What's The Deal With Banksy?

Banksy, the anonymous British street artist is causing a bit of a stir as of late over in New York City. It seems they're not really used to the political and social commentary with which Banksy uses his art to portray. You see graffiti is just graffiti in New York it seems, and New Yorkers like it that way, taking every chance they get to shit on his parade.

He's over there for the whole month of October for a bit of a gorilla marketing job for his new Better Out Than In show, aiming to create a new piece of art every day and up until today they've not been that into it, that is until Banksy revealed his latest... a tribute to the Twin Towers in Tribeca.

The other day he gave over $250,000 worth of paintings to a local street vendor to sell at $60 a piece and only five people decided to splashed out on what they believed to be fake prints.

This sort of behaviour might be new to Americans, but this side of the pond Banksy's legacy goes back a lot further. Here is some of the mischief he has gotten himself into over the years.

He managed to get himself back on an episode of the Simpsons, the one where bart essentially was Banksy. He even designed the opening credit sequence for Matt Groening and crew.

He's been over to the West bank to stir up a bit of controversy, like when he painted this dove, the symbol of peace, with a bullet proof vest on. We did say political commentary and satire was his forté though didn't we.

He made the journey to America before back in 2008 to mark the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He stepped on a few toes by accidentally doing some work on the side of a crack den, which was consequently painted over in less then 2 hours, I'd imagine  they didn't want the added attention of having a famous artwork on the wall.

Wayyy back in 2004 he got in a lot of trouble by hijacking a shipment of Paris Hilton CDs on their way to HMV in Bristol and swapping them with photoshopped versions depicting Paris naked.. As if we hadn't all seen that before.

This one caused a real stir, at the turn of the century Banksy designed these £10 notes depicting Princess Diana's face instead of Queen Elizabeths. Bit of a hidden conspiracy theory in their I'd imagine?

Is this Banksy? According to various news sources this photo was taken in Jamaica and appears to show Banksy setting up before doing to work.

Even still I wonder where all the money goes from his sales? Or how someone like Blur, The Simpsons, or Bono gets in contact with him? For a wanted 'International Art Terrorist' he can't be that difficult to track down, can he?