Thank you Gilbert for giving our community one of our greatest gifts.
You are a trailblazer for #LGBTQ youth around the world.
You will be missed!
It Gets Better Project
Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 – March 31, 2017) was an openly gay American artist and civil rights activist who designed the rainbow flag in 1978. Baker’s flag became widely associated with LGBT rights causes, a symbol of pride that became ubiquitous in the decades since its debut.
The colors on the Rainbow Flag reflect the diversity of the LGBT community.
When Baker raised the first rainbow flags at San Francisco Pride (his group raised two flags at the Civic Center) on June 25, 1978, it had eight colors, each with a symbolic meaning:
Hot Pink: sexuality
Red: life
Orange: healing
Yellow: sunlight
Green: nature
Turquoise: magic/art
Blue: serenity/harmony
Violet: spirit
Banksy is back — this time with a deranged theme park mocking Disneyland
Dismaland is a temporary art project organized by street artist Banksy, constructed in the seaside resort town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. The secretive pop-up exhibition at the Tropicana, a disused lido, is “a sinister twist on Disneyland” that opened during the weekend of 21 August 2015. Banksy has described it as a “family theme park unsuitable for children“.
Banksy created ten new works and funded the construction of the exhibition himself. The show features 58 artists of the 60 Banksy originally invited to participate, and is scheduled to run until 27 September 2015, for 36 days, with 4,000 tickets available for purchase per day.
Now a perennial tradition, like the Super Bowl Halftime Show or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, elusive artist Banksy is back with his latest spectacle — a dystopic “bemusement park,” aptly titled “Dismaland.”
Likely you’ve already seen pictures of its dilapidated castle and polluted waterways, staffed by glum employees whose uniforms read “dismal” across the backs. The human condition is very sad indeed.
Nearly two years ago I wrote about Banksy’s immensely popular month-long residency in New York City, during which he produced a new work each day for one month in the five boroughs.
I concluded then by saying:
“Banksy’s popularity endures simply because he’s preaching to the choir. There’s an insatiable demand for his brand and people are happy getting what they want. They also like feeling smart, and his overwrought images continue to be rooted in the same, familiar liberal values that people are all too eager to agree with.”
Banksy’s now ubiquitous anti-consumerist and anti-authoritarian tropes are fully exhausted in this most recent packaging and Dismaland is, quite literally, art about nothing.
Consumerism is bad, Disney is evil, advertising is dishonest — we got it.
Banksy is a pseudonymous British graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter.
His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.
Banksy’s work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris.
Banksy says that he was inspired by “3D”, a graffiti artist who later became a founding member of Massive Attack, an English musical group.
Banksy displays his art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces.
Banksy has been secretly assembling his own Disneyland-inspired creation in this West Country seaside town, and it’s not exactly the happiest place on Earth.
Dismaland, which opened to the public Saturday, August 22, 2015, and sits on the 2.5 acre site of the Tropicana lido, is the shadowy artist’s first “bemusement park,” and it’s packed full of subversive artworks.
It Is What It Is 