The Netherlands: Tour Journal
Amsterdam, 2019
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, was a quick stop, but I had just enough time to stop at two very influential art museums, The Van Gogh Museum, and MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art).
The Van Gogh Museum was incredible. It was really cool getting to see all of the artwork up close, and original letters written back and forth between Vincent and his brother, Theo.
The place that surprised me most, was the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) with Daniel Arshum and Banksy. The artwork is breathtaking. Arshum’s work looks like you stepped out of a futuristic archeologist’s worksite. I’d seen his work before, but never fully appreciated it until I saw it up close. I think a lot of things in life are like that. We pass them tens, or hundreds of times before we decide to stop and see the beauty of it. Sometimes we choose to stop ourselves and appreciate the beauty, and other times life forces us to stop.
Banksy’s work was also super impressive and provocative. If you don’t know Banksy, he’s the street artist, that has his work selling for literally millions at auctions, yet no one knows who he is.
When I first learned of him, I just thought of him as a rebel with no decency. Now, however, after seeing his artwork in person, and reading some of the things he’s written, I see him as something much more than that. I would even say I’m beginning to agree with a lot of the things he’s said. Take this quote for instance that he said in relation to graffiti and advertisements:
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
f**k that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.
Every new campaign, Nike emails me to ask me to do something about it. I haven’t done any of those jobs. The list of jobs I haven’t done now is so much bigger than the list of jobs I have done. It’s like a reverse CV.
I have been called a sellout, but I give away thousands of paintings for free, how many more do you want?
I think it was easier when I was the underdog, and I had a lot of practice at it. The money that my work fetches these days makes me a bit uncomfortable, but that's an easy problem to solve—you just stop whingeing and give it all away.
I don’t think it’s possible to make art about world poverty and then trouser all the cash, that’s an irony too far, even for me. I love the way capitalism finds a place—even for its enemies.
What I see in Banksy is a resistance, and a certain kind of almost integrity. It’s a rejection of everything that’s just glossed over as okay in the world, but is really not. It’s artwork that asks us to question what we’re okay with and why.