Free Banksy by Will Ellsworth-Jones Page A

graffiti, first as sort of rivals and then as
collaborators, producing the key book on American graffiti: Subway Art. It still remains an extraordinary record of the days when the New York subway system became one huge graffiti
canvas. Over and over again graffiti artists say that this was the book that inspired them. Inkie, for instance, says, ‘It was instant. Lots of us were punks at the time and as soon as I saw Subway Art I thought it was the perfect synergy between graffiti and my anarchist tendencies.’ Jason Kelly, a friend who went on from graffiti to become a designer at the Daily
Telegraph magazine and then start his own design business, even copied his tag, ‘kid-ink’, from the book. ‘It’s a great book, it was like gold dust in those days,’
he says. ‘It was like a bible,’ says another graffiti artist.
    The police, when discussing the case against John Nation, showed him a copy of the book they had taken from his office at Barton Hill as evidence that he was inciting young people to go out and
paint illegally. He pointed out to them that he had bought the book at Waterstones and if they were going to prosecute him they should be prosecuting Waterstones and the publishers as well.
    It was a huge book not only in its impact but also in its size, although sales were slow to start with – partly because the graffiti fraternity were stealing the book, despite its size,
from bookshops in much the same way they stole their paint from paint shops. In the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, which came out in 2009, Martha Cooper remembers going on a promotional tour
across Europe, visiting eighteen cities in twenty-one days, and ‘in every city kids came up to me to tell me what Subway Art meant to them. More than one said “You saved my
life.” My favourite was the English writer who playfully shook his finger at me and said “Youhave a lot to account for.”’ The whole graffiti removal
industry – for it is now an industry – would certainly agree.
    A Banksy freehand ‘tag’ exists now only in old photographs and there were never too many of them in the first place, although there was for a short time a joyful ‘Banksy’
in big lettering on the side of a nightclub boat in Bristol harbour – ‘That was so toy,’ says one graffiti writer. His tag was the first thing that he put into stencils. It
started off with simple lower-case lettering but soon evolved into the very distinctive signature – with the upright back of the capital B missing, the k relying on the n for support, the s
with the top shaved off slightly and the final y that looks almost like a hieroglyphic – that he has continued to use ever since.
    Although he had switched to a stencil for his signature he persevered with ‘freehand’ graffiti for some time. Inkie remembers this freehand stage well. ‘He’s a very
talented artist quite apart from the stencils. If you look at his sketch book he’s got fantastic concepts, an amazing sense of perspective and depth and vision. Personally I prefer some of
his early stuff, the canvases or the sketches, over the stencil stuff. However I do feel that he gives depth to his stencils in a way that others can’t do. It’s a bit more
organic.’ But however talented Banksy was as a freehand artist, it is still fair to say that if he had stuck to his freehand style he would probably still be doing it in Bristol today, and
probably no one other than the tight circle of the city’s graffiti artists and ex-artists would have ever heard of him.
    Even when he was painting with a ‘crew’, if there was intricate lettering to be done someone, often Inkie, or sometimes another friend, Kato, would do it, while Banksy stuck to
illustration. The people, and indeed the apes, he drew in these early days all have a slightly strange, primitive feel to them. My personal favourite –perhaps because
it is still there to see – is a piece which greets you when you enter the Pierced Up