Are his hearts still going out to him now? Banksy’s iconic graffiti “Girl with Red Balloon”.Image: keystone
analysis
He was the last art riddle in an unraveled world, now he is one person among many. Why the unmasking of Banksy leaves no one unmoved.
03/17/2026, 04:1203/17/2026, 04:12
Do I have to write an obituary now? The question has arisen since three hard-working journalists in a lengthy and expensive one Investigative research has uncovered the identity of the world’s most famous street artist.
An article published on March 13 by the Reuters agency ends a decade-long cat-and-mouse game, according to records and witnesses. Banksy is the graffiti artist Robin Gunningham, who was born in Bristol in 1973. After a name change his name is David Jones, he is now in his fifties, and the common name says it all: he is one of us. Point. There’s nothing to add. Not even from Banksy, who announced through his company “Pest Control”, which is responsible for work authorizations, that he had decided “not to say anything”. His Instagram profile also remained silent.
Investigative journalism has rarely caused so much anger and incomprehension among readers. In the comment columns one wonders how one could put so much money and energy into unmasking an artist who, with his humorous, political, humanistic messages, has raised the corners of even those who only see the bad everywhere. “This is a very rare case in which I reject investigative journalism,” writes a commentator on the “Zeit” online site.
Fans criticize the unmasking
The act is rejected there as “selfish” and “immoral”. Many sound like three-year-olds who have just been told that the Christ child is a clever but unfortunately invented marketing idea for Christianity. The logical reaction to this attack: defiance and defense: “I think Banksy is just Banksy,” writes a family man. In any case, his daughter believed for a long time that he was Banksy, he writes, alluding to the many suspicions and denials that have accompanied Banksy’s twenty-year career. Another commentator turns a blind eye to the facts: “I think it’s not proven who Banksy is.”
With Banksy, everything was always the other way around: While people all over the world cling to their belief that a “real” Rembrandt is hanging in their living room and get on the nerves of provenance researchers with this belief, people hung a Banksy on their wall precisely because he was a phantom.
He was a mystery, an unsolved picture puzzle in a world that leaves neither success nor luck to chance. His graffiti broke into our everyday lives, unexpectedly, original. The messages were so catchy that everyone could understand them, yet complex enough that one could derive intellectual enjoyment from them.
A Jesus among sworn disciples
With his humanistic and popular messages, Banksy seemed like a savior in a society that has turned away from all religion and metaphysics and in which too much privacy online damages the image of public figures. And his myth could not be damaged as long as he controlled his every public move and the sworn disciples around him, the initiates, remained silent about him and no Judas appeared on the scene.
Will Banksy soon trick us again like the judoka Putin in Ukraine?Image: keystone
Above all, Banksy, the phantom, perfectly fulfilled the expectations of online journalism: a new Banksy has appeared? We clicked on it. Banksy has his own work shredded at a Sotheby’s auction? We clicked on it. Now the very journalism whose mechanisms he used as an instrument for so long has completely exposed him in his overzealousness.
A Banksy work in London.Image: keystone
But does that mean Banksy’s art loses value? The Banksy brand has long been established on the art market, which the artist has often criticized. And his works, as the many angry reader comments attest, have a value for many people that obviously needs to be defended.
A rapid fall in prices on the art market is not to be expected. Rather, this man, who fooled passers-by, security personnel, gallery owners and journalists in a variety of disguises, has long since become one step ahead of us again. And while we’re still digging through Robin Gunningham’s past, the artist, like a Matryoshka figure, is already planning the next molt. And, like the little boy who bashed the judoka Putin in a graffiti that appeared in Ukraine in 2022, he will soon be fooling us again.