Recently a new art space in the Callao district of Lima, Peru—Monumental Callao/Casa Fugaz— asked my husband and me for loan of a piece of artwork we own for inclusion in their new international contemporary art festival ART.MO. A few minutes before curtains up on opening day, my husband texted me this picture of it hanging in the exhibit hall. It’s the green one hanging at the back of the room opposite the front door. It’s a Banksy print titled No Ball Games.
Seeing it there in this new setting, after years of it hanging in our home and we having grown blindly accustomed to its presence, gave me a wonderful feeling. Trying to figure out what it was that struck me about it so much, I came to the conclusion that, more than just seeing it anew, I felt proud of it.
Not proud of owning it, I should clarify. The fact that this print is ours is actually just dumb luck. Ten years ago, we got an email asking if we wanted to enter a lottery to win the chance to purchase at a mind-boggling discount a mystery Banksy piece, sight unseen. We entered, and amazingly, we won. We debated whether or not to exercise our right to purchase. It was an amazing price, but still a lot for us at the time. And what if we ended up not liking it? Eventually we decided that if we hated it, we could always just sell it, so we pulled the trigger. It arrived in the mail, and lucky for us, it turned out we love it!
No Ball Games was released in a signed limited edition print run of 250 in the year 2009. This was before Banksy directed the much-discussed Academy Award-nominated Exit Through The Gift Shop, a dock- or possibly mockumentary that claims to be “the world’s first street art disaster movie.” Before the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art hosted the historic and wildly successful Art In The Streets show with Banksy as one of several high-profile and talented contributors spanning decades of creative activity. Before his bemusement park pop-up Dismaland, “a family theme-park unsuitable for children” that existed for just five weeks before its building materials were dismantled and shipped off to Calais, to be repurposed as shelters for some of the many thousands of migrants who have been moving through and camping in that city since the turn of the millennium. Before the opening of his Walled Off Hotel in the city of Bethlehem, situated directly across a narrow street from the West Bank barrier wall, giving it the distinction, in the artist’s words, of having the “worst view of any hotel in the world.” And before the now infamous shredding at Sotheby’s auction house last year of a framed version of his iconic Girl With Balloon that set the art world reeling and the piece’s value soaring.
There are a lot of mixed feelings out there about Banksy as an artist. I myself share a lot of them. But regardless of how you feel about him or individual works of his, what is undeniable is that his work gets people talking.
Many of his latest exploits, at least those that make their way into the media, have moved beyond the visual arts and into the realm of the performative. Which is fine by me. Even the shredding is fine by me (although I admit to being curious as to the legal ramifications of destroying something after it’s become the property of another and without their knowledge or consent).
But especially in the case of Girl With Ballon (shredded)—as I fancy this particular piece might end up being called—it feels a bit like some of his work is becoming more of an in-joke for the art world. Which, again, is fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dialogue between artists playing out through their publicly available work. It’s happened for ages and I enjoy that it does.
However, it is a fact that nuanced nods for those in the know can never be as meaningful to the uninitiated masses. Of which, in this case, I am one. And what I love about the print that happily found its way into our home is that its message is both righteous and highly accessible.
Girl With Balloon (shredded) may provide some interesting high-impact provocation and commentary on art markets, collectionism vs. impermanence, etc., but No Ball Games speaks to something much more fundamental. A rebellion not against the mostly unrelatable realities of the sparsely populated high-art world, but against the low-grade oppression that permeates zillions of everyday people’s everyday lives. For me, No Ball Games represents a more straightforward and universal sort of fight-the-man innocence, or simplicity, or dare I say purity. One that can be immediately understood and can resonate with anyone and everyone.
Thumbing one’s nose at rich art collectors is funny. But yanking down a sign that decrees “no ball games” and playing catch with it instead? Refusing to allow our spirits to be numbed, controlled, or broken by a myriad of modern forces? That’s necessary. That’s something to be proud of.