For this reason alone Banksy might best be understood as a ‘he’, ‘she’ or even ‘they’, but for all intents and purposes Banksy is widely-held to be a white male, now in his early to mid-forties, born in Bristol, western England and brought up in a stable middle class family, a pupil from a private cathedral school and a one-time goalkeeper in the infamous Sunday soccer team The Easton Cowboys. Anonymity is less important than the impact of his art, which is more than likely created, fabricated and situated by a group of collaborators. His greatest triumph has been his ability to keep that identity swathed in mystery, even though the artist’s name is said to be in the public domain beyond all reasonable doubt, readily available on Wikipedia and subject to myriad press revelations in the past five years. To the press and public, the question of Banksy’s identity is more intriguing than the legitimacy of his work and the price that celebrities, dealers and other wealthy patrons are prepared to pay for it. Prankster, polemicist, painter, Banksy is arguably the world’s most famous unknown street artist. The paper compares the deadpan, but hugely popular, drawn language of the stencil with the freehand calligraphy of the taggers, ‘kings’ and other exhibition ‘writers’, and closes with a set of questions, in particular what is the future of drawing in countercultural expression.

Exploring the origins of his work in stencil the paper examines how he has both radicalised the genre, while still retaining its essential value as an industrial, utilitarian, and iconic graphic.

This paper explores the persistence and ubiquitous spread of the stencil as a vehicle for mass–produced street art, made especially popular through the iconic work of British street-artist Banksy. At the other extreme are the stencil-cutters, who by comparison are regarded within the peer community of the subculture, as lesser writers, relying on craft skills that are held to be quaint, even fraudulent. At the apex are those writers who create the imposing wildstyle exhibition pieces, large-scale vivid inscriptions that require a high degree of graphic invention and daring. Contemporary graffiti artists, or ‘writers’ as they are known, observe a strict hierarchy that self-ranks ambition, daring and calligraphic innovation.

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