Banksy and the problem with sarcastic art

[summer]

NY Times



The day Banksy unveiled “Dismaland” — a sprawling exhibition of conceptual art that is itself a concept, with mock security guards and mouse-eared employees instructed to frown instead of smile — its ticketing website was so overwhelmed it crashed. Hours before the opening of the park, which is built on a disused resort in Weston-super-Mare, England, hundreds of people had lined up outside in the rain. “Dismaland” is a heartening display of public interest in conceptual art, even if the concept is “What if Disneyland were as bad as real life?”



In the days that followed, online media struggled to decide whether the art was worthy of its audience. Banksy had called the project, which includes his work as well as that of others, “a family theme park unsuitable for small children.” Mark Brown, an art correspondent for The Guardian, called it “sometimes hilarious, sometimes eye-opening and occasionally breathtakingly shocking.” Mike Nudelman, the graphics editor at Business Insider, described it as “bad and boring” and likened Banksy to the director Michael Bay. “Dismaland Is Not Interesting, and Neither Is Banksy,” declared a Huffington Post Canada headline on a story that concluded: “It’s bad. It’s bad, and it’s uninteresting.”



Once again, Banksy has put the art enthusiast in a bind. “Dismaland” is spectacular, but its ideas are not everything you want a candidate for history’s largest work of conceptual art to be. For example, one of its most remarked-upon installations is a wreck of Cinderella’s carriage: Her body dangles luridly from the window, lit by the flashes of a paparazzi scrum.



That’s a reference. It’s not exactly ironic, nor is it funny. But it’s built like a joke: Like Cinderella, Diana became a princess by marriage. Also like Cinderella, Diana took a famous ride, but her fairy tale turned gruesome — what if Cinderella’s had ended the same way? That’s not exactly an insight, but it has a certain quality. Darren Cullen, a contributing artist for “Dismaland,” may have put it best: “This place is brilliant,” he told The Guardian. “It is just amazing having this much sarcasm in one place.”



Ah, sarcasm: the very highest form of wit. In the dictionary, “sarcasm” is still defined as the use of irony to convey contempt. But what we call sarcasm, especially on the Internet, has become less a technique than an attitude: a contempt so settled that it doesn’t bother constructing ironies. I submit that this sarcastic attitude, which presents itself as the perspective of a knowing few, is actually one of the dominant aesthetics of our age. Sarcasm is our kitsch.



The problem of kitsch has vexed aesthetes since at least the 19th century, when industrial production introduced a new level of cultural expression between folk traditions and high art. The term originated in 1920s Germany to describe cultural products that were excessively garish or sentimental. “Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas,” Clement Greenberg wrote in “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” in 1939. “Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations.”




The defining feature of kitsch is that it preys on our desire to feel art succeed. It follows the formula of meaningful expression and exploits our willingness to manufacture the sensation of meaning. How wonderful, after all, to see a painting and be moved. As a species of contemporary kitsch, sarcasm takes advantage of our readiness to respond to actual wit. It, too, is mechanical and proceeds by formula. And online sarcasm is now industrially produced, thanks to the mass quantities of content that digital media must churn out each day.



The style of Internet writing often called snark participates in sarcasm, typically by adopting the derisive tone of satire without the complex irony. You can find this sort of writing anywhere, on almost any topic. Picking more or less at random, I found this sentence from a Wonkette story about the Oath Keepers, a constitutionalist group that recently interceded in a mining dispute in Montana: “George Kornec and Phil Nappo have a mining claim on federal land; they’ve put up a garage and a fence, and the dastardly government is pushing its weight around and being a big bully and being really terrible and stuff by telling Kornec and Nappo to take them down.”



That’s technically irony, because the literal meaning (the government is abusing its power) is the opposite of the meaning implied (the Oath Keepers are overreacting). But the inversion is applied mechanically, artlessly, in a way that does not encourage the reader toward a deeper truth. There’s no insight here to raise this irony to the level of satire. There is only mockery, backed by certainty that the reader shares the author’s contempt. Sarcasm is a natural fit for partisan news aggregators, because it relies on a calculated appeal to shared attitudes.

Kitsch banks heavily on these shared attitudes. It substitutes them for artistic insights, and it relies on its audience’s agreement with them to produce a feeling similar to profundity. Sarcasm works best when people already know what you mean. By the same token, you don’t have to think society has become crass and venal to enjoy Banksy, but it helps.



Like other forms of kitsch, Banksy’s work presents conventional wisdom as insights: It’s true we have treated our princesses ghoulishly, particularly when their carriages crash. As with memes, Banksy asks us to substitute the sensation of recognizing a reference for the frisson of wit. And he sometimes seems to operate by formula, as the Twitter account @banksyideas points out. “Stencil of a child assembling the toy from a Kinder Egg, yeah?” goes one such parody idea. “The parts fit together to make a handgun.”



This open indulgence in kitsch may be why the aspirational Internet — the knowing Internet that defines itself in opposition to a perceived, less savvy mainstream — seems to hate him. It is the narcissism of small differences. Like Banksy, the highbrow, left-leaning Internet frequently indulges in sarcasm; how else could it produce so much ostensibly clever content every day? But such attitude-based aggregators distinguish themselves from the kitschy Internet by embracing the premise that cultural production can improve an unjust society, whereas Banksy’s premise seems to be that cultural production can point out how awful everything is.



Online media’s distaste for Banksy seems like a disagreement of ends rather than means. The Huffington Post article “35 HELPFUL Things Banksy Could’ve Done Instead of ‘Dismaland,’” for example, indicts his cynicism while embracing the sarcastic mode: Items 33 to 35 on the list are “Shut up,” “Don’t” and “Gah.” Even among its nominal opponents, the problem of how to respond to kitsch persists.



If you love art, you must be glad that thousands of people are supporting it by going to “Dismaland.” If you love cultural expression generally, you must be glad millions of people are participating in it on the Internet. But when you see bad expression praised as good — when your Facebook friends share a sarcastic news report, or a millionaire street artist puts mouse ears on an actress and tells her to frown — you must also feel some injustice has been done. Kitsch should not get away with exploiting people’s desire to feel the art. How wonderful it must feel to go to “Dismaland” and see through society! But how awful to see society embrace art that makes you feel nothing, that makes you think only about the vast chasm between you and everyone else.

[heyjude]

It just seems so trite. Making fun of Disneyland and it all represents is seriosuly low hanging fruit. It seemed beneath Banksy.

[ttt]

Great article. Just because something is sarcastic and irreverent doesn't mean it's good or insightful.

[laurenpetro]

Banksy reminds me of basically every college art major I've ever met. I'm really glad I dropped it.

[pixy0stix]

It reminds me of this article: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3210074/Couple-cancel-three-week-honeymoon-Caribbean-enjoy-post-wedding-holiday-Banksy-s-Dismaland-instead.html

Where the couple just didn't get it.

[averyjessup]

I went to Dismaland, it was amazing. On the way in they had fake metal detectors and cameras, and the "security guards" would do things like take peoples phones from them and hold them up against the wall really seriously for about 10 seconds before giving them back. Completely pointless, just for show stuff. It's all a bit on the nose, but that's what you get with Banksy.

It's also worth mentioning (since the article mentioned helpful things Banksy could've done instead) that it brought a ton of money into Weston Super Mare, the structures are being taken down and sent to Calais to be used as refugee shelters, and I've been told the money from ticket sales and all of the games & such went to charity as well.