**The most wide-ranging and up-to-date volume available on the enigmatic
and controversial graffiti artist, this deeply researched and highly
personal tribute explores how Banksy continues to defy accepted wisdom
about artistic success, growing only more famous and powerful even as he
sticks to his anti-establishment platform and to his mission to give a
voice to the voiceless.
**
Accompanied by stunning full-page, full-color reproductions and
photographs of works in situ--including many that have been lost to
time-photographer and street art expert Alessandra Mattanza's
impassioned and informed text follows Banksy's career trajectory from
creator of message-laden stencils on London's city walls to a
sought-after champion of human and environmental rights. She
investigates many of the key images that populate Banksy's
work--animals, children, historic figures, balloons, cartoon characters,
police officers, and others. She shows how Banksy's oeuvre has expanded
beyond graffiti and stenciling and how his art has helped support his
activism in a variety of causes--from calls for peace in the Middle East
to the preservation of the natural environment. Best of all she helps
readers make sense of the rather unusual path Banksy has chosen--an
artist who uses his global platform to raise awareness about the
underserved, rather than to his own celebrity. Readers will come away
with a new understanding of how Banksy helped transform an illegal act
of criminal damage into a high art form, and how, by ridiculing
institutionalized art, he has achieved enormous fame within those very
institutions.
