Wall and Peace

Anyone who's never seen graffiti artist Banksy's work before, you need to run, not walk (or whatever the web-surfing equivalent of running is) to his website here. He is a genius. I've never been anything like a graffiti enthusiast, but he really makes me believe in the medium. He snuck his work into the Louvre in Paris, and glued it onto the wall; it was an altered painting of an old duke or baron or something, holding a can of spray paint, painting peace signs on a brick wall. It stayed up for 2 days - that's awesome. He took a trip to Palestine and painted some amazing works on the segregation wall right in the middle of Palestine. The wall has armed lookout posts every 300 ft. or so, and is very well protected, yet he somehow managed to paint these huge pictures on the wall. One of them made it look like there was a hole in the wall, and on the other side was revealed a beautiful, idyllic looking beach. Genius! There was this hilarious quote underneath that went something like "Onlooker: You make the wall beautiful; Banksy: Thanks; Onlooker: We don't want it to be beautiful. We hate this wall. Go away." One of his particularly poignant pictures (not in Palestine, but somewhere in London, where he lives and primarily works) was a faux-street sign that had apache helicopters chasing a crowd of men, women, and children, and said "Americans Working Overhead" at the bottom. It's an interesting look at global perception of America right now. Anyways...he's an amazing artist, and you should definitely check out his work. One of the most amazing things about this enigma known as Banksy is that no one knows who he is! He's done thousands of pictures (I'm sure there's a slang term for graffiti pictures that I'm just not hip enough to know about...) all over the world, hung his work in museums in Paris, New York, and London, and really has a huge cult following, and yet only a small handful of people really even know who he is. I don't know about you, but I'm intrigued...