Banksy Dismaland Show Revealed at Weston's Tropicana

But the truth is actually worse. He didn't profit off of their art, didn't make money because of the quality of their photos. It could have been any photo. It could have been a frame from one of those rotating E-Mail .gifs from the '90s. It doesn't matter, because the only thing Richard Price was ever selling was his own celebrity. The image is merely the frame in which it was hung.

I believe that if one thinks about art in a deeply personal way, everyone has the spark of an artist and everything they do can be artful. With art everywhere, art feels far more alive. I believe that art is the humanness left behind in an artifact by its creator that has no significance except that a human being put it there. Objects that have no meaning except that a human being made them feel powerful. They are human subjectivity rendered tangible. To bear one is to bear something deeply strange and wholly familiar.

I think I prefer Drew Struzan's definition though. It's something that asks a question, which ultimately only you can answer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

    > The definition of "art" becomes "anything produced
    > by an Approved Artist," nothing less or more.

It's great that the most common question asked of big time artists is "WTF is art anyway?" and they all try to answer it. It's super cool. Anyway Grayson said that all the proper art like portraits and landscapes have been done a million times and are still being made today. It's only the weird shit that gets in the newspapers, and that's because it's weird, or someone paid a gazillion pounds for something bonkers.

Grayson ended up saying that it's an interesting question. There is no answer. He doesn't think about it much.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c37b1b6a-3017-11e3-9eec-00144feab7...

I believe the intrinsic value of art (ie. how "art-y" something is) can be evaluated in a couple ways. First is technical. Does the execution of the art require some kind of technical excellence. If you take a look at some paintings and sculptures, you cannot but be struck by the incredible attention to detail and precise work done by the creator. Even features that the audience would probably never notice (eg. reflections in the pupil of the subject in a painting) are carefully rendered.

The second criteria is how much the piece changes the art form itself. Think about how renaissance paintings introduced perspective in painting to make more realistic images whereas earlier paintings were flat and lifeless. More recently, consider how Elvis created rock and roll or how Michael Jackson changed the definition of a singer from someone with a good voice and catchy tune to being an all round entertainer with skills in dancing, video and special effects.

The third criteria is something I call transference. It is when an artist can transfer an emotion from inside their mind to that of the audience using only the medium of their art. Listen to Chopin's Funeral March to see what I mean or rewatch the early scenes in Jaws (before the shark shows up) to get a more contemporary example.

Lastly, some art has a point of view and says something that asks us to look at the world in a different way. Most standup comedy is like this. Banksy's art is like this. Warhol's paintings were like this. Shit on a plate could be like this if executed well. This is the area where I feel a lot of modern art has lost its way. They mistake different for meaning. I once was at the Tate Modern in London and noticed that most people were not really looking at the works of art but fixated on the little white cards next to each piece explaining what the work was about. If the art work cannot tell its own story then perhaps it has not much to say or is not well done.

Art, like love, can only be truly measured in the heart of the subject. Your feelings for your mum would not be swayed if some celebrity stated that their mother was the best in the world so, unless you are an art investor, do not be carried away by the whims of the so-called connoisseurs of the art establishment.

   I MET a Traveler from an antique land, 
   Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
   Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, 
   Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 
   And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
   Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, 
   Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
   The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: 
   And on the pedestal these words appear: 
   "My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings." 
   Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair! 
   No thing beside remains. Round the decay 
   Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, 
   The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Everything we make is ephemeral, nothing will last. It will be transformed by man or by nature. Either in its meaning or its form. And, ultimately, it will fall to the elements.

EDIT: I recently learned that there's a second poem, this one by Horace Smith. The two wrote their poems as a competition.

  IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone, 
    Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws 
    The only shadow that the Desart knows:— 
  "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone, 
    "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows 
  "The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,— 
    Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose 
  The site of this forgotten Babylon. 

  We wonder,—and some Hunter may express 
  Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness 
    Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace, 
  He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess 
    What powerful but unrecorded race 
    Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Banksy is a polarising person within the Graffiti community. Most notably because he defaced a piece by Robbo.

So yes, it was 'supposed to happen' and depending upon your stance it could either be seen as justified or something to 'feel sad about'.

If Banksy's work is meant to raise the question of who in our society gets to determine what images invade everybody's retinas in public spaces [2], those bystanders provided an answer: whoever is hip enough to get people to defend their images. At that point the artwork was complete.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2465617/Banksy-fans-...

[2] http://www.davidairey.com/banksy-on-advertising/