It Should Be a Capitalist Flop, but Banksy’s Dismaland Is Pure Magic

It’s not easy being a superstar anti-establishment art celebrity.
It Should Be a Capitalist Flop, but Banksy’s Dismaland Is Pure Magic
A steward is seen outside Banksy's 'Dismaland' exhibition, which opens tomorrow, at a derelict seafront lido on August 20, 2015 in Weston-Super-Mare, England. Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
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It’s not easy being a superstar anti-establishment art celebrity. Back in the late 1990s I was one of a group of art students who, for a time, became mildly famous as art pranksters. Within the group we could never be sure – and this despite our most earnest efforts – that our work really was the stuff of revolution. But we were in the papers. We were on the Turner Prize programme. We were even offered a book deal. Nonetheless it’s hard to maintain revolutionary kudos once you’ve been interviewed by Timmy Mallett.

And so I feel for Banksy. In Bristol, his street-pieces are still powerful landmarks even if we know, and he knows, what a dichotomy he represents, caught somewhere between art and artifice; an anarchist in capitalist giftwrap.

This being so, I was not expecting much from his latest hyped-up creation, Dismaland. I assumed it would be trying too hard to recapture that lost edginess; that old sold-out soul. An art Dumbo, painting its face like a clown; an elephantine joke that isn’t funny.

And yet. And yet.

Weston-super-Mare has become a byword for every cliche ever mouthed about the British seaside. Fish-paste sandwiches. Miserable donkeys. Rain. More rain. Somewhere along the seafront, a life-size dummy of the Queen stares out from a hotel window.

Faded glory: Weston-super-Mare. (Mark Robinson, CC BY)
Faded glory: Weston-super-Mare. Mark Robinson, CC BY
Victoria Anderson
Victoria Anderson
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