Banksy

Banksy doesn't do interviews. But he has agreed to one this time, though he laughs when
we suggest a photograph. Banksy is Britain's most celebrated graffiti artist, but anonymity is
vital to him because graffiti is illegal.1
„Nobody ever listened to me until they didnt know who I was.“1
Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between
artists and musicians.2

Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical
group Massive Attack.2

Banksy's documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) made its debut at the
2010 Sundance Film Festival.

In 2014, he was awarded Person of the Year at the 2014 Webby Awards.

Banksy started as a freehand graffiti artist in 1990–1994[31] as one of Bristol's DryBreadZ Crew
(DBZ), with two other artists known as Kato and Tes.4

Banksy's first known large wall mural was The Mild Mild West painted in 1997 to cover
advertising of a former solicitors' office on Stokes Croft in Bristol. 6

"the Banksy effect"

During the visit (Gaza) he painted a few artworks including a kitten on the remains of a house
destroyed by an Israeli air strike ("I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos
on my website—but on the internet people only look at pictures of kittens") and a swing hanging
off a watchtower.

In May 2017, Banksy claimed the authorship of a giant Brexit mural, painted on a house in Dover
(Kent)

The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment.

Banksy has published several books that contain photographs of his work accompanied by his
own writings: 3

Kissing coppers:5
Cornbread
American graffiti writer from Philadelphia.

During the late 1960s, he and a group of friends started doing graffiti in Philadelphia, by writing
their monikers on walls across the city.

McCray later worked with the Philadelphia's Anti-Graffiti Network and Mural Arts Program to
help combat the spread of graffiti in the city. He is currently a public speaker and a youth
advocate

While at the Youth Development Center, McCray adopted the nickname "Cornbread". McCray
complained to the cook of the institution, Mr. Swanson, that he only baked white bread, while
McCray preferred his grandmother's cornbread. McCray's constant badgering inspired Mr.
Swanson to start calling McCray "Cornbread", a nickname that McCray adopted.
The YDC was full of Philadelphia gang members who would write their names on the walls of the
facility. McCray claims he was never part of a gang, but he would write his new nickname,
Cornbread, on the walls next to the gang members. McCray claimed to be the first person to tag
his own name and not a gang name or symbol.[5]
To win her attention, he wrote "Cornbread Loves Cynthia" all over North Philadelphia. After
winning over Cynthia, he continued tagging North Philadelphia.

In 1971, Cornelius Hosey was shot dead in gang warfare, and Philadelphia newspapers
incorrectly identified him as Cornbread, the tagger.[citation needed]
McCray was arrested for tagging "Cornbread Lives" on an elephant at the Philadelphia Zoo.
In 2007, documentary filmmaker, Sean McKnight, made a film called Cry of the City Part 1: The
Legend of Cornbread.[9] The story of Cornbread is also prominently included in the documentary
film about the history of graffiti, called Bomb It (2007). In August 2013, McCray was honored at
the Graffiti Hall of Fame[10] in East Harlem for his contribution to hip-hop culture.
"I didn’t have a mother, I didn’t have a grandmother, I didn’t have love, I didn’t have a home and I had to fend for myself. The only
thing I had was “Cornbread.” The only the time I didn’t feel the loss of my grandmother and my mother was when I was on the
mission doing Cornbread. And I stayed on the mission ninety percent of the time. I didn’t want to deal with the pain and
suffering. Nobody else could compete with that. With all the writing I was doing, I really bombed the city of Philadelphia
out. There were no other artists writing on walls. Teenagers didn’t really catch on to what I was doing until I started
getting in the newspapers."

The counselors thought he had a mental problem, and he was scheduled to see a
psychiatrist. He remembers bucking the session and saying, “You ain’t seen
nothing yet. Wait ’til I get outta here. I’m going to set the world on fire!”
They organized themselves into groups named after Black Greek fraternities.
McCray belonged to Delta Phi Soul for example. These groups were for kids who
didn’t want to be in gangs. In addition to graffiti writing, the groups would
compete with each other to see who could be best dressed and who had the
dopest dance moves before breakdancing was fashionable. They would also spit
rhymes to each other without beats before rapping became popular.
“The city of Philadelphia was so messed up, it looked like another world,” McCray
said of the time when the graffiti got out of control. “When I started writing on
walls, it didn’t look like that. Something needed to be done. We had to clean our
house. This is where we live.”
“At the end of the day, I’d like to be recognized fully for the culture that I gave
birth to,” he said. “There was no hip-hop artist before me. There was no graffiti
artist before me. All roads lead back to me.”