Mick Hartley

A recent Banksy on Martineau Road, opposite the new Arsenal stadium.

To judge from this picture, someone had made their own addition to the work, but it’s now been painted over. It strikes me that that’s precisely what Banksy intended – that people should add their own graffiti in the space provided. I’m not sure that “ARSE” is quite what he had in mind though. A comment on the work itself? A passing Arsenal fan? Or a pithy critique of the current art scene? Maybe I’ll head over there this evening with my little spray can to make an artistic statement of my own – or I would do if I wasn’t worried about the Highbury locals, no doubt keen to preserve their work of art in a pristine state. Adds to the property values, I shouldn’t wonder.

There’s an article on the man in the New Yorker.

Last month, a painting titled “Space Girl and Bird” sold at Bonham’s for five hundred and seventy-five thousand, a Banksy record. Ralph Taylor, a specialist in the Sotheby’s contemporary-art department, said of Banksy, “He is the quickest-growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time.” Banksy responded to the Sotheby’s sale by posting a painting on his Web site. It featured an auctioneer presiding over a crowd of rapt bidders, with the caption “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.”

I don’t know – am I meant to think he’s some kind of hypocrite because Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for his stuff? Good luck to him. There are worse people around making claims on our attention.

“The art world is the biggest joke going,” he has said. “It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.”