私醫聯招 英文歷屆試題｜第 499 題

There remained an appreciation for the artistic qualities of certain kinds of graffiti. Some of the more famous graffiti artists even started their own art galleries, which leads to the idea that not all forms of graffiti were destructive. Even so, the idea of graffiti as art was still not widely accepted, and the art form remained outside the mainstream—that is, until the appearance of the mysterious graffiti artist Banksy. Banksy is a secretive graffiti artist from the UK, whose graffiti art started appearing in the late 1990s. Banksy takes great care to hide his identity. His graffiti usually involves humorous pictures with anti-authority slogans. Banksy likes to take risks in order to draw attention to his ideas and works. In one set of schemes, Banksy snuck into world-famous museums and galleries and hung up his own artwork next to that of the masters. In many of these places, his addition was not discovered until days later. Banksy somehow managed to do all this without getting caught by the police. In time, his actions attracted the attention of the news and the general public. While still creating his secretive street art, he also started to sell his works through a gallery. Famous actors and musicians became interested in collecting his works. Since his first works went on auction, Banksy and his art have only become more popular, more expensive, and more a part of public awareness. His fans want to follow his upward trajectory from the outlaw spraying walls in Bristol, England, during the 1990s to the artist whose work commands hundreds of thousands of dollars in the auction houses of Britain and America. Today, he has “bombed” cities from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. And he has moved from graffiti on gritty urban walls to paint on canvas, conceptual sculpture and even film, with the guileful documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Many people criticize Banksy for relying on easy satire, his emphasis on anonymity, and the lack of any proposals for the future, failing to contribute anything other than relatability to society. But it is undeniable that thanks to Banksy, ideas about what is or is not art have been revised, and this outsider art form has been brought inside today’s galleries and museums.