Googly-eyed Rembrandt by Banksy

You know that feeling – you go on a first date with someone and they keep making jokes, the jokes are funny, and the person is kinda cute, and generally you have a blast… but then you get home and think to yourself: I am not so sure… not sure I want to see that person again. Perhaps you just don’t have that much in common? Perhaps you feel that there’s just no real substance behind the jokes? It’s a strange sort of ambivalence but the bottom line is – the person just didn’t rock your world.

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It’s like that for me with Banksy – the trickster, the jokester, the jester – funny, cute, amusing but just not my cup of tea, thank you very much.

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Like this work – a riff off Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q (his famous Mona Lisa with a moustache and a beard). Only Duchamp’s work was pretty revolutionary for 1919. I am not so sure about Banksy’s Rembrandt. It’s a pretty poorly executed copy of the Self Portrait at the Age of 63 with some googly eyes attached. Subversive? I guess… if you interpret it as a commentary on “high art” and “low art”. Only this particular piece of “low art” sold for £398,500 (insert a pair of googly eyes here for a massive eye roll).

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If you read what the famous art critic Jerry Saltz often writes about Banksy, you’d probably get the impression that the artist really got under the critic’s skin – the terms like facile, trite and unoriginal are thrown into almost every sentence. Though, Saltz does give credit to Banksy’s absolute genius of self-promotion. So do I. I think he is a very modern genius. He is a genius in the art of something… not just self-promotion, not quite visual arts. The art of harnessing public adoration? He answers that question himself in his clever film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”. I think in this film Banksy answers all of the questions about Banksy. Highly recommend.

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Images:

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Banksy, Rembrandt, 2009, googly eyes, acrylic on canvas, private collection

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait at the Age of 63, 1669, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London