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You know what graffiti is, right? Have you ever heard of Banksy? Neither am I, but today I found an article about both, and have a hard time comprehending the logic of the throng, which admires and promotes this thing and this man.

 
The work by the graffiti artist Banksy is offered on eBay for close to $2milion. The “painting” is still on the wall in London, is being protected by the building’s owner, who gave his permission to the artist to do the work. The lucky bidder will have to find the way (and the funds) to remove it from the original placement. Read a short article and see the picture here: www.bornrich.org 

 
Who is Banksy?
“The New Yorker” published a very informative article about Banksy in May of 2007:
“Banksy is a household name in England—the Evening Standard has mentioned him thirty-eight times in the past six months—but his identity is a subject of febrile speculation. This much is certain: around 1993, his graffiti began appearing on trains and walls around Bristol; by 2001, his blocky spray-painted signature had cropped up all over the United Kingdom, eliciting both civic hand-wringing and comparisons to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Vienna, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Paris followed, along with forays into pranksterism and more traditional painting, but Banksy has never shed the graffitist’s habit of operating under a handle. His anonymity is said to be born of a desire—understandable enough for a “quality vandal,” as he likes to be called—to elude the police. For years now, he has refused to do face-to-face interviews.”

 
“Confronted with a blank surface, he will cover it with scenes of anti-authoritarian whimsy: Winston Churchill with a Mohawk, two policemen kissing, a military helicopter crowned by a pink bow. Typically crafting his images with spray paint and cardboard stencils, Banksy is able to achieve a meticulous level of detail.”

 
“…At a London antiwar demonstration in 2003, he distributed signs that read “I Don’t Believe In Anything. I’m Just Here for the Violence.” Later, he produced revisionist oil paintings (Mona Lisa with a yellow smiley face, a pastoral landscape surrounded by crime-scene tape) and, disguised in a trenchcoat and fake beard, installed them, respectively, in the Louvre and the Tate. For the Natural History Museum, it was Banksus militus vandalus, a taxidermy rat equipped with a miniature can of spray paint.”

 
“Whoever he is, Banksy revels in the incongruities of his persona. “The art world is the biggest joke going,” he has said. “It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.” Although he once declared that “every other type of art compared to graffiti is a step down,” in recent years he has produced his share of traditional works on canvas and on paper, suitable for hanging indoors, above a couch.”

 
His paintings were sold at Sotheby’s. The guy’s reaction? Here: “Ralph Taylor, a specialist in the Sotheby’s contemporary-art department, said of Banksy, “He is the quickest-growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time.” Banksy responded to the Sotheby’s sale by posting a painting on his Web site. It featured an auctioneer presiding over a crowd of rapt bidders, with the caption “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.”
Source: www.newyorker.com 

 
In San Francisco and most of the civilized word, this kind of art is punished by law, and the owner of the defaced building must remove the image himself.
“On October 19, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd sponsored an ordinance to require that property owners remove graffiti from their property within 30 days of receiving a notice of violation from the Department of Public Works. Under the ordinance, property owners are required to pay the cost of the graffiti abatement or pay a $500 fine. They can appeal a violation notice, and if they don’t have the money or resources to paint over the graffiti, they can request that DPW either provides them with paint or paint over the graffiti for them…“We’re spending $2 million a year on graffiti abatement,”…”
Source: news.sfobserver.com

 
The following excerpt is from one of the city’s documents about the prosecution of one of the graffiti artist’s:
“…Romero, 20, agreed to a court-ordered injunction barring him from possessing instruments such as spray paint and markers defined as “graffiti tools” under state law; forbidding him from trespassing or being within 100 yards of intersections where he is known to have committed graffiti vandalism; and requiring him to observe a curfew within City limits between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., with limited exceptions.  The injunctions will remain in effect for the next 60 months.  Romero also stipulated to pay civil penalties, fees and costs to the City and County of San Francisco totaling $20,000, with the City agreeing to waive half that amount as an incentive for payment provided Romero makes regular payments totaling $10,000 within the next 48 months.
An additional provision of the stipulation requires Romero to complete a public service announcement at the direction of the Department of Public Works to warn others of the consequences of committing graffiti vandalism in San Francisco.”
Source: www.sfgov.org

 
What is Graffiti? 

 
Wikipedia offers a few results for the meanings of this word:
1. “Graffiti (disambiguation) refers to the vandalistic scratching, scrawling, or painting of messages or artwork onto property that does not belong to the artist.” Graffiti 1
2. It also offers in-depth explanation of the same from originating as an art in the ansient times and ending up as a modern graffiti. Graffiti 2

 
Reference material for you: 
About Banksy: wikipedia.org

 
Collection of his works: www.artofthestate.co.uk