See the playfulness of contemporary art from Banksy's self-destruct paintings
Wen, Cao Xi Frog
Banks is a world-renowned anonymous British graffiti artist who has so far not been able to determine his personal information, including his identity, and some speculate that he is a native of South Gloucester, near Bristol, born in 1974.
Banks is an artist from the bottom, he never demands that his works enter any gallery, and he does not pursue the commerciality of his works, because most of his works are graffiti and satire, and indeed in the eyes of ordinary people, these graffiti and satirical works really have no commercial value, and no gallery will invest a lot of money in these seemingly just to coax the art to take risks, neither solemn nor flattering, and specially provoke and satirize those high-class people who have a bulging wallet and can often shut your mouth with a word. These works have no practical pursuit, nor can they subvert this society, only for everyone to see, witty laughter, not even for the sake of fame, often dodge, haunted among ordinary people, in many cases you rub shoulders with the face of the public, just like an ordinary underground party member, scattering leaflets, shouting a slogan.
Of course, these are just the general public's view of Banks, he himself is probably not so, because his works are clearly intentional, the result of the accumulation of pursuit, his graffiti seems simple, rough but it is only limited to time, materials and other limited conditions, if the conditions allow the painting, he will also do meticulous, complex and exquisite, will be very beautiful, like a million pound bill, even if you knead them into a ball or like the work in front of you, you put it into the shredder.
The core of contemporary art is to pursue a kind of coaxing beauty, even if you can't figure out whether it is beautiful or not, it disappears in front of you, no matter how big its battle is, no matter how much money it has spent, how much manpower, it is for the short-lived, just like spending 106 million to wrap up the arc de Triomphe in Paris, that thing many people in Paris have seen, but just look at it, the time is gone and demolished. The Wrapped Arc de Triomphe is written by the land artist Cristo and his wife, Jeanne Claude.
Contemporary art in a certain situation, is an act, it does not pay attention to the result, does not pay attention to the get, is the visual flash of the moment, or even just an artist's consciousness, a sketch, is the creation of a dream, full of uncertainty, full of instability, lifelong pursuit is coaxing, the key is to pursue a continuous, instantaneous, short coaxing, no matter how complex it is, it does not care, because it is also a kind of beauty.
Just 3 years ago, Banks's "Girl and the Balloon" was at auction, and when the hammer dropped a few seconds later, his author pressed the shredder hidden in the frame in a corner to self-destruct, and this unexpected performance art shocked the world and became an indelible moment in art history. In reality, Banks's paintings do live in an era with the shredder, but Banks makes an effective link between his works and the shredder, and the theory is that Max's "Girl and the Balloon" does not have any amazing artistic skills and no epoch-making artistic contributions, but he makes an irretrievable link between him and the shredder, which is still a sublimation of complex concepts.
3 years later, he returned, the "Girl and the Balloon" was renamed and resurrected, praised by the media as "Banks's greatest work", "the most daring prank so far" was renamed "Love in the Trash" and now on the shooting field, this is the game of contemporary art, a kind of art, media, the upper class conspiratorial beauty, you want to play together, the threshold is still very high, has nothing to do with eternity, and has no half-cent relationship with the so-called old art history or old academia. The aforementioned work "The Triumphal Arch Wrapped" also cost a huge amount of money.
The artist Christo is dead, but there are still many artists who pursue the beauty of art alive, and that is also a kind of purity.
October 17, 2021 at the Moon Palace in Beijing
Note: The pictures in this article are from the Internet.