Banksy’s Voice Could Potentially Have Been Caught In This Podcast

Graffiti art extraordinaire Banksy has lurked in the shadows of the art world for nearly three decades now, surreptitiously delivering moving anti-establishment pieces that reflect our society under a cover of darkness. His anonymity has lent itself to propelling his fame and allowed him to slip out of issues surrounding how legal his artwork is.

With little known about him, not even a name, one podcast taken back in 2005 claims that it might have him on recording during an interview.

The podcast believed to hold the elusive artist’s voice is from the series All Things Considered, which aired on NPR. The clip from one of the episodes has now resurfaced in an all-new BBC Sounds and Radio 4 series called The Banksy Story, which dives into the prolific and enigmatic career of the graffiti artist.

In the snippet, then-host Michael Norris is interviewing who is thought to be Banksy about his recent stint hanging his work in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Met. It opens with Norris asking, “We assume that you are who you say you are, but how can we be sure?” In response, the other person states, “Oh, you have no guarantee of that at all.”

As the conversation continues, the elusive voice explains why he decided to take it upon himself to hang his paintings up in different galleries, including the Louvre. “You don’t want to get stuck in the same line of work your whole life long, do you?” What pushed him to do so was that the Met once hung a piece by Henri Matisse upside-down and didn’t realize it had done so for 42 days.

He also said that he thought his paintings were “quite good” and that if he didn’t put them up in a museum, they’d stay home where no one could see them. “If you wait for other people to latch on to what you’re doing, you’d be waiting forever. You might as well cut out the middle man and just go stick it in yourself.”

 
It’s odd hearing this after decades of his graffiti appearing alongside buildings, homes, war-torn cities, and even museums, including his first show in over a decade at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. Where he places his work is almost as important as the art itself, even if city councils and even citizens find ways to get them removed.
 

“But what you’re doing is not legal!” the host claimed back in 2005. “That’s what makes it good fun,” he said in return.

Whether or not this is Banksy’s actual voice is still up in the air, but what makes the artist so revered are the smoke and mirrors he hides behind.

 
 
[via The Guardian and Dazed, Photo 160359411© Schlenger86 | Dreamstime.com ]