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| Banksy murales at Barbican Centre in London |
Banksy homage Basquiat with two new walls outside the Barbican in London
An ironic and bitter comment on the different treatment that street art gets out of the museums and inside.
Banksy signs two new works near the Barbican Center in London, where he is about to inaugurate a large exhibition dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat.
While a thousand hypotheses on his supposed identity still proliferate (the latter identifies him with Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja), the world's most famous street artist returns to action in the motherland.
Banksy has chosen to comment in his own way on the imminent opening of the great exhibition dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat in the Salon of the Barbican Center with two new murals, both inspired by the works of the great American artist who disappeared in 1988 at just 27 years.
On Instagram account, which together with the official website can be considered the only reliable source when it comes to Banksy's works, the English artist has posted three images accompanied by brief but incisive comments.
In the first, the Barbican is described as "a place that usually scraps graffiti from its own area", alluding to the lines of different treatment that graffiti inside the museum and out.
In the second comment, Banksy "signs" his work by defining "an unofficial collaboration with the Basquiat exhibition".
The murals recall both the style and poetics of the American artist in a very clear way.
In the first, the largest, we see the protagonist of the famous Boy and Dog painting at Johnnypump (1982) while being searched by two London police officers.
The figure, which can be interpreted as a self-portrait of Basquiat, is then resumed to allude to the treatment that the artist would now have had if he was just a black boy trying to draw graffiti on the wall and not the international superstar contending by museums and collectors.
In the second design, however, a recurring symbol in the works of Basquiat, the crown, is used as a modular element replacing seats in the image of a panoramic wheel: a clear reference to the theme of transforming street art into a mere commercial attraction.
Banksy last week donated £205,000 (~$277,000) from the sale of his latest indoor piece at an anti-arms fair exhibition to charities.
Banksy also recently revealed plans to open a gift shop selling original works alongside his Walled Off Hotel in the occupied Palestinian territories sometime this fall.
