Inside the arrest that led to Banksy’s possible unmasking decades later

NEW YORK – Toting a portable supply of paint cans, the artist slipped onto the roof before dawn and began mischievously remodelling a fashion billboard.

This was late in the summer of 2000 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, then a proudly transgressive neighbourhood. Prostitution and S&M – or sadomasochism – leather bars co-existed alongside food distributors emitting a foul stench into the air and blood and grease onto the cobblestone streets.

The figure defacing the billboard stood out, at least to the two sex workers eyeing him from the street.

“They thought he was doing something anti-gay,” said Ms Ivy Brown, the gallerist who asked the daring artist, an acquaintance, to deface the billboard. Ms Brown rented space in the building that the billboard stood on top of.

But before the artist could finish, the police showed up and arrested him for felony criminal mischief.

It was a routine arrest. He was arraigned downtown in Manhattan Criminal Court at 100 Centre Street and signed a handwritten confession detailing his defacing of the billboard after a night out drinking.

The signature on the confession was scrawled so sloppily that the last name was indecipherable. But typed into accompanying court papers, the name was plain as day: Robin Gunningham.

The authorities did not know it, but at least according to a recent investigation by Reuters, they had just caught Banksy, who would go on to become the most elusive and successful street artist of the 21st century, with work selling for tens of millions of dollars.

For decades, Banksy’s closely guarded anonymity has captivated the art world nearly as much as his work.

Once his name was entered into New York’s justice system, it became part of the public record and available for anyone to find – but only if someone knew where to look. And after 26 years, somebody did.

The obscure court file was tracked down by Reuters, whose lengthy probe last week leaned heavily on the arrest as confirmation that Banksy is Gunningham, born in Bristol, England, in 1973.

By sleuthing out the arrest report and court filing, Reuters effectively confirmed on a theory circulating since a 2008 report by The Mail on March 15 and advanced by other investigations.

Banksy’s representatives have long denied that he is Robin Gunningham, or anyone else for that matter. Pest Control, an agency that authenticates his work, said in an e-mail that neither it nor the artist nor his long-time lawyer, Mr Mark Stephens, would comment.

Requests sent to Mr Stephens’ law office in London were not returned, but he told Reuters that the artist did “not accept that many of the details contained within your inquiry are correct”.

The legal file from 2000 provides the most concrete evidence to date regarding Banksy’s identity.

The arrest was perhaps a rookie mistake. At the time, he was a fledgling artist still finding his voice. He had only recently begun cultivating the street-art style and image that would make him famous, using a series of aliases that included Robin Banks, Mr Banks and eventually Banksy.

He had one thing working in his favour, however: At the time of the arrest, the police did not know who he was. “He hadn’t really made a name for himself, at least not in the States,” said Mr Steve Mona, commander of the New York Police Department’s vandal squad at the time.

“He certainly had not risen to the level of being on our radar,” said Mr Mona, who is now retired and could not recall the 26-year-old arrest. “Either we weren’t notified, or if we were, we passed on it, which would have likely been because what he’d done wasn’t a tag, something we could ID or tie to other incidents.”

Without that, Banksy’s billboard caper was most likely considered a garden-variety graffiti charge, a bit of booze-fuelled mischief.

The initial felony charge was reduced, and after five days of community service, Banksy put the arrest behind him, his anonymity intact.

‘A humorous adjustment’

The building at 675 Hudson Street, in the heart of the Meatpacking District, is known as the Little Flatiron Building for its triangular footprint, which is similar to its more famous counterpart on 23rd Street.

The structure is now surrounded by the trappings of tourist-friendly Manhattan: high-end boutiques, sleek hotels and an Apple store. The High Line and Chelsea Market are also nearby.

The district was a far less accommodating neighbourhood in 2000. The Little Flatiron was smack in the middle of a nightlife underworld – inside the building were the clubs Manhole and Hellfire – and it was surrounded by edgy galleries.

Ms Brown, Banksy’s acquaintance, lived and ran a gallery in the building. In an interview this week, she said she had come to know him through a mutual art-world friend.

During New York Fashion Week in 2000, she said, she told Banksy about an awful billboard that had recently gone up on the roof of her building.

It was an advertisement for Marc Jacobs clothing that showed a young man’s face with the tag line, “Boys Love Marc Jacobs”.

“The whole thing bothered me,” Ms Brown recalled. “I thought it defaced the building.” She hated the sign and asked Banksy to paint something – anything – over it.

“I said: ‘Yo, B, I got this thing up on the roof that has really got my goat. Do you want to do something up there?’”

“He said, ‘Yeah, let me check it out’,” she said, and he spent the next several days hanging out at the Gaslight Lounge across the street, staring at the sign.

“I thought, this is what he does. He scouts out his location,” said Ms Brown, who gave him a set of keys and left the artistic decisions to him. “The things he came up with were brilliant. I just trusted him to make it something cool.”

Up to this point, Banksy was focusing on street art; he was less known for the distinctive stencil style that would make him famous.

The court filing is a window into Banksy’s early years in New York City. He told the authorities he was staying at the Carlton Arms Hotel, a Manhattan spot famous for letting artists stay for free if they decorated the rooms.

As damage to the billboard exceeded US$1,500 – the legal records put the repair cost at US$1,742.82 – the authorities initially charged Banksy with a felony. That was eventually reduced, with the fine and fees totalling US$310.

Mr Robert Clarke, a night porter at the Carlton Arms when Banksy began staying there, said he befriended Banksy in 1995.

“They must have been kicking themselves that they nicked him, and he’s that well known now,” he said in a phone interview from Bristol, England.

New York helped the artist develop his distinct style and stealth method, Mr Clarke said, to the point that he could execute a stencilled piece in seconds and reappear down the block waiting for you to catch up.

Ms Brown said that after the police caught up with Banksy that summer night in 2000, she got a call from a detective saying: “We have someone who says he’s a guest of yours, and he’s doing something on your roof.”

The court file shows Banksy had to surrender his passport before posting US$1,500 bail. He was in custody only for the morning and was released by midday.

“A few hours later, he’s out, which I found amazing,” Ms Brown said. “He called and he said, ‘I’m out, and I’m walking up Grand Street.’”

She recalled Banksy’s explanation for getting released so quickly: He had charmed the female judge.

“Part of his art, I realised, was getting out of trouble,” she said. NYTIMES