Banksy Did Something

It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that Banksy, world-famous street artist and Urban Outfitters-brand enfant terrible, is at it again.

CityBeat reports that an Ohio artist known pseudonymously as Frizk claims Banksy reached out via Instagram DM to request that they hang a small painting of a half-peeled banana in the middle of the Mamma Andersson: Memory Banks exhibit at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center in December. "The banana had no meaning at all, but when people came up and brought meaning to the piece, it proved that the modern art industry is a scam," Frizk told CityBeat, in what sounds like an installation-art thesis description any Bard professor would hand back with a red-pen-scrawled "Needs work."

"Honestly, I'd rather have the art museum just hang it up then have them give it back to me," Banksy allegedly told Frizk via DM. Sadly, his dreams were crushed when the painting was removed shortly after its installation, with CAC's communication director Joshua Mattie saying in a statement, ""The painting was in place for a matter of minutes before it was discovered. Visitors who claimed to be ‘vlogging’ about their visit to the museum asked the guard on duty for a tour of the exhibition and it was discovered as they returned to the opposite end of the gallery." (Art world: beware the vloggers!)

Banksy engineered the stunt to "prove a point about perspective," but as The Observer's Helen Holmes notes, the show Banksy disrupted featured the work of a lesser-known Nordic female artist; not exactly the target most people envision when assigning blame about the current state of the art world. At least he's not shredding paintings this time?