Banksy's Glasgow show reasoning proves he's behind the curve

For one thing, doesn’t street art take power from its illegality and illicitness? As Banksy says, in one of his exhibition quotes: “Most artists have an obsession that defines their work ... Monet had light, Hockney has colour. I’ve got police response time.”

So what are we to make of this warm municipal embrace of his creations, with its ratty brand logo burning through all media platforms, installed in Glasgow’s pre-eminent ex-slave-trader’s residence? (Banksy himself is “not sure which is the greater crime” – street stencilling itself, or displaying them in an art gallery).

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Will Cut And Run inspire the city’s youth to start spraying provocations on every spare wall? And how happy would the city’s mothers and fathers be with that?

We seem to have some kind of answer to that last question. What’s clearly been an attractor to Banksy was the Wellington Cone. That’s the traffic cone that’s been spontaneously plonked on the head of the horse-borne Duke of Wellington’s statue since the late 80s, right at GOMA’s doorstep.

“Despite the best efforts of the council and police, every time one is removed another takes its place”, writes Banksy at the beginning of the exhibition. “This might sound absurd and pretentious (just wait until you see the rest of the exhibition) but it’s my favourite work of art in the UK and the reason I’ve brought the show here.” The Cone has even become the “A” in the official Banksy banner.

I asked for further explanation of this from Banksy himself; none came in before my deadline. But it’s obvious from the quote above that Banksy is exulting in the folk energy of the Cone. A simple intervention from below, perpetrated by many anonymous hands, that makes an icon of imperial, military Britain look ridiculous and bathetic.

Yet Banksy is appreciably behind the curve if what he values in the Cone is its defying of laws, authorities and convention. Rent any modern Glasgow hotel room, and the Cone will be an artwork on the wall. Over a decade ago, it was part of the branding of the 2012 Commonwealth Games. The Glasgow City Council official I spoke to the other day said that the authorities recognised the Wellington Cone as “a contribution to social and cultural capital”.

Did you hear the “sell-out” klaxon there? Is Banksy fully aware that his Cone-love is, in 2023 at least, a key element in a municipal soft-power strategy? An instrument for the commercial vending of Glasgow’s “attitude” to the world’s tourists? Or even a weapon in wars for creative talent (for example, the Cone appears at the start of Scotland’s pitch for Channel Four’s headquarters)?

I have some esteemed peers that are very grumpy about the Wellington Cone, and the compromised nature of its rebelliousness. Chief among them is David Greig, playwright and director of the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, who responded to my tweets this way: “I know it’s not a popular view but I think it’s a bit embarrassing. A proper country would remove the Duke. It’s adolescence framed as the national psyche. Who is it rebelling against?”

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The writer Peter Ross replied: “Don’t think it’s an act of rebellion. It’s an expression of an aspect of Glaswegianism; and a sort of folk ritual – like building the Penny Hedge in Whitby or some such. I remember noticing it in the aftermath of certain civic tragedies, and there’s a sort of resilience in it too”.

Greig’s response? “I disagree. It’s premised on an idea of disrespect for authority. Which is fine but begs the question: to whom is this mocking gesture directed? The council? Wellington? ScotGov? Westminster?

“When are you going to deal with your desire to change the authority? To change the character of your alienation? ... I think it’s directed against ourselves, to serve as a constant reminder that the idea we could have authority over ourselves is a joke.”

But that’s it’s a joke may be its enduring point. The least one could concede to Banksy’s aesthetics is that his tone is often absurdist and despairing, as well as defiant and militant. And humour, however dark, is one way to keep the spirits lightened for combatants and victims, even in the toughest spots.

Take Banksy’s Monopoly boards laid out at the heart of Occupy Wall Street, or the pillow fights between Palestinians and Israelis he sprays onto Gaza’s walls, or maybe especially his theme-park satire on our entertainment culture, Dismaland. All these are visual puns that give robust pleasure, as well as pointing at oppressive forces. Should we underestimate the generation of good cheer in political art?

It’s all a lightning rod for debate. In fact, the merest historical context shows how much ideology the Duke of Wellington statue has always been caught up in. I dug up a 2004 paper by JE Cookson, on the “Wellington statues of Unionist Scotland” (there’s another in Edinburgh, and many more across these islands and globally).

In Glasgow, its commission and funding was led by Tory-identifying aristocrats, like Lord Kelburne and the Duke of Hamilton. They intended the statues to assert the natural moral authority of their own upper class over Liberals, Chartists – and French emperors.

As Cookson puts it: “Wellington’s loyal service, sense of duty, steady application to the task in hand, plain living, compassion and civility were contrasted with Napoleon’s egotism, restlessness, ostentation, cruelty and tyranny.”

Perhaps it’s the unctuousness of the Wellington myth that obscurely motivates the Cone-applicators. Wherever you’re leading, pal, we’re not coming with you…

And for those implying passivity in attitudes to the statue, Cookson unearths a Glasgow Herald report (October 11, 1844) that social riots accompanied its day of unveiling. “The press of the crowd on invited guests developed into a rampage through the streets when young rowdies seized the rope marking the platform area and took off for Glasgow Green, where a bonfire was made of demolished picket fences.”

So is it enough for Glasgow to be the temporary artistic “home” for rebellious spirits like Banksy, at 15 quid a ticket, while the city’s poverty, drugs and homeless statistics are so egregious? Might we want Glasgow to be more like Barcelona or Vienna, whose governors consciously and systemically tilt their cities against capital’s hold on property and technology?

Also, while here, perhaps Banksy could find some time to artistically engage with Glasgow’s own death dealers in military technology, like BAE Systems or Thales?

Or even the city’s shaming legacy of slave-holding itself?

My worries about Glasgow, Banksy and the Cone is that it’s more like the hacking tradition on the MIT campus in Boston.

The authorities there turn a blind eye to the ingenious, irreverent physical stunts – or “hacks” – that students perpetrate.

On the Institute’s Great Dome, they’ll hoist whole police cars or trams up there. Or they’ll turn campus statuary into video game characters.

Why is such behaviour tolerated (indeed, a history of notable hacks is part of the university’s own museum)? It’s because these acts display the kind of disciplined imagination that MIT wants its students to exemplify.

Like the Wellington Cone, there is an acceptable frisson of illegality (but also very few arrests). This burnishes the liberal reputation of the existing structure while leaving its basic power relations exactly as they are. (Chomsky aside, MIT was as integrated with the military-industrial complex as any major American university.)

So 1.5 cheers for Banksy, setting up his DIY stencil-versity in the heart of Glasgow. But let’s hope he inspires a deep wave of genuine rebel spirit, manifesting in thousands of fruitfully disruptive ways. And not be a plastic cone plonked on top of the same old, same old.