Five works that reveal the philosophy of Banksy

Banksy’s new mural in Marseille is not the first image he connected to the history of ideas. From Plato to Foucault, Banksy experts reveal the philosophy behind these popular artworks.

Which of you, who you are, or who can you be? Certainly, it is a clumsy question and not what you expect to face while walking along the streets of Marseille on a decline in May. But it is truly an existential dilemma that Banksy, once claiming to be “overestablished as himself,” was secretly installed in a stretch of the quiet ruefélix Fregier corridor. New work site – The latest in the decades-long career of an elusive artist as a provocative philosophical mischief.

For over 30 years, Banksy has spiked many of his most iconic pieces – from his girl to a masked riot where he reaches for a heart-shaped balloon and throws a bouquet of flowers – from Michelangelo to Monet to Vango, the Old Masters, Vango, with Araudion with the Old Masters. But there’s more. Beneath his stealth stencils is the history of ideas and deep and deliberate involvement, ranging from classic stoicism to postmodern deconstruction.

On May 29, Banksy piqued the internet’s interest by posting a photo of his first new work on Instagram in over five months and withholding the exact location. Later, discovered in Marseille, a major port city in southern France, the mural is at first glance simple. Rusty street bollards placed nearby. Then, painted shadows extending across the pavement combine objects from the real world, in two dimensions, into their enhanced echoes. The stencil on the black lighthouse is the words, “I want to be what you saw in me.”

Those who want to find a source of ideas to inform Banksy’s new works simply reflect the history of philosophy in the original all-tales of Plato’s Cave (from a republic paper from the 4th century BC), turning the ancient epithets on its head. In Plato’s parable, prisoners are chained together in the shadows of the walls for reality, and do not know the true form that casts them outside. But here, Banksy, the Banksy, feeds us by switching setups and reverse the relationship between essence and shadow. In Banksy’s murals, the monotonous bollards do not reduce their own imitation, but are a symbol of something much grander, lighthouses, lighting and guidance. Here it is a silhouette, not reality, it is true.

Banksy’s inversion encourages you to ask where reality actually lies. His heartbreaking phrase – “I want to be what you saw in me” – is charmingly resilient. Does this dream of more than a bollard appear? Or do you want light to become light? Or are we all — Banksy included — struggling to meet a better version of what people who believe in us imagine? The answer is certainly yes to all of the above. And that is yes “Is this new work a lamp that can shed light on Banksy’s even more level of meaning?” The next thing to say is to briefly reflect on some of the artist’s most famous works, and how they are also cheerful and often tense. This is many of the most important philosophical doctrines that take on who we are and who we are.

Banksy’s new mural in Marseille is not the first with influential captions that link the work to the history of ideas. Among his most famous murals, the balloon girl depicts a child reaching towards a heart-shaped balloon floating away from her, appearing in 2002 in various parts of London, alongside “There is Always Hope” in various parts of London, including the South Bank. That belief encourages constant effort in search of ideals that are not seen in murals (there is no way for balloons to return). A few years later, Banksy mischievously hides a remote-controlled shredder in a frame of a girl with a balloon that appeared at auction in 2018. I destroyed the work intuitively In front of the incredible auctioneer, he succeeds in raising an anthem for Schopenhauer’s belief in the futileness of desire by boldly manifesting it himself. Where there is will, there is conflict.

The famous mural of Banksy’s masked man freezes forever before unleashing a bouquet of flowers, not bricks or bombs, but at first it may seem to blush and illustrate the pacifist’s commitment to peaceful disobedience. This work appears to reflect the lessons of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha, a non-violent philosophy created by Indian ethicists in 1919. is not it? Or did Banksy violently destroy the philosophical claims of peaceful forces by portraying his hero as an infuriating mob? The anger of a person is not mitigated by his appeal to a higher ideal of beauty and truth. Instead, these ideals are weaponized by Banksy. Here, beauty and truth are not disarming, but devastatingly explosive.

Banksy murals in Marseille employ proven techniques to ensure that work protrudes into the urban spaces we encounter. It is the tactic he used in his 2007 work, appearing near Oxford Street in London, where he portrays a boy on an unsteady high ladder, inspiring the pervasive observation that we are “one country of CCTV” with quirky, distinctive letters. Also depicted in the mural is a unified officer and his obedient police dog, who watches the young Vandal. The director’s infinite layer of surveillance captures the eerie layer of surveillance that proves that the film is watching the boy – capturing the philosophical outline of the vast and inclusive prison machinery that French philosophical philosopher Michel Foucault believes is now enveloping praise. Foucault’s Research Discipline and Punishment: In the birth of a prison, he revives the prison blueprint proposed by British utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham at the end of the 18th century, reviving the “panopticon (“meaning everything””), which cannot be escaped as a memo of maneching martfating.

Banksy’s witty 2014 job mobile enthusiasts glow a cold light into the state of modern relationships. The mural depicts a couple whose almost loving embrace is interrupted by a deeper love for the warm glow of their smartphones. French existentialist philosopher Simone des Beauvoir, who died in 1986, may not have been long enough to witness the emergence of mobile phones. However, her highly influential 1947 book The Ethics of Ambiguity was released just 60 years before the iPhone was released in 2007. This is a very reporting investigation of devastation that peeling and cutting can lead to the realization of our true self, and is highly reporting of our modern plight. To be free, Beauvoir has to insist on and pay deep attention to each other. She believed in the credibility of human encounters, but without it life was a wasted performance, not profound and meaningful, dimly lit by disposable devices.

How Banksy preserved art history by Kelly Grovier, published by Thames & Hudson, is now available.