Now Banksy’s really made it in the art world. He’s been faked.

About a year ago the British tagger artist Banksy made a splash in L.A. that included a show of his work and a spree of spray-painted stencil tags in the usual gritty urban places. I wrote about the pink elephant and rat, two animals that played important roles in his visit. (See blog of 9-23-06.) Just recently, a whistleblower has outed a rat who may represent a pink elephant in the art and eBay scenes.

Banksy has used East London’s POW, Pictures on Walls, to publish prints of his work. Reading their FAQs tells us they are “a loose collection of alcoholics and show-offs,” just the edgy, nasty, anti-social bunch that would appeal to an artist who revels in anti-everything. Banksy’s frequently stenciled rat image signifies society’s outsiders who, looking in, want to expose everything that’s wrong, selfish, greedy, and decadent with our culture. But a whistleblower ratted on POW.

It seems unauthorized prints of Banksy’s work were being illegally and fraudulently sold on eBay, where not only were forged prints listed, but “shill” bids were put in that artificially increased the forgeries’ prices. To protect its buyers from such frauds, eBay’s rules have strong consequences, including account cancellation, forfeiture of fees, and referral to law enforcement. Between 25 and 100 people may have purchased the fake Banksy prints. How embarrassing for POW whose slangy policy says, “The manufacture and sale of prints on POW is in fact an extremely accountable process.” Yeah, right, this from a company that describes their facility as a “shit-hole” selling prints, “direct over the internet without the usual art world sham.”

So who’s the rat, and who’s the elephant here?

Is the “elephant in the room” that no one wants to confront eBay? By writing rules of enforcement about fraud, don’t they reveal there’s a scam problem? Is it the print studio POW who stressed they had been victims as well, yet seem to revel as the get-even outsiders who couldn’t “be embraced by the proper art world?”

And who’s the rat? The whistleblower who exposed the fraud in his or her own studio, or the selfish, greedy employees who made out by picking eBay buyers’ pockets? Or could it be Banksy, symbolized by the ever-vigilant, repugnant rat, whose art, one way or another, is still pointing out “what a horrible place the world its?”

Controversy at Tres Zapotes: The Olmec Head Caught in the Middle

I have a news alert out through Google for anything Olmec. Ever since the discovery of the enigmatic Cascajal tablet that most likely is proof that the Olmec had writing (See my blog of Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2006), I’ve been looking for news that Pre-Columbian scholars had cracked its code. So it was with great expectations that I opened my latest alert. High expectations were not a good thing that day. They only served to enrage me when I read the story.

A group of touring Afro-Americans from “a university on wheels” was raving about the great epiphany they experienced when they witnessed the famous Olmec monumental heads at the museum of Tres Zapotes, located in the Olmec heartland along Mexico’s Gulf Coast.

“Praise be to Allah!” the article began, for Allah had helped them reconnect with evidence that ancient Africans had not only discovered America, but had been instrumental in the development of an advanced civilization that the later Maya owed a debt to. It was just as their leader, the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, had revealed to them in his divine teachings.

This story is sad in so many ways. It is a litany of misunderstanding, ignorance, racial profiling, stereotyping, and rejection. It speaks of disingenuous leadership that fails to provide a sound foundation for the cultural identity of its community.

Misunderstanding and ignorance are two sides of the same coin. They are based on the inability or unwillingness to ask questions and test the answers. Cited again and again as proof of the African influence on the Olmecs is that the Olmec heads have thick lips and broad noses. Africans have thick lips and broad noses. The tourists are convinced--the Olmec trace their origins to Africa. Yet every day I see a Latino busboy in my local restaurant who, if wearing a ballplayer’s helmet, would look like an Olmec head.

This is not to say that African people NEVER traveled to the New World before Columbus. The coasts of Africa and Mexico are closer to each other than North America and Europe are. Surely seafarers and traders could have followed the ocean currents to the opposite shore. But to give possible seafarers credit for establishing the Olmec civilization is an insult to the indigenous people we know existed in the area for centuries before the Olmec flowering. In this sense, the proponents of this theory do reverse racial discrimination, being unwilling to credit these indigenous people with the capacity to form advanced societies complete with a complex social organization, monumental sculpture, architecture, and mathematics. Where, for example, do they show examples of the bar and dot numerical system being used in Africa? Why are there no monumental stone heads found in Africa? When will we see the scholarship that might also tie remote African ancestors to the ancient cultures in Cambodia and the Philippines, since their sculptures and facial features also share the thick lips and broad noses of the Africans? How would these people react to the idea that their accomplishments were not entirely their own, but were influence by African seamen?

We hear a lot today about stereotyping and racial profiling, and the accompanying outrage it evokes. But it seems that we have selective targets for our outrage, and African-Americans in Tres Zapotes aren’t in range.

Perhaps the saddest part of this whole story is the implied rejection of the wonderful traditional art and culture of the peoples of West Africa, that rich, fertile environment that brought forth the ancient tradition that was the true heartland of African-American culture. Rather than celebrating weak links to Olmec and ancient Egyptian civilizations (King Tut shown as black), why isn’t there a celebration of these profoundly spiritual, artistically rich, and culturally relevant West African peoples? How familiar are these African--American tourists with the history and art of Benin? The Bambara? The Yoruba? The Bakuba? Where are the African-American scholars and researchers who should be revealing the secrets of the Nok people, or excavating the ancient cities of Nubia? Why aren’t they working to understand the astonishing metal-working of the ancient Igbo-Ukwu people in Nigeria. This comment should spur their interest: “The high level of technical proficiency of artwork found at Igbo-Ukwu raised questions about its origins with some historians theorizing foreign influence or phantom voyagers.” Foreign influence and phantom voyagers in the African heartland? Why isn’t an Afro-American scholar pursuing this challenge to the creative and technical abilities of the indigenous Igbo-Ukwu people?

It isn’t because of lack of educational opportunities. Every black linebacker on Monday night football will proudly tell you what college or university he graduated from. Perhaps this sad state is the fault of the African-American community’s leadership which seems satisfied with smiling platitudes, as when the author of my offending article boasted that The Honorable Elijah Mohammed has also taught that the “Original man searched for trillions of years to find a mystery God.” Humm. Trillions?

So beware, you Bortox beauties with your luscious, inflated lips. You too could become another branch of the African diaspora.