Yup... still not helping.. who is Banksy? All I'm getting right now is some gangmember guy that likes to throw things :/
Banksy is a street-artist with a penchant for putting up the graphical equivalent of satirical one-liners in appropriate/inappropriate places. Some of his work is just meh, like he's just phoning it in, while other pieces just make me laugh with glee even as I realise he's obliquely pointing out something that's pretty fucking sad, both as a well- (and audaciously) placed sign of dissent as well as an attempt to laugh at something to that would otherwise make you cry.
I think that some of his most highly-valued pieces are indeed overrated pieces of absurdist or quasi-philosophical blah. That is to say, I wouldn't pay that much for them if I had the money
paying millions of dollars to purchase these pieces is kinda like buying a tiger for your Beverly Hills villa. That's not where it belongs and it's just uglified by your purchase ya tasteless tit
But, with that said... who am I to judge? Different artists express different things in different ways, and each of us find different things to appreciate in their works for different but mostly legitimate reasons. We're not all going to appreciate the same things in the same ways for the same reasons. I often greatly enjoy watching immigrant comedians whose humor is centered on ethnic/cultural differences and the absurd experiences of immigrants in Sweden. So do many of my non-immigrant friends, but I suspect I enjoy this kind of comedy more--and for very different reasons. Others don't enjoy them at all, but enjoy comedy that I can't stand, most likely because that sort of boring comedy speaks to them in a way it doesn't speak to me.
I like some of the stencils Banksy put up on the West Bank barrier (such as the one that inspired the Mario t-shirt), even though I realize that reactions were mixed:
But I also simpler less audacious ones: