The Wall Street Journal, bless its nilla heart, breaks this story and undermines it in the course of two paragraphs:

"Do you think that hip-hop would be an appropriate area for NEA to fund?" I inquired.

"Absolutely. And mural painting and graffiti are art. There are popular aspects of all the arts that I think shouldn't be ignored."

Funding hip-hop-the best of which is rhythmically poetic, but commonly punctuated by profanity, violence and/or misogynistic sexuality-could put the previously embattled agency back in the crosshairs of the decency police.

Sure, rappers have rhythm. Many can dance! But, you know...bitches and hoes. Guns and malt liquor. Pussy and weed. Glocks and rocks. The WSJ thinks you know what it means. The things those people talk about. [Pic: Rob Gale]

The NYT says the city's buffed about half the buildings surrounding the High Line so far, so that Ed Norton—who I blame for everything bad that's High Line-related—will not have to have his Prada shades sullied by the vision of art that doesn't cost millions upon millions of dollars. Pretty dramatic set of before and after pics here; whoa, it looks so much blander now. Awesome.

Even more annoying than the rich High Line people here are, of course, the NYT.com commenters. Who are perhaps the same people!

Graffiti is trash. period.
Always glad to see vandalism repaired.
Graffiti is not ART, and it never was. There's no historical meaning to it, except that some uneducated loser wasted paint and time to deface an already attractive wall or whatever.
Graffiti is not art, and never will be.

Etc. Shut up, dumb mean people. Anyone echoing these sentiments (without an incredibly creative argument) in our comments, which are supposed to not suck, will be banned. Anyone posting pics of where they tagged the High Line wins a free kiss.

[Would have had this post up earlier except stupid Flickr was down. Pics: Niznoz, Zantony.]

Hint: Banksy is nowhere in this picture.

"Untitled (Trouble/Sleep), 2007. Collage." Via.

"TBT, 2008. Photograph - Digital C Print." Via.

"TBT, 2008. Photograph - Digital C Print." Via.

" Untitled digital images, 2007. (Primed urine stained stretched canvas, painted image of baby, various clippings, urine, semen, spit, wax & Rivington Arms ad)." Via.

"Untitled (No.22 & 23), 2007, Polaroid, 4" x 4.25". (Easel, swimming pool, primed urine stained canvas, painted image of baby, various clippings, urine, semen & spit)." Via.

"Untitled,(Hell). 2005. Digital C-Print." Via.

"Untitled (Diptych). 2006. Digital C-Prints." Via.

Graf in Soho, NYC. Via.

In action on the Brooklyn Bridge. Via.

"Fuck the Police (Detail). 2005. 45 Framed press clippings, semen." Via.

"This Was Your Life. 2005. Leather couch, rosary, mask with human hair, mirror, fur coat, horny hillbilly, palm tree, snakeskin boots, silent witness." Via.

"Untitled, 2007. Mixed Media Installation. Via.

Some group called "Appropriate Media" went and splashed paint all over a classic Banksy piece in Bristol, cause Banksy is way too "middle class" now. No idea when "Middle class" became a slur over there. Also, Banksy is in fact upper class. Anyhow, their manifesto:

In the early hours of this morning, Banksy's 'Mild Mild West' on Stokes Croft in Bristol (UK) was repainted by a member of Appropriate Media, presenting an alternative version of this 'alternative Bristol landmark'.

Through this action, Appropriate Media asks ?What is the value of street art??. How much time and money will be spent to restore this urban 'masterpiss' by urban masterpisser, Banksy.

Come on, you only care about it cos its a Banksy and he sells his lazy polemics to Hollywood movie stars for big bucks.

Come on, you only care about it cos makes you feel edgy and urban to tour round the inner city in your 4x4, taking in the tired coffee table subversion that graffiti has become.

Graffiti artists are the copywriters for the capitalist created phenomenon of urban art.
Graffiti artists are the performing spray-can monkeys for gentrification.
We call for the appropriate and legitimate use of public and private property.

We are taking matters into our own hands

We will not seek permission

We will retaliate

Hmmm. Current odds in favor of this being a stunt by Banksy himself: 3-2.

From epiclylaterd.com:

Epicly Later'd is the blog of photographer Patrick O'Dell, former photo editor of Vice. Supporting evidence:

—This looks a lot like the dude in yesterday's Neckface pic (sort of? Iffy).
—Patrick O'Dell has a section on his site where he posts adoptible animals, where there is currently a cat named Neck Face (ROCK SOLID EVIDENCE).
—Patrick O'Dell is friends with Neckface! They did this video together for VBS.tv. And don't forget this blog post we just found, pointing out that O'Dell has been posting pics of Neckface for a while now with his permission, so what's the big deal? Here's one more:

Neckface, allegedly!

"Graffiti is very bad, dude," he says. "I'm angry about it, all the way to 100 degrees."

Is there more?

And this: "Make sure those two people don't escape. Try to get every graffiti person out of the entire universe. Can you please tell the policemen they did good work?"

Rocco Parascandola's take:

There are no police officers in Christopher's family, though Christopher would seem to be the perfect candidate. Should recruitment officers get back to him in 16 years? Maybe...

Christ.

[Newsday via Animal]

How quaint—it's like a nasty little blog comment, only IRL! Graffitists are, of course, among the original commenters. Only they usually have more important things to say, like attack the political power structure.

But! Marking houses with specific messages also has Biblical origins: during Passover, God was going to kill the first-borns in every Egyptian house, but the angel of death would pass over the houses of Israelites who marked the doors of their homes with lamb's blood.

And so, the hordes of celebrity-worshippers, in the SLUT-painting ritual marking of Sienna Miller's house, symbolically "passed over" Balthazar Getty, demonizing her for dallying with a married man, but conveniently leaving him out of the matter and blameless. And so the bullshit double standard was upheld. They looked upon this, and saw it was good.

That's good enough for Page Six!

[HYB via Animal]

Who is he?

He's just a dude from England who makes street art. We once thought he might be the alter ego of fellow Brit stencil artist Nick Walker, but that's probably not the case—not exactly, at least. The Daily Mail says he's a guy from Bristol named Robin Gunningham, who has a Facebook page that may or may not be real. There may or may not be more than one photo of Banksy extant. Basically he's a big fucking mystery.

Why is he important?

Ha. "Important" is a subjective idea. But he's important artistically, because he is the single funniest and most incisive social critic working in street art today; and he's become a celebrity, making him important...to people who care about celebrities. Once his works started selling to Angelina Jolie and other assorted stars, his secret true identity became an item of even hotter speculation. But most Banksy fans loved the guy for his art long before they even knew he was a big secret.

Who cares about his identity?

If you're a Wu-Tang fan, you remember when Ghostface Killah first started rhyming, when he wore a stocking over his face in all photos. It was awesome. People who are self-proclaimed mysteries succeed immediately in making fans who would normally care little about their background start to obsessively wonder about them. But you have to give Banksy credit: any time in the past couple of years, he could have sold a big reveal of his identity to the highest bidder for a huge sum. The idea that he's staying secret out of fear of prosecution for vandalism is a little ridiculous; this is a guy who started as a vandal, but now has museums and town councils voting to keep his (illegal) works in place—sometimes even having city employees go back and touch up his pieces when they get painted over with more graffiti. He's probably just a guy who doesn't care to be treated like a superstar in public. The irony is that, by staying anonymous, he's pushed interest in himself up to mythical levels.

And?

Dig it:

[via And I Am Not Lying]

[via LAT]

This morning, we got a tip about a sighting of Banksy painting on the side of Thunder Jacksons in NYC. Bucky Turco went and took pictures of the work. Shortly afterwards, Gothamist and others proclaimed that the piece was in fact by Nick Walker(pictured)—another well known stencil artist from Bristol, England.

Well.

The piece at Thunder Jacksons is by Nick Walker. You can see the theme in his own photos on Flickr. Our own original tipster wrote in to say, "I stand corrected. It wasn't Banksy - it was Nick Walker...the pics of the artwork show a signature that happens to be Nick Walker's. Youtube has some videos of Nick Walker working and he is the guy who was at TJ's last night."

But, asked for more information, the same tipster added this: "While he was outside doing his stencil sombody asked if he was banksy and he said he was."

Nick Walker said he was Banksy. [This is also corroborated by Gawker commenter chickenjungle, a.k.a. Abbe Diaz, here. She says she was at Thunder Jacksons last night and heard Walker say the same thing]. With that in mind, allow us to quote liberally from Bucky Turco's just-posted item at Animal NY:

According to a waitress at the newly stenciled Thunder Jackson restaurant, who witnessed Banksy painting the wall last night, "the whole thing took him about 15 minutes." When asked if she was positive it was Banksy, she emphatically stated "yes," and then awkwardly added, "Banksy is Nick Walker, they are the same person. Oops, I don't think I was supposed to say that." When pressed on why Banksy would use different names, she spilled, "He uses that identity because of visa and passport issues." The waitress added that Banksy is going to make a big announcement about his identity but not while he's in town, "He has a whole master PR plan, but he's waiting till he leaves the country."

Wow. If true.

Walker is often described as a predecessor, friend, and/ or rival of Banksy, and has certainly benefited from Banksy's publicity himself. He told Bloomberg last month:

Walker said that he had got know Banksy in Bristol, western England, in the late 1990s when he was invited to be part of the ``Walls on Fire'' group of graffiti artists.

``We don't talk too much now,'' he said.

Now let's run through the case against this theory. It started with an unsolicited tip. It has only a handful of sources. Theoretically, any of them could be lying, exaggerating, or misinformed. But it's worth noting that none of them have any readily apparent reason for making any of this up. We'd be happy to hear some art experts weigh in on Nick Walker vs. Banksy from a technical angle; but the similarities in their styles are obvious and unmistakable.

So, smart people: is Nick Walker Banksy?

[Animal NY]