Banksy and the Problem of Writing about Humor You Don’t Get (Dan Brooks in the NY Times, Part II)

In a previous post I called out (and, I hope, shamed) Dan Brooks in his NY Times essay, “Banksy and the Problem with Sarcastic Art” for writing a negative critique of Banksy’s pop-up theme park, Dismaland, without bothering to actually experience it. Now I’d like to address another aspect of that piece, the fact that Brooks doesn’t get British humor, thereby offending an entire culture.

Before expounding, Brooks might have, like any good writer, consulted Wikipedia, where it says: “A strong theme of sarcasm and self-deprecation, often with deadpan delivery, runs throughout British humour.” This is a surprise? I thought humor was one of Britain’s most famous exports. But then Brooks lives in Montana.

So, of course, the Brits say it best, as evidenced by these comments on Brooks’s blog:

Patricia:  Hello your piece about Dismaland was a load of bollocks just saying .smiley face



Sam: Hey arsehole, I noticed you didn’t offer a right to reply on your hilarious Banksy critique you coward. American critics can’t seem to help but embarrass them selves when it comes to understanding British cultural work. The reason you can’t pin down where the depth lies in his work is because you can only see it through the lens of your own cultural experience you prick. Its not for you, (American goal/success obsessed, materialists), its for us, (British people who live under the yolk of class oppression). He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to be in the work and that’s a big part of its value. Just accept it. It’s Far more poignant and rare to see outward looking work like his, rather than most American introspective conceptual art that’s obsessed with the artist and the individual, that when you get down to it, exists as little more than in invitation to fuck or be fucked. Write about shit you see in your own culture but leave our work out of it.

           
Beaver:

 LOL. Takin’ some heat for your Dismaland piece. I guess that’ll happen when you deconstruct the only functioning tool in the room. And anyway, if you can thrill to the demagoguery, than surely you can at least find some amusement in the irony of a society which makes a bond of the chasm and defends it by hurling at you fragments of their smashed and deconsecrated urn, the last remaining ashes of wit mixing irretrievably in the wind with whatever comes next.

Dismaland, featuring "Mediocre" by Axel Void of Miami. Photo: Carol Diehl © 2015

Events and non-events

By now everyone knows that TIME’s Person of the Year for 2011 is “The Protester” and that Shepard Fairey created the cover. Those who’ve followed this blog for a while know that I worked as a consultant for TIME on the covers for over 20 years, and introduced Fairey to TIME in 2007, when he created an image of Putin that ran on the inside (see post here).  While the Person of the Year, along with the magazine itself, no longer has much cachet, I’m still glad TIME made a good call (over, say, Kate Middleton for getting married or Steve Jobs for dying) as it represents formal recognition that this is a massive, worldwide movement—unlike the New York Times, which is still waiting for Occupy to go away so no one will notice that they haven’t been covering it.

I admire Shepard Fairey and feel his success is deserved; I have absolutely no patience with the kneejerk reaction that commercial success = sellout (Coldplay remains a favorite, and I’m glad Radiohead left their major label so they, too, don’t have to be a guilty pleasure). However, if I still worked for TIME, I wouldn’t have recommended Fairey for this cover simply because the protests represent the new and unknown, where his now-ubiquitous style is associated with the known, the past, and is simply too sleek and realized (again, nothing wrong with that per se) to represent the nascent, unformed and gritty surge that is this movement. If they’d asked, I would have looked for the street artist who is now what Fairey was in 2007. It's no one I could name off the top of my head. Because a TIME cover has very specific requirements, that would require the research that was once my job. I might, however, start here:

Although it’s had the Internet on fire for weeks and was a headline today in Britain’s Guardian, another event the New York Times (along with the rest of the mainstream media) hasn’t covered is the hasty passing—ironically on 220^th anniversary of the Bill of Rights—of the latest iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act, which many feel compromises our most basic American rights to due process. But you can learn about it on the Huffington Post, and if you need a laugh to mitigate the fright, on The Daily Show.

Meanwhile, in the art world, I received a press release today announcing that Gagosian will be showing ALL of Damien Hirst’s dot paintings (they call them “spot” paintings) in ALL of the eleven Gagosian Galleries throughout the world—Paris, Athens, Geneva, Hong Kong, London, Rome and New York. Now there’s an event to stay home for. My opinion as a critic is, if you’ve seen one dot painting, you’ve seen them all. You can quote me.

Banksy's take on Hirst's dot paintings.