In this essay, I will be comparing the two artists Banksy and JR, one of them is a street photographer whilst the other is a graffiti artist. I wanted to compare these two artists as they both relate their work into politics and everyday life, as they both see the world the same as everyone else but they incorporate what they see into their work. I also really like Banksy’s work and I have seen a few pieces that JR has produced and they are really interesting also.
JR, like Banksy isn’t a very well-known artist for showing his face as Banksy is the same as no one really knows Banksy’s true identity, with JR just using initials he isn’t fully known either and their work is very similar. They both like to display their work everywhere in any way they can find possible to do that, on walls, sides of buildings, floors, bus stops etc.
Similarly, both artists like to work against the law to show their work off, as some of Banksy’s work is removed soon after he has done it even though he’ll replace it soon after with something different. JR likes to work against the law in a way that shoves it in their faces by showing his work somewhere where it would be offensive to show and if the government see it they would be very displeased.
Differently to Banksy, JR exhibits freely around wherever he works, and he likes to catch the eye of the untypical gallery or museum visitor and he believes his work catches the average person’s eye compared to the museum visitor who is interested in art already. Yet Banksy, believes that “a wall has always been the best place to publish work”, and he also believes that “the people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti because they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit, which makes their opinion worthless”. (From Banksy’s book wall and piece).
JR first started publishing work around 2001 after finding a camera in Paris Metro, he then travelled Europe, to meet those who also express themselves on walls and facades and pasted their portraits in the streets, roofs and undergrounds of Paris. (from his website). I believe he did this because he found love for photography as soon as he picked up a camera and he wanted to show off his work in a different way compared to any other photographer and he basically became a sort of graffiti artist as well as a photographer because of how he produced his work.
When Banksy was eighteen he was attempting to paint on the side of a train the words ‘LATE AGAIN’ but before he was able to finish the British Transport Police came and he got ripped to shreds running away from them and as he was hidden underneath a dumper truck. He then realised he had to cut his painting time in half or give up and he then saw a stencilled plate on the bottom of a fuel tank and he thought he could copy it and make each letter three feet high. (From the book wall and piece again).
JR produced a piece of work in 2007 collaborating with an artist called Marco, which became the biggest illegal exhibition ever, as JR posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Israeli and Palestinian cities so this was very controversial. (from his website). Banksy has also made some very controversial pieces, such as, the two policemen kissing, the royal guards misbehaving in various places, and also his timeline of Che Guevara gradually disappearing as his face was everywhere.
Banksy has also sprayed a piece on a wall that looks like an authentic contract from the national highways agency, this could be quite a controversial piece of art as he probably hasn’t asked for permission he’s just done is and he’ll re-paint over it with something different. The thing is it wasn’t him who re-painted over the top of it, it was a bunch of different graffiti artists as they thought it was genuine and the wall was covered and the thing is the first attempt he spelt graffiti wrong and the crest was taken off of a fag packet.
He then proceeded to do the same thing in san Francisco dressed in overalls designating places as legal graffiti areas, to then be stopped by local workers who just painted over them. (Also from his book).
Whilst Banksy is working to help other artists express their work in their own way all over doing graffiti, JR, embarked on a long trip in 2008, for his piece called ‘Women are heroes’ in which he underlines women’s dignity as they are normally the target of conflict. In 2010 this film was shown in Cannes, the same year he created a piece called unframed, which was a project in which he uses images that were not his, by famous or unknown photographers, and reframes them in a different context on a larger scale giving them a new meaning. He also received the TED prize in 2011.
JR has also made various films on his work about where he has displayed his pieces as he believes this broadens out his fan base, even though his videos are only simple shots, they make it very interesting to watch and enjoyable to watch and it also shows how his work is produced and with all different close up shots for the film and for the shots it makes for a very easy to watch film.
Banksy definitely takes more risk in his work compared to JR as Banksy likes to go into places he shouldn’t be in such as the zoo as he has been to various zoos and has displayed his work in all different animal enclosures and he also works inside galleries where he changes the real work for his where it’s the same painting but with his take on it where he has normally changed a bit of it or added over the top of it. One of his most famous pieces doing this type of work is where he changed Mona Lisa’s face for a smiley face and it was hanging up in the Louvre for an unknown amount of time.
Banksy has a quote where he says, ‘become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else’. Banksy has realised people enjoy looking at his art. That’s why he is still producing the amount of work that he still does and some of his work is in galleries, but, the pieces are never there for long as he normally takes the original piece and replaces it with his work without anybody realising.
JR then created an installation with 4000 faces in and on the Pantheon in Paris. The concept of crowd will be used for a video installation at the CAC Malaga, and on the façade of Assemblée Nationale and other monuments in Paris during the COP 21 summit at the end of 2015. He worked in the abandoned hospital of Ellis Island, an important chapter in the history of immigration – and directed the short movie ELLIS, starring Robert De Niro.
JR creates ‘Pervasive Art’ that spreads uninvited on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle-East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil. People who often live with the bare minimum discover something absolutely unnecessary. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Some elderly women become models for a day; some kids turn artists for a week. In that Art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators. (From JR’s website).
Banksy has written about a theory, called the broken window theory, that criminologists James Q Wilson and George Kelling developed a theory of criminal behaviour in the 1980’s that became known as the ‘broken window theory’. They argued crime was the inevitable result of disorder and that if a window in a building is smashed but not repaired people walking by will think no one cares. Then more windows will be broken, graffiti will appear and rubbish get dumped.
The likelihood of serious crime being committed then increases dramatically as neglect becomes visible. The researchers believed there was a direct link between vandalism, street violence and the general decline of society. This theory was the basis of the infamous New York City crime purge of the early nineties and the zero-tolerance attitude to graffiti. (Found in Banksy’s book wall and piece).
Comparing the two artists, it seems that JR has become less risky in his recent work as he is doing a lot more shows for audiences in galleries and other various places, whilst Banksy still works on the street at night wherever he can find a good enough place to produce his work on and he always takes a photo of his work either the day after or straight after he does it compared to what JR does as he is producing his work compared to Banksy who just does it, but sometimes his work will be painted over and got rid of even though he will always find a way to replace it.
Banksy has received letter’s sometimes about his work in certain places, such as a letter from someone in Hackney, that he was sent this because these two brothers couldn’t live in the place they grew up, as Banksy’s work has pushed up the house prices in that area, but Banksy really doesn’t care where he works and how he affects people’s lives when he works and he just wants to display his work and that’s all he believes in.
It was in 2013 that JR got his first museum retrospectives in Tokyo and CAC in Cincinnati, followed by Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden in 2014 and HOCA Foundation in Hong-Kong in 2015. Whilst JR gets paid and is told to put his work in certain places compared to Banksy who just puts his work where he wants, when he wants and that’s how Banksy likes to work whilst it looks like JR likes to have a sort of schedule or something like that, whilst Banksy just works in the night taking risks in his work whilst I think JR has taken the risk out of his work and is working a lot safer now.
But like each other they both like to be anonymous and they rarely explain the work they do they just do it, as JR doesn’t explain his full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/ protagonist and the passer-by/ interpreter. That is what JR’s work is about raising questions…, whilst Banksy has kept his identity a secret as well but everyone knows who he is or has a least heard of him but no-one knows his real identity.
Banksy has also worked with people on the segregation wall in Palestine to create some really interesting pieces of work and he did this to show that it is a wall but that means to Banksy that there is endless possibilities to create art in any way, shape and form that you want and you can use the wall to your advantage if you are a graffiti artist, you see it as a blank canvas, and as a massive opportunity for them to express themselves even though it is quite risky to do it and he has created a few large pieces across different parts of the wall.
Also, a thing that is similar about them both is that they both like to work on a larger scale which makes their work more interesting and a lot easier to see even though both of their work is very interesting I think I still prefer Banksy’s over JR’s just because of the way Banksy does it and the amount of risk he takes to do them.
References: Banksy: was all from his book Wall and Piece and JR: http://www.jr-art.net/projects
For my essay I looked at two artists, Banksy and JR, Banksy was pretty easy to do as I had heard of him before and already had his book ‘wall and piece’ for a reference point, whilst I knew nothing about JR so it was really interesting to find out about him and look at all his different pieces of work and compare them to them of Banksy’s and compare the two styles.
Film and Photography 