legal, was his first large-scale exhibition in the US. Complete with valet parking and a retinue of publicists, it is by far the most high profile of Banksy’s foreign jaunts, which have also taken him to Paris, New York and Israel.
The show includes pieces of British iconography, such as a Guardsman on Horse Guards Parade atop a pantomime horse, in addition to work aimed specifically at the local audience. A police van dominates the entrance to the exhibition, decorated with a picture of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz carrying a noose. Occupying an entire wall next to it is a painting reinterpreting an American icon, the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. In Banksy’s interpretation, the scene is given an urban setting with a group of protesters raising the flag on top of a car.
The world of Brad, Angelina, Jude and Keanu is a long way from Banksy’s origins as a 14-year-old schoolboy in Bristol, England, dabbling in graffiti when it was considered an aggressive form of counterculture. The images that followed, daubed illegally on London’s walls, paved the way for the trend of appropriating public space by graffiti artists. His chutzpah rose to a higher plane earlier this year when he sprayed nine paintings on the 684km barrier that separates Israel from Palestinian territories. A stencil on a Bristol building was allowed to remain in place by the city council after the public voiced overwhelming support.
Yet somehow, despite his mainstream appeal, Banksy has lost none of the respect of his more “underground” British peers. “People have been doing graffiti [in the UK] for about 30 years, and it’s time it was taken seriously,” said “Tizer,” a south London graffiti artist who works on public murals and on education projects with young offenders. “When people talk about graffiti they talk about Banksy. Famous people have always come to his exhibitions because his stuff is easy to read.” A week before the Los Angeles exhibition, Banksy visited Disneyland, somehow managing to place an inflatable figure dressed as a Guantanamo detainee alongside a railroad ride. A short film of the escapade runs inside the LA show. In the same darkened screening room a glass case displays another of his recent interventions: the Paris Hilton CD doctored by Banksy, which he carried out with the help of Los Angeles-based producer Danger Mouse. Enormous cockroaches had been placed inside the display case. Like much of Banksy’s work, it is an overt statement. But of what, precisely?
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