If You Take Street Art Off the Street, Is It Still Art?
If You Take Street Art Off the Street, Is It Still Art?
Fans Cut Mural Linked to Banksy From Wall; One Man's Rescue, Another's Heist
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DETROIT—Secured inside a wooden crate and locked in a warehouse is a painting that could cement this city's reputation as a showcase for avant-garde art. Or as a wasteland waiting to be picked apart.
It's a stenciled image on a 7-foot-by-7-foot slab of cinder-block wall, showing a small boy holding a can and paintbrush.
Next to the boy are the words: "I remember when all this was trees."
The painting came from the grounds of the old Packard auto plant, one of the city's infamous industrial ruins. And it is believed to be the work of the mysterious street artist Banksy, whose graffiti-like renderings adorn the lanes of London and the walls of the West Bank. His ironic urban images, or "tags," have produced world-wide fame and led him to create an Oscar-nominated documentary.
