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This week, contemporary art’s worst-kept secret was exposed when street artist Banksy was revealed to be 52-year-old Robin Gunningham, thanks to an 8,000-word investigation by Reuters. This would have been big news had the Mail on Sunday not got there first nearly two decades ago. Still, it made headlines.
The previous week, thousands of book lovers expressed their grief at the announcement on X of the death of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, supposedly by her translator Ann Goldstein. In fact, it was the work of infamous Italian hoaxer Tommaso Debenedetti, who had set up an account in Goldstein’s name, and who pulled the same trick in 2022.
Banksy and Ferrante share the paradoxical distinction of being the most famous anonymous artists today. Ten years ago, Ferrante was subjected to a similar exposé when an Italian journalist went through her finances and concluded that she must be an Italian translator. Earlier theories have posited various writers and publishers, that she is a man or even a group of men.
A real-life detective story is hard to resist. The gap left by the absence of a “true” Banksy or Ferrante is one that people have been all too keen to fill. But such investigations reveal more about our obsession with fame and authorship than about the artists. Banksy’s lawyer argues that they “violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger”. Ferrante has said that to relinquish her anonymity would be “very painful”.
For Banksy, subterfuge was a practical necessity: street art is illegal. But this enigmatic cover has allowed him to mock the art establishment, talk truth to power and become a national treasure (in 2017 Girl With Balloon was voted Britain’s favourite artwork). He has also left his mark on the global stage from Palestine in 2005 to Ukraine in 2022. Whether as a protection from prosecution or a highly successful publicity stunt, his anonymity has become integral to the iconoclastic Banksy brand.
For Ferrante, it is an artistic choice, liberating her from “the anxiety of notoriety”, as she put it, and the publicity demands of modern publishing. But it is hardly new. Jane Austen, the Brontës, Georges Eliot and Sand, all published anonymously or under a male pen name because writing books was considered unladylike. As Virginia Woolf wrote: “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” As part of their campaign to rewrite art history, the anonymous feminist collective the Guerrilla Girls sign their posters with names of female artists such as Frida Kahlo or Alice Neel.
True Banksy or Ferrante fans do not care about their real identities. On the contrary, they collude in the mystery. Like children believing in Father Christmas, we hang on to the idea of Banksy the rebel artist who appears at night and leaves a surprise in the morning. Similarly, we admire the purity of a novelist who writes without public recognition. Ferrante’s fiction feels so intimate because there is no “world-famous author”.
Such radical self-effacement is rare in a culture of exposure and celebrity. An artist’s decision to remain anonymous should be respected. Creativity is one of the last great human mysteries. The work must be allowed to speak for itself. As Banksy has said: “If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask.” His mask is his art – let’s not destroy it.
