Banksy, the mysterious English graffiti artist who makes apparently mind-blowing art about how Disney is evil or something, might have had his identity revealed this week.
Banksy has long been suspected to be the musician Robert Del Naja, a founding member of the celebrated trip-hop band Massive Attack. And in a recent interview about the commodification of graffiti, British DJ Goldie accidentally referred to Banksy as “Robert” before quickly dropping the subject. Damn Goldie!
An investigation by journalist Craig Williams last year concluded that Del Naja was probably the ringleader of a group of artists who go by Banksy by tracking new artworks in locations where Massive Attack was performing. Del Naja was also formerly a graffiti artist before making music and has said before that he is a close friend of Banksy’s several times. Which, word of advice, if you don’t want to be discovered as the man behind Banksy maybe don’t go around talking about how buddy-buddy you are with him? Just a thought.
And to think, all this time I thought it was probably one of the Gallagher brothers!
Correction: a previous version of this post stated that the Daily Mail investigated Banksy’s identity. In fact, it was journalist Craig Williams. Jezebel regrets the error.