Bros

Graffiti artists need to remain anonymous. It is not a successful artistic strategy but a necessity that arises in relation to prohibitionist laws regarding an expression, generally pictorial, that sees the occupation of public and private spaces without the authorization of the owners. It is for this reason that the pseudonym was born: the tag. After so many years since the birth of metropolitan graffiti we have reached the awareness that this kind of need is also linked to social redemption: these New York boys, children of emigrants, who probably had difficulty in realizing themselves during the day, at night (wearing a different costume, as in a "second life") became superheroes with the gift of ubiquity.

The "Banksy case", however, is different. The choice to remain anonymous is not simply dictated by the risk of being arrested because of illegal actions, but a conceptual operation that constantly accompanies his artistic activity, an altruistic gesture that in this case the author makes towards the community to which he gives a pure aesthetic experience, free from documentary or curricular information. A small revolution in the field of cultural expression made in an underground context.
I would dare to hypothesize a sort of distinction: graffiti is nothing but the name of the author repeated to the point of nausea as in an advertisement of a "phantom vandal", who invades people's lives without caring to create a relationship with them; while in street art the author "disappears" to make room for the work and the potential ties he can create with those who come into contact with it.

In this way an exhibition short circuit is created, in a random place, where only a relationship between the work and the public remains. A new visual experience that opens new values of acquisition. The public is aware that they are not inside a place dedicated to art and they find themselves in front of an image that may have been painted or stuck by anyone (who knows maybe it's my neighbor's son!). This approach leads to perceive Banksy's action and all street art as a popular expression, a voice of the people; as if those thousands of phrases carried by little mice, which invaded London between the late 1990s and early 2000s, are nothing more than the thoughts of the people who materialize.

Banksy's work is studded with images that we could all do, only he made them concrete: his success lies in the fact that these images are closely linked and contextualized to the times in which they were made; they are not self-referential images (of classic graffiti), but a great visual chronicle that comes out of newspapers or the news and invades the cities.
The streets all over the world have been filled with an awareness of facts of public interest, in step with the demonstrations for the G8 in Seattle or Genoa. The desire to challenge what does not fit us takes shape through the action of a small number of anonymous authors who sometimes march in the square singing slogans (against the capital) and sometimes fill the walls of the city. I am thinking of the demonstrator who launches a bouquet of flowers instead of a petrol bomb. Finally the success of Banksy (and street art) has also been amplified by the internet and the possibility of sharing images that the network has provided us.
The square also becomes virtual and the user becomes an author who through his own channels can make his own the images he has seen and photographed, reworking them and using them at will. Even more the author disappears and street art becomes a repertoire of images, placing on the same level author, work and user: an authentic public cultural operation.

In this case Banksy may not even exist.