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The Star
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
New lighthouse artwork by Banksy discovered in Marseille: 'We love it'
This photograph shows a newly released artwork by street artist Banksy on the facade of a building in Marseille, southeastern France, on May 30, 2025. (Photo by Viken KANTARCI / AFP) A new mural depicting a lighthouse by world-famous street artist Banksy has appeared on a wall in the southern French city of Marseille, with AFP confirming its location on Friday. The anonymous artist known as Banksy revealed the new work on Instagram on Thursday but its location had not been disclosed. The words "I want to be what you saw in me" are stencilled in English across the black lighthouse set against a beige stucco wall. The mural is on quiet street near the Catalans beach not far from the city centre, according to an AFP correspondent. The lighthouse's painted shadow connects to one of the street bollards lining the sidewalk. A pedestrian takes a photograph of a newly released artwork by street artist Banksy on the facade of a building in Marseille, southeastern France, on May 30, 2025. — Photo: Viken KANTARCI/AFP Banksy – whose identity has not been publicly revealed – has crossed the globe for decades painting clandestine murals in public spaces, including in the occupied West Bank, London and Los Angeles. "It's fascinating that Banksy chose a city like Marseille, which has so much art, foreigners and life," said Esteban Roldan, a 42-year-old carpenter who came to see the artwork. "This is huge, Banksy in Marseille," added another local, Virginie Foucault. She said she was having lunch nearby. "I thought to myself, 'I'm not going to find it in Les Catalans,' and then, by chance – I never go there – there it is. We love it, we love it!" For Susan McAllister, a 60-year-old British teacher, "It was nice to have a little search to discover where it was. I'm happy I found it." "It's exciting, I'm happy he is exploring different places in different cities to display his art or her art," she said. "It might be a woman." Banksy is best known for hard-hitting murals, often using a distinctive stencilling style, that frequently pop up on buildings and walls. In recent years, he has kept the attention of the contemporary art world with his social commentaries and causes – migrants, opposition to Brexit, denunciation of Islamist radicals – while still stirring the excitement of the moneyed art markets. The artist boasts an A-list client lineup and has sold his works for tens of millions of pounds at auction since the early 2000s. – AFP
Forbes
3 days ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Banksy, AKA Robin Gunningham, Puts A Fine New Lighthouse In Marseilles
TOPSHOT - This photograph shows a newly released artwork by street artist Banksy on the facade of a building in Marseille, southeastern France, on May 30, 2025. (Photo by Viken KANTARCI / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by VIKEN KANTARCI/AFP via Getty Images) When Britain's ebullient graffitist/prankster/political gadfly Banksy drops a move, the best art sleuths throughout the kingdom drop whatever they are doing and rush to verify the what-where-when-who-how. As happened on Thursday, May 29, rather late in the news cycle, the hunt is ordinarily triggered by the reclusive artist himself and/or his assigns in the form of 'Pest Control,' his personal verification/art agency. In the case of the witty, tiny, 'extended shadow' of the lighthouse mural in Marseilles, pictured above, the post of a shot of the stark black, rather foreshortened lighthouse, fully in the Banksy style, went up on Banksy's own Instagram account (of all places). That threw the kennel gates opened for the predictable flood of the finest coursing hounds in the British press last night. By lunchtime Friday in London, some four hours ago at this writing, no less a pack of art sleuths than the BBC had confirmed the chosen — now quite elite — streetscape as the Rue Félix Fregier, just south of the city's legendary port. As with everything Banksy, siting and context are chief among the avenues of investigation into the man's intent and into his his hilariously ruthless nocturnal execution of his art. And so we have now, per Banksy's choice, the port of Marseilles: Forever a magnet for European organized crime, it the 20th century it grew to become the infamous sluice for much of Europe's heroin trafficking (cf. The French Connection). That revenue stream is still in spirited play in Marseilles and in other, smaller, less-well-policed ports of call on the Continent, but over the last decade a new, politically fraught focus of all coast guard and/or national police forces in the northern Mediterannean — be that the forces of Spain, Italy, Malta, France, or Greece — has shifted to the combat of trafficking in people. Significantly, both for this ongoing paradigm shift as well as for Banksy's choice of Marseilles as a site for the 2025 placing of the lighthouse grafitto, the charity/humanitarian group SOS Mediterannee operates its massive and very capable rescue ship, Ocean Viking, out of Marseilles. Further toward decoding that Banksy has slipped into Marseilles to start production in Summer 2025, this week the Ocean Viking has been particularly busy with the rescue of 116 refugees whose wooden boat had departed Libya but which had given up the ghost and began to capsize in the central Mediterranean between May 24-26. The situation was dire. The rescue had to be executed in stages, mostly at night, hampered by bad weather and lack of coordination among the responsible coast guard forces, Italian and Libyan, according to the documentation of SOS Mediterannee in Marseilles. The first two attempts by civilian vessels managed to get some of the refugees off. Called in late, the Ocean Viking got the remaining majority, some 52 people, including women and children. Three refugees drowned. Occasionally, the point of a Banksy stencil is the siting, sometimes amplified by a title. But in the case of this most recent Marseilles graffitto, as pictured top and below, there's an actual stencilled legend, Jenny Holzer-style, across the lighthouse, reading: 'I WANT TO BE WHAT YOU SAW IN ME.' In fairness, and since the man is so innately, thoroughly political, it's difficult to say precisely what Banksy has buzzing in the behive of his mind, but nothing — repeat, nothing — the man writes can be taken at face value. More safely, with this artist, we can attempt to nail down what the man is saying by assuming that a few thousand metric tons of irony is being poured over us within whatever it is that he actually, physically states. Thus, this week in Europe, on the cusp of the summer solstice and with it, the 'migrant season' kickoff for the police forces on the Med, neither those forces nor the lighthouses of Europe have exactly been welcoming beacons, as SOS Mediterannee has richly documented. The rest of the tumultous, deadly migrant season lies before us. Unclear, also, is whether this lone grafitto, ominous as it is, portends what we might call a Banksy 'residency,' as he has performed repeatedly in Palestine, for instance, stencilling various fraught locations as well as the vast Israeli wall. There, in Palestine, portentously, irony was in rich supply.
