Graffiti Wars - Banksy vs. King Robbo

submitted by Zifnab
1 decade 3 years 2 months 2 weeks ago
In London over the past 18 months the tension between the camps has played out in a battle of spray cans between freehand graffiti writer King Robbo and his nemesis, the stencil-using street artist Banksy.

The graffiti war between the two men began in the early 90s but was re-ignited by what was widely seen as an unforgiveable transgression of strict graffiti rules by Banksy.

It was an act that pulled 80s legend King Robbo out of retirement to retaliate in the place where it all began, the streets.

The film goes behind enemy lines as the war escalates, until tragic and unforeseen circumstances bring about an unexpected ceasefire.

22 Comments

EMPIREsays...

the painting Banksy did on Robbo's grafitti under the bridge or whatever, was a major improvement. His art is so damn grafitti-generic. No wonder he slapped Banksy, he must feel jealous of his fame.
edit: that and robbo's grafitti was in a really bad state.

Zifnabsays...

It's working for me now, hopefully it'll be working for you as well...>> ^spoco2:

Wow... good work Vimeo:

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legacy0100says...

There are several tags made on top of the original Robbo's piece. That didn't cause such a fuss, so why would it be a problem when someone famous does it?

Anyways, I'm gonna go out on a limb and propose a theory. Perhaps maybe Robbo did meet some person who claimed themselves to be Banksy, and maybe he did slap that kid. And maybe just perhaps Robbo is a very naive person and believes anybody to be exactly what they claim to be.

And just maybe that banksy he has met, was not the real banksy, and maybe Robbo doesn't really want to fact check, maybe because he probably has been out of the street graffiti loop for so long that he doesn't know who to contact to find out for sure.

So maybe him and his friends, who are all out of the loop, is just sticking with robbo's side of the story without fact checking, and maybe is creating this whole hype over some sort of graffiti war.

Just to top it all off, maybe the issued painting under the bridge was painted over long before all this hype (as the photos suggest of its last condition of Robbo's work, which was graffitied over by many other random tags), and it's being made an issue only after the alleged claim from King Robbo.

It is just a maybe though, just maybe.

The problem is that both Banksy and King Robbo operate under anonymity, which leaves a lot of things unorganized and unruly. Anybody can start claiming to be them without any kind of proof as long as they can mimic the original artist's style well, and nobody could tell the difference or know who exactly did what. Even for 'Team Robbo', this is just a collective mass, and anybody can start claiming themselves to be Team Robbo, and start putting up work under its name. So why can't this be the scenario for Banksy's work as well? Seeing there are lot of imitators out there.

I mean this is England, lot of dumb wankers out there. These are the same young people who just recently trashed their own neighborhoods because they were bored and riots felt exciting. You can see the immaturity of these gang's minds by calling Banksy a 'la rat'. It's a negative connotation because it's French, and French is bad because French are pussies, etc etc, that sort of typical immature insult which all English hooligans and lower classmen love to use. And to think, Robbo must be in his 30s, and yet he's still caught in this mess. He allowed himself to be caught in this silly feud that's been created by young teenagers of London. Jeez.

Trancecoachsays...

sounds like sour grapes to me.. all this self-importance.

the problem with being an artist, is that you have to have an ego of an artist in order to be a good one.. which makes it next to impossible to be a real social person.

Sagemindsays...

OK, so I remember a discussion that was had in one of my art history courses on modern art (a few years back) while I was attending the Emily Carr University of Art & Design

The value of art. Years ago during the depression, rich people, like the Rothschilds and such had so much money, they didn't know what to do with it. They began to invest in art, buying up all the famous pieces they could. It became a famous pass-time of the rich to buy art and flaunt it around. But the investors didn't just flaunt it, they sold it.

Now, these guys were profiteers as we all know, and so were all the players that surrounded the art world. These guys looked at art as an investment, always trading up and selling for more than they paid. Art was (and still is) a commodity.

Of course with any gold-rush industry, an industry is born around that commodity and art galleries sprung up everywhere. Art was all the rage. Gallery owners and promoters, traveling shows, salesmen, pretentious buyers and all those people that wanted to be part of the In-crowd, the inner-court, as it was, were frantic to be the next best thing.

Flash forward into the eighties. Break Dancing, Rap music, Graffiti and Street gangsters and the sub-culture that goes along with it was on the rise. Gallery curators were looking for the next "big thing". Someone noticed Banksy and brought him into the gallery. (I used to have the article on how it happened, I no longer do). They put up the "great works of Banksy. They brought the street/graffiti artist off the street and billed him as the new Commodity. They invested in him and promoted him. Every one in the In-crowd bought into him and his works sold for copious amounts of money.

Then the problem arose that the "King wasn't wearing any cloths." That's right, everyone started to realize that the art was crap, simply tagging brought in off the street and hung on the gallery walls.

Only it was too late because the BIG investors who sink their cash into these commodity/investments never allow themselves to loose money. They were duped and no one wanted to admit it.

So what did they do? Well like any King Pin that controls the markets, They ignore the mistake, threw a spin on it and pretend it didn't happen, No one want's to admit they spent $200,000 on a piece of CRAP. (or more, I don't remember the dollar amounts - and I'm sure it was quite a bit more, into the millions - I just don't have those facts handy, so I'm going with six-figures.)

So to this day, Banksy is still creating art, his works are still worth money (only because they say it is), and next to impossible to sell. The fame remains because Banksy's biggest contribution to the art world was to buy with caution, it's not a good commodity just because the art world jumps on it as the flavour of the day. Many investors lost a lot of money on his works and the art buying world got a slap in the face.

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