Being exhibited for the first time in Budapest, works by legendary UK street artist Banksy currently fill a large upstairs space at the back of a courtyard deep in the Jewish Quarter. Collated by former cohort Steve Lazarides, some 70 canvases and screen prints mainly date to the early 2000s, before Banksy achieved global fame. This unauthorised exhibition, The Art of Banksy, adds its own layers of irony – admission prices are steep and here you enter through the gift shop.
Banksy, the anonymous street artist and political agitator who emerged from the Bristol underground music scene, isn’t really an exhibition kinda guy. In the early days, when then manager Steve Lazarides sold canvases from the back of his car, Banksy had shows in London and Los Angeles. Since then, unless you happened to be passing a wall in Bethlehem or Dover, you could only follow the extraordinary rise of this artist provocateur through the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (on view here), a pop-up boutique near Central Park, the faux theme park Dismaland in Somerset, and sundry random short-lived projects across the globe.
Prices paid for his works, sometimes wall and all, have spiralled. In October 2019, his pertinent Devolved Parliament sold for nearly £10 million (400 million HUF).
Meanwhile, his old mate Lazarides recently published a book of little-known early works, Banksy Captured, that sold out within days. He is also touring a show of old canvases and screen prints, The Art of Banksy – Without Limits, around the world, recently calling at Bucharest, Paris and Istanbul.
Last Saturday, 1 February, it reached Budapest. Specifically, the Tesla Loft, a space above the Story nightclub, tucked away at the back of the courtyard lined with classic neon from yesteryear. This, as the grand entranceway indicates, belongs to the Electrotechnical Museum, located in the same stately complex.
The first thing you need to know about The Art of Banksy is that his art, even in this hand-me-down form, doesn’t come cheap – 4,300 forints (€13) on weekdays, 4,800 (€14.50) at weekends when the place is, apparently, packed. (Each ticket displays your half-hour time slot from when you arrive.)
The second thing, along with it being unauthorised, is its huge sense of incongruity (Banksy? Exhibition?!? Oxymoron or what!?). This is augmented by the Hunglish phrases that cover the walls around the ticket office. Hunglish, a kind of English Hungarians think is English, continues throughout the documentation, as if Banksy himself has spent time in Budapest and decided to subvert the whole event.
Plus, of course, there’s that gift shop, plain as day when you walk in, proffering books, postcards and T-shirts (‘i’m banksy!’). Alongside, beneath a doorway bizarrely named ‘where’s Hollywood?’, the Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, with the artist’s voice fuzzed out, plays on a loop. Across the room is a rather tacky display of Banksy’s tools of the trade, spray paint, stencils and so on. So far, so meh.
Then comes the raison d’être for you parting with nearly 5,000 forints. Dating mainly to the period 2000-2004, the hall displaying the best of Banksy immerses the visitor into a world of bitter parody, vicious yet so vital. This is what has lifted an unknown street artist to a global, if still anonymous, phenomenon. These greatest hits, albeit copies, include Kissing Coppers (also shown in a classic red phone box), the Warhol-style Kate Moss, the rioter chucking a bouquet, and Samuel L and Travolta toting bananas in Pulp Fiction. And, however Hunglish, the documentation is enlightening. The story behind the aforementioned Tarantino parody – how fellow street artist Ozone created his own version before being killed by a Tube train, giving rise to Banksy’s own tribute – may be familiar to Banksy’s many followers in the UK but a revelation to Hungarians.
And Hungarians would probably get the most out of this exhibition. The street murals that colour the streets elsewhere in District VII depict gentle themes such as Rubik’s Cube and Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Here, you feel the artist’s red-hot anger at the world around him, the hypocrisy, the poverty, the prejudice. He’s doing something about it. Why can’t you? It’s a message that should spark some kind of reaction even in the most conservative of Magyar viewer.
While jaded UK visitors may feel a sense of Banksy overkill, even cash-in, other non-Hungarians, plunged into a subversive universe that has changed people’s perceptions across the world, should come away with the satisfaction of 5,000 forints well spent.
The Art of Banksy
Tesla Loft
District VII. Kazinczy utca 21
Until 30 April
