Banksy "It's (L.A.) The Easiest Place In The World To Rent An Elephant"

"I STARTED painting graffiti when I was about 14 or so, and people always ask, yer know, what makes you do it?

"But the question was always really, why would you not do it?"

These are the words of one of the world's most famous artists, and most elusive characters.

Bristol-born Banksy is hugely popular worldwide, his guerilla-style graffiti his calling card.

Yet for 18 years he has succeeded where The Stig failed - and kept his identity totally secret.

Who is he? That's the question on the lips of everyone from trendy youngsters to the snobbish art world elite.

For the first time ever, the street artist has spoken at length about his amazing rise from a spray-can-toting youth, to someone whose work sells for £1million a time to Hollywood's A-listers.

And The Sun is the first to bring you the interview.

His openness coincides with the DVD release of his film Exit Through The Gift Shop on Monday.

Explaining where it all began, Banksy says: "You're 14, 15. It's a big world out there, you wanna make your mark, and no one listens to a word you say. Whereas, yer know, one night, one spray can, all of a sudden people notice you."

Banksy was plugged into the trendy street scene, and gives a nod to fellow Bristolian, 3D from dance music outfit Massive Attack.

"There was always a lot of graffiti in my home town growing up, urmm, I think 3D from Massive Attack had brought it back with him off tour in America and he'd been painting all over the city.

"I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it. I always used to get things too close together or too far apart and it used to take me ages.

"So I had to come up with a way of making it quicker, otherwise I was gonna get nicked."

The works that catapulted Banksy into the spotlight almost all involved black and white stencil drawings, such as the iconic image of two policemen snogging.

"I mean they're very efficient, stencils. You get to put something up in very little time and it's hard to mess it up.

"When I moved to London I just carried on painting. I never saw that there was anything bad in it.

"You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something.

"And I always felt that it was all right to answer back a little bit, I suppose. That the city shouldn't just be a one-way conversation "I didn't see why you'd settle for just walls. So I started vandalising statues and that led to vandalising parks. It just kept going really.

Elephantastic ... decorated live elephant used for his LA exhibition

"So I'd come up with this idea of painting graffiti over oil paintings instead of on walls. And I was completely convinced it was a genius idea nobody had had before."

Banksy began producing his own versions of classic paintings, his most famous being Monet's Water Lily Pond with discarded shopping trolleys under the bridge. In 2003 he snuck into London's Tate Britain gallery and added one of his creations.

He explained: "I thought, 'How do I stop people from stealing this idea?' And I reckoned the best thing to do was to get it hanging up in the Tate with my name next to it.

Maid to order ... stencilwork and skill are combined in his iconic street art creations

Rex

"But obviously if you were waiting for them to come to you, you'd be waiting quite a long time. So I thought I'd just go in the Tate and stick it up.It was funny. I was going to all these galleries and I wasn't looking at the art, I was looking at the blank spaces between the art.

"So I thought it was probably about time to have a gallery show. But I don't really like galleries, so I, er, ended up renting this warehouse instead."

One of the most memorable moments in Banksy's career was when he sabotaged the launch of Paris Hilton's music album.

Opportunistic ... Banksy's work uses the urban environment

He managed to replace 500 copies with his own CD in September 2006. On the cover he superimposed a picture of a dog's head over Paris's and added a sticker that said it included tracks Why Am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?

For the first time he explains how he pulled it off. "I'd been talking to the DJ Danger Mouse about trying to vandalise some pop act or hijack somebody who was in the charts.

"And then suddenly we found out that Paris Hilton was going to make a record. And we had like three weeks to turn it around before the CD was in the shops.

"It was an idea that was just waiting for Paris Hilton to happen. I messed around with the visuals then Danger Mouse sort of turned the album into this one long track where she just repeats herself over and over again.

"We packaged it up, we put it in the cases and then me and two other guys split up and went across the country reverse shoplifting.

"We put out 500 of 'em, which I think probably turned out to be a fair percentage of what she actually sold. I mean, what can they do you for? Littering? Maybe? I guess?"

Just a short time later Banksy caused controversy by staging an exhibition in LA that included a live painted elephant.

He says: "I guess I fancied going somewhere a little bit warmer. So we ended up in Los Angeles and, yer know, it's this really glamorous town that also has this dirty side to it.

"But... above anything else it's the easiest place in the world to rent an elephant." Today Banksy's works can fetch £1million, with Brad Pitt famously picking up a piece at a London auction with a phone bid in 2007.

Small pieces regularly command six figures. But it wasn't always that way.

Banksy says: "When the paintings suddenly started going for, like, really big money it definitely weirded me out, and I kind of went away to the middle of nowhere and I stopped making any more paintings. But... er... the whole time the auction houses were just selling paintings that I'd done years before and sold for not much money. Or paintings that I traded for a haircut or, yer know, an ounce of weed and they were going for like 50 grand.

"It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.

"But I can't help feeling it was a bit easier when all I had to compete against was a dustbin down an alley rather than, you know, a Gainsborough or something."

Despite success beyond his wildest dreams, Bansky remains endearingly modest about his work.

"Graffiti's always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off. I mean, most of it is just designed to look good from a moving vehicle. Not necessarily in the history books.

"But maybe all art is about just trying to live on for a bit.

"I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time."

If this is true it will be a very, very long time before Bansky finally gets to rest.

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