Despite being arguably the world’s most famous living artist, Banksy has miraculously managed to maintain the secret of his real identity. Now that a U.K. greeting card company is suing the elusive godfather of graffiti, that could be about to change. Maybe.
First reported by the Daily Mail, the defamation lawsuit is being brought in the High Court of Justice in London against “The Artist known as ‘Banksy’” and the company that authenticates his artworks, Pest Control Office Limited. According to the report, the case could finally lead to Banksy being unmasked after an intriguing name was included in the suit.
The Mail claims that the artist Robin Gunningham has been named in the lawsuit “as the first defendant.” Gunningham has long been the subject of attempts to conclusively prove the true identity of Banksy. He comes from Bristol in southwest England—Banksy’s hometown—and the Mail claimed in 2008 that a photograph taken of a man kneeling alongside spray paint and a stencil in Jamaica four years earlier was both Banksy and Gunningham.
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Banksy’s agent at the time denied the man in the image was his client. But in 2016, an academic study used a criminological technique called “geographic profiling” to investigate Banksy’s identity, and came to the conclusion that Gunningham was the most likely candidate.
No one has yet conclusively proved that Gunningham is Banksy, however, and his connection to the new lawsuit is unclear. “The claim we are suing Robin isn’t accurate,” lawyer Aaron Wood told Artnet in a statement. The outlet added that only Banksy and Pest Control Office Limited were listed as defendants in the claim.
The case, brought by British greeting card business Full Colour Black, stems from a post allegedly made on Banksy’s Instagram account last November, Artnet reports. The post, which has since been taken down, allegedly included “defamatory words which referred to, and were understood to refer to, the Claimant,” according to Full Colour Black’s claim.
The company has been involved in a long-running trademark dispute with Banksy over a 2002 design of a monkey with a sandwich board. The allegedly offending Instagram post was seemingly made around the same time that the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) ruled in Banksy’s favor, reversing an earlier decision that had sided with Full Colour Black.
The greeting card company is now seeking at least $1.6 million in damages in its new lawsuit along with an injunction to stop further alleged defamation in the future. While the Mail reported that the litigation meant that Banksy “may be forced to disclose his true identity,” Artnet claimed the likelihood that he would be forced to attend the proceedings in person or expose his identity is “low” given that his name had not been used in court documents.
Jasper Beese, a Bristolian who accompanied Banksy on a painting tour of Mexico in 2001, previously told The Daily Beast that the artist had not asked people to avoid speaking to the media about his true identity. “We all knew him as Banksy from the pub,” Beese said. “Although, I thought his name was Robin Banks.” “Robin Banks” is believed to be a pun on Gunningham’s first name which later evolved into “Banksy.”
