In 2018, the renowned anonymous artist Banksy sold his painting, Girl with Balloon, at Sotheby’s for $1.4 million. The moment the sale went through, the painting suddenly started lowering itself through a shredder built into the bottom of the frame, halfway destroying the piece.
“Undeniably Banksy’s most calculated act of rebellion against the bourgeois art works and market, Banksy staged his shred at Sotheby’s: the epitome of commodification in art — at least in Banksy’s eyes,” Erin-Atlanta Argun wrote for Edition Magazine. “This was an act of protest as well as a performance art spectacle, as Banksy reclaimed agency over his work once the highest bidder had staked their claim.”
What was intended to be an anti-capitalist reclamation over the commodification of art was dictated as “the first work in history ever created during a live auction” by Sotheby’s, renamed to Love is in the Bin, and sold again in 2021 for a whopping $25.4 million — becoming Banksy’s highest valued piece. The so-called reclamation of agency over the bourgeois art world only made the piece more highly sought after by that very same world he criticizes.
Banksy has roots as a guerilla Bristol street artist, but despite his background in an art form that is genuinely anti-capitalist — due to the criminalized nature of graffiti — his current empire of so-called “anti-capitalist” artworks has been not only embraced, but revered by the wealthy, who see art not as a means of expression but investment (I suggest listening to the Overthink podcast episode on Art as Commodity to learn more about this).
My friend came to me recently telling me about a design company a straight woman she knew was starting, called Haus of Hue. She asked if I thought she was appropriating language coined by queer Black people in the ballroom scene, who used the title “haus” to refer to chosen families — a creative act born of the need for survival. Due to the chosen aesthetic of this business — which was more sad beige minimalist than femme queen realness — we decided that her choice of language was probably not an intentional act of queer-baiting to garner more artistic clout, but was instead indicative of the pervasive capability of capitalism to appropriate and pervert acts of genuine, radical creation. The history behind “haus” — particularly the insidious “why” behind Black queer people needing to create their own families to survive — is erased, ignored, repackaged, and resold, so that it eventually trickles down to this straight white woman and others who are detached from its cultural ties.
The values of capitalism and the upper echelon of capitalists are solely and entirely concerned with money. You can create something that explicitly calls your clientele morons for buying your product, and it doesn’t matter (just ask Banksy, who made a print doing exactly that, versions of which are currently valued anywhere from $24,000 to $160,000).
Of course, Banksy is so embraced by the art world because he is (suspected to be) a white man* who creates pieces that merely appropriate the aesthetics of radicalism to formulate a message that is so shallow it’s closer to something I’d reblog on Tumblr when I was 14 than the cutting protest the fine art industry purports it to be.
(*“Banksy” is actually a collective of artists who produced works that Pest Control, the Banksy authentication service, deems Banksys, but one of the leading suspects to be the original street artist from Bristol is Robin Gunningham.)
Regardless of how you feel about his personal art style, it’s difficult to find anything anti-capitalist about work that sells for more than most Americans make in a year (or, in the case of Love is in the Bin or even the original Girl with Balloon, more than they’ll see in a lifetime) in the same way you won’t find anything queer about Ms. Haus of Hue. When it comes to artists who are producing truly subversive work, you’ll find them in working class people, queer people, people of color — those like the graffiti artists and ballroom icons — whose existence itself subverts the values of capitalism.
If you’re looking for some work from queer DIY artists in Atlanta, check out visual artists Barry Lee, Sofahood, and Abbie Argo; musicians Makenna Lyric, DJ Cochino, and Frankie Consent; poet Sunbody (@leo.nade); collectives like Junk Press and Peach Fuzz; and accessible art spaces like Baby’s Place, The Bakery, and Market Hugs.