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10/23/2015

Banksy and the Problem With Sarcastic Art - The New York Times

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Banksy and the Problem With Sarcastic Art


ByDANBROOKS

SEPT. 10, 2015

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-superMare, 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 eyeopening 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: Its bad. Its bad, and its

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10/23/2015

Banksy and the Problem With Sarcastic Art - The New York Times

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 historys largest work of conceptual art to be. For example, one of its most
remarked-upon installations is a wreck of Cinderellas carriage: Her body dangles luridly from the window, lit by the
flashes of a paparazzi scrum.
Thats a reference. Its not exactly ironic, nor is it funny. But its 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
Cinderellas had ended the same way? Thats 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 doesnt 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.

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10/23/2015

Banksy and the Problem With Sarcastic Art - The New York Times

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; theyve 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.
Thats 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. Theres no insight here to raise this irony to the level of
satire. There is only mockery, backed by certainty that the reader shares the authors 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
audiences 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 dont have to think society has become crass and venal to enjoy Banksy,
but it helps.

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10/23/2015

Banksy and the Problem With Sarcastic Art - The New York Times

Like other forms of kitsch, Banksys work presents conventional wisdom as insights: Its 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 Banksys premise
seems to be that cultural production can point out how awful everything is.
Online medias distaste for Banksy seems like a disagreement of ends rather than means. The Huffington Post
article 35 HELPFUL Things Banksy Couldve Done Instead of Dismaland, for example, indicts his cynicism while
embracing the sarcastic mode: Items 33 to 35 on the list are Shut up, Dont 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 peoples desire to feel the art. How wonderful it must feel to go to

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10/23/2015

Banksy and the Problem With Sarcastic Art - The New York Times

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.
Dan Brooks writes at combatblog.net.

2015TheNewYorkTimesCompany

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