Banksy Balls: it's a new one!

Photo from Jam Factory

Prepare yourselves for some skin-crawlingly embarrassing outbursts of chattering class pant-wetting over the next few days because a new Banksy has been ‘discovered’ on Park Row.

Within hours the young ‘n’ edgy end of the local media – unable to discover anything genuinely new or original for themselves – were all over this new, although not signed, work. So you’ll be struggling to avoid overkill levels of Banksy balls in the local media over the next few days.

Already Lib Dem rubbish czar turned art critic Gary Hopkins has been wheeled out to explain to us ignoramuses what constitutes ‘art’ these days: “My own view is that it would depend on how funny they are,” he says.

So sorry there Leonardo, Turner, Cezanne and especially you Goya, I’m afraid you lot don’t make the grade any more using Gary’s new humour test for real art.

This latest Banksy discovery comes hard on the heels of Evening Cancer columnist and self-styled street art expertSuzanne “I don’t know how she does it” Saville condemning local “graffiti vandal Daniel Tyndale” who’s been recently convicted for a load of tagging offences.

Saville rages in her column in The Cancer’s Seven supplement: “His artistic abilities – and those of his fellow taggers – are at about the same level as schoolchildren’s doodlings on exercise books or pencil cases.”

Ooh, er, missus!

Hip hop expert Saville also assures us that Tyndale is one of “Bristol’s wannabe Banksys” but isn’t as good as Banksy because “[Banksy’s] work Space Girl and Bird sold for £288,000 at Bonhams a few months ago.”

Although strangely it’s Saville and her middle class dinner party set, not Bristol’s taggers, that seem obssessed with Banksy. Indeed it’s this dinner party set that seems to have decided that all graffiti must use Banksy as the benchmark and must henceforth meet standards set by middle-of-the-road know-nothing commentators like Suzannne.

Meanwhile Tyndale, the comic book villain of the piece, appears to have never mentioned Banksy and, in commom with most graf artists, probably couldn’t give two tosses about some cunt from Hoxton who sells overpriced canvasses to the gullible.

It all really looks like Saville has no idea that graffiti existed long before the Banksy bubble she’s helped create and will continue long after she’s shut up about it and moved on to the next thing to waffle about.

As for her views on art. Who gives a toss about her 19th century values where art must combine moral instruction with being an amusing trifle to entertain the ladies? What about the 20th century dadaists and surrealists who thought the main function of art was to outrage the bougeoise?

By their reckoning – and judging by Saville’s response – it’s Daniel Tyndale who’s the artist and it’s Banksy that’s just a well-paid entertainer for the benefit of the conventional middle classes.