BANKSY HEARTS BLEK LA RAT

Banksy is a London, England-based artist. He makes public art. His work is almost always political, or at the very least it comments on societal norms, and it more often than not achieves genuine wit.

Banksy is famous. New works of his are regularly covered by London newspapers. There is wide speculation as to his identity. If a Banksy appears on the side of a building it usually stays there. In some cases the owners of the buildings have repainted around the art... A far cry from how standard graffiti is treated, wouldn't you say?

Here is a selection of my favorite of Banksy's works...

Banksy's style is derivative of a guy named Blek la Rat, a French artist -and the inventor of stencil graffiti- who visited New York in the early 1980's and loved the traditional graf he saw there. He decided to use stencils so as to not just copy what he'd seen while in the States. Blek la Rat's stuff was also often political or satirical, and sometimes he even appeared in his work himself.

You can see Blek la Rat's work HERE.