In his third to last day of residency in New York Banksy did, not surprinsingly, the unpredictable. Basically, the street artist bought an original painting at the Housing Works Gramercy thrift shop on East 23rd Street, reworked it and then brought it back with his signature on it. The re-make consisted in adding a Nazi officer who’s sitting on a bench looking out over a pastoral scene. He entitled it “The banality of the banality of evil.” Actually, Banksy stole this quote from the subtitle of the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt.
When someone came in to the store and dropped it off as an anonymous donation, nobody knew what it was all about. The enigma was solved later when the thrift store got a call authenticating the work as Banksy’s. At first the, the painting was posted at the window and went unnoticed. But after the announcement of the piece on Banksy’s website describing it as “A thrift store painting vandalized then re-donated to the thrift store” there were a lot of people wanting to see the painting. The piece was auctioned and all the funds were to a charity group, which focused on homelessness and HIV/AIDS issues. In my opinion, this is one of the coolest Banksy’s innitiatives that happened during his residency in the city. Don’t you think?
In fact, this is not the first time that Banksy mixes fine arts and street arts and see how long it takes to people notice it. Actually, back in the UK, the “cave painting” sample that you can see below with a man driving a shopping cart got added to the permanent collection of the British Museum after museum officials found it. At least hilarious, isn’t it?
by Daniela Ferraz
finding bksy 