Sorry, Banksy. It’s our fault you’ve been unmasked (and here’s how we did it)

The Independent was first to reveal the identity of the UK’s most notorious street artist in 2003 – and it shattered an art world taboo, writes Ryan Coogan. Did we make a mistake?

A public work by Banksy, the globally famous street artist from Bristol (AFP via Getty Images)

The true identity of elusive, enigmatic graffiti artist Banksy has never been officially revealed. But in the three decades since he started covering the urban landscape with satirical murals – of parachuting rats with briefcases, and teddy bears lobbing Molotov cocktails at riot police – many a column inch has been spent discussing who he might really be.

Now, a rare audio recording has resurfaced in which Banksy himself appears to confirm his identity – and it’s all thanks to the Independent.

In the interview, first aired on BBC Radio 4 some 20 years but which has been dusted off now for a bonus episode of the Banksy Story podcast, the globally famous street artist is confronted by PM presenter Nigel Wrench, who asks: “Are you happy for me to use your name? I mean, The Independent has…”

“Yeah,” Banksy replies.

“Is it Robert Banks?” Wrench continues.

“Robbie…” Banksy answered.

And with that, that the notorious Bristolian vandal was unmasked – and promptly forgotten about.

The irony of an artist best known for causing criminal damage being named “Rob Banks” has not been lost on me, but that’s nominative determinism for you.

I’m actually a huge fan of Banksy. I’m a huge fan of anybody who manages to make the British public sit up and have a conversation about art. In a lot of ways, what we call “Banksy” is the conversation – the hushed speculation about identity; the social media discourse about his latest stunt; the outraged handwringing about the invisible line between artistic expression and property damage.

His aura is so borderline-mythical that it prompts the question: is it a good idea to reveal his identity? Are we somehow disrupting the myth by sharing his name? Am I complicit in my own form of vandalism by name-dropping him in this article?

Banksy’s identity has long been public property, as long as you knew where to look for it. In 2008, a national newspaper spent a year investigating his identity, chasing him around his hometown of Bristol – and abroad, in Jamaica – in a bid to build a picture of his middle-class life… only for so few of us, ultimately, to remember anything about it. Least of all his real name.

Unmasking artists who prefer to be anonymous has become something of a sport in the internet age. In 2017, the anonymous X/Twitter comedian @dril was given a namecheck in a New York magazine article. If you’re a follower of Dril – who is still posting weird takes with the same intensity he was back when the website was still good – that news might surprise you. It surprised me, too. His real name is pretty common knowledge – but the vast majority of his fans simply agree to pretend it never happened.

After all, why wouldn’t you? Like Banksy, a huge part of Dril’s esoteric appeal comes from the identity he’s built online. I don’t care about some guy called “Paul”; I care about the bizarre recluse with the low-res Jack Nicholson avatar who buys too many candles and can’t go to the zoo anymore.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a similar kind of agreed-upon collective amnesia here. The myth of Banksy is so much more interesting when he’s this ephemeral, nameless art bandit, leaving his mark in the dead of night and disappearing with the sunrise. People like to argue that by remaining anonymous, Banksy allows the art to do the talking, and that revealing his identity we somehow compromise that – but the fact is that the identity question is just another part of the overall work of art.

A “Banksy” isn’t just paint on a wall – it’s a whole performance, that includes its discovery, the media coverage, the speculation about why a particular location was chosen, how he managed to put it there, and all the other minutiae that surrounds the actual image itself. In 2018, when one of his pieces self-destructed at auction, auto-shredding itself in front of shocked bidders at Sotheby’s, people didn’t worry about names – they were too caught up in the spectacle to dig into the mundanity of who did what. It was just another day in Banksy Land.

Similarly, the legend of Banksy has broken beyond the boundaries of any one individual. At this point, the word “Banksy” denotes a brand identity, a way of creating art, a way of thinking about art, a specific mode of political action, and a thousand other things that can’t really be attributed to the actions of any individual. “Robbie Banks” is just another facet of that legend – he’s no more “Banksy” than a mid-19^th century businessman called Louis Vuitton is Louis Vuitton, the fashion empire.

Revealing Banksy’s identity is like revealing the chemical composition of the paint in a Picasso, or the brand of urinal Duchamp used for his Fountain. It’s a minor footnote in an ongoing piece of performance art that has been going on for decades, and will hopefully continue for decades more.

Also… Rob Banks? Really? Can we really be certain he hasn’t gotten us again?