Banksy's 'real name revealed in 26-year-old police report'
An investigation has linked the elusive graffiti artist to a misdemeanour committed by Robin Gunningham in New York in 2000
https://www.thetimes.com/culture/art/article/banksys-real-name-revealed-in-26-year-old-police-report-2lxssfgml
https://archive.li/BzL5T
A news agency says it has uncovered the identity of Banksy, the world’s most famous graffiti artist, after an investigation led to a 26-year-old police report. The artist, who has left his mark on the world’s streets for three decades, has been named by Reuters as Robin Gunningham, after it discovered records of a misdemeanour committed in New York in 2000.
It has long been speculated that this is the real name of Banksy, who emerged from the Bristol art scene to become one of the world’s most famous artists. The investigation by Reuters also states that Gunningham then changed his legal name to David Jones, one of the most common names in Britain.
Under this name, it was reported that the artist had travelled to Ukraine, where he painted murals. Immigration records cited by Reuters said that this David Jones had left Ukraine in October 2022 on the same day as Robert del Naja, a founding member of Massive Attack, who is known to have moved in similar circles to Banksy.
It said that the date on Jones’s passport matched that on the documents of Gunningham. Banksy’s real identity has been a conundrum ever since he appeared on the British art scene. Those who know his real identity, such as his former manager, Steve Lazarides, who subsequently fell out with the artist, have repeatedly preserved his anonymity.
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related:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-art-banksy/
This Banksy mural of a man scrubbing his back in a bathtub appeared in 2022 on a wall of a destroyed building in the Ukrainian village of Horenka. The mural piqued the interest of a Reuters journalist, setting off an effort to identify and understand the elusive artist. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
= new reply since forum marked as read
because "William Shakespeare" is a pseudonym. People ask why the writer(s) behind some of the greatest works in the English language would hide behind a pseudonym (technically an allonym since the pseudonym got tied to a real person with a similar name, eg William Shakspere (pronounced "shack spur"
?
Why? Because people were arrested and tortured for writing. Plus a variety of other dynamics and nationalism and myth making. And as noted by others here -- anonymity enhances the mystique and the appeal.
For "Banksy" the pseudonym is both a shield and a sword. It shields him from the legal ramifications of graffiti and subversive politics while it also creates mystique and interest. His work achieved a larger than life status perhaps because it was not grounded or limited by being tied to one very human, very knowable person. I see that as overlapping with 'Shakespeare' s motivations and the way his 'Shakespeare' persona played out. Many people love the country boy with no college education myth of Shakespeare much more than they like any of the the most likely candidates.
There is a ton of documentation about William Shakspere of Stratford on Avon but what it shows is a person who could barely write their own name and left no letters, book, marginalia, etc. A semi-literate person whose neighbors and family never said they were the writer and whose alleged grave does not say "Shakespeare" and does not have a Shakespeare quote on it but rather has a crudely composed curse, eg "Cursed be he that moves my bones". "Experts" (Older Lit professors and tourism promoters) mostly ignore or spin the documentation and refer to "missing years" in the life of Shakspere. Oddly they use the lack of any documentation that links him to writing as a blank slate onto which they have built the myth.
