Banksy Pops Up in the South Bronx, Catching Up with Weekend Banksys [UPDATE 2]

Today’s Banksy is up in the South Bronx. This is the second time the artist has hit the borough, although his first Bronx work, which features a person shining Ronald McDonald’s shoes, was only unveiled there; it’s now roaming the streets, popping up in front of McDonald’s locations city-wide.

We haven’t yet been able to find the location of the new work, which seems like a cheeky mash-up of the type of graffiti he thinks you’d already find in the Bronx with the artist’s more typical style. We’ll update the post when we figure out where it is. (Update, 11:50am: Animal NY is reporting that it’s at 465 East 153rd Street, close to Elton Avenue.)

Weekend Banksys

(by Hrag Vartanian)

There’s been a suggestion that Saturday’s Staten Island Banksy is a reference to Un Chien Andalou, with the ants. It’s also quite ironic that the only Banksy people haven’t yet been able to find is the one in Staten Island — this falls into the stereotype of Staten Island not being really part of the psychic geography of New York.

On Saturday I arrived on the Upper West Side around 2 pm, and there was a friendly crowd around this, the 20th Banksy. People were taking pictures with the work in silly poses, particularly with their heads propped up under the sledge hammer.

I met a woman, Marietta Ganapin of Astoria, who was in the neighborhood to pick up a free helmet from the Department of Transportation. She said at roughly 12:30 pm a man tried to attack the graffiti. Another man stopped him, and then a third man, who was a friend of the would-be tagger, stepped in and asked, “What are you going to do, kill me?” I took this photo of the woman’s camera. The man who attempted to tag the work is in the red bandana, and his friend is also in there. She explained that he was unable to tag anything. She was obviously taken aback by the whole incident but was enjoying telling the story to anybody who would listen. There was something more slapstick about this Banksy than the others.

As might be expected, the Sunday Banksy didn’t last long. A man named Gerald Posley has a video on Instagram showing the state of the work this morning and the scene:

Update 2: Also, via Instagram, it looks like last Thursday’s Japonaiserie Banksy in East Williamsburg now has official “gallery hours,” thanks to the building owner, who somehow installed a storefront gate over the weekend. User Gabriella Burnham posted this; if you click through to the comments, you’ll see that the gate is up Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm. She writes, “geisha gallery hours are dictated by when my landlord’s optometry practice is open.”