Banking on Banks

An anonymous tip off sent me this in the morning - Banks Violette's old painted guitar fragments from his hardcore days before the art world is on sale on ebay. I don't know how I feel about this. There's something vampiric about that cashing in process. Especially when it's a work that hasn't been created as an art object (brings up that old idea whether a work of art is so because the artist's sees as such - or in this case the consumer).

Still it kind of fits with the ideas behind Banks' work - in fact even testing his arguments. In the interview I did with him for Hell Bound, he talked about the idea of faith of being something transformative.

“That there’s an imminent value in that thing – in the wafer or the coffin. You direct your faith towards it and that makes it something more. And if you have a whole community doing that, then you have a religion or a subculture or you have art.”

Maybe if some art geek wants to see this old broken instrument as art then it counts...