This Side of the Pond

You may have seen on the news over the last few weeks that unexplained monoliths have been appearing in strange places across the world. The first turned up in the middle of a desert in Utah, followed by more in California and Romania.

There didn’t seem much rhyme or reason to their location, as evidenced by the fact that a fourth has now appeared. It’s sitting on a beach on a small island that you can almost see from my parents’ house, as long as you wait for good weather and are prepared to squint.

Now, my favorite author is Arthur C. Clarke and the most famous of his books (which you may know better as the movie “2001”) included large monoliths that were plonked on this planet by aliens. He didn’t live far from the Isle of Wight either, so I’m sure he’d have been out there like a shot with his magnifying glass and a copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

I know, I know: this probably wasn’t the work of visiting Martians. Sad as I am to admit that this was definitely done by humans, the credit has now been claimed by various artists.

The people who admitted to the Utah monolith did not, however, include the British appearance in their confession. There was still a slim hope it might have been put there by copycat aliens.

“The monolith is out of my control at this point,” said the anonymous collective when asked about the new sighting. “Godspeed to all the aliens working hard around the globe to propagate the myth.” If that isn’t a confession of alien involvement, I don’t know what is.

And apparently I don’t know what is, because the Isle of White monolith was created by a local artist called Tom Dunford, who snuck it onto the beach in the middle of the night. This was very disappointing. Like you, I come from a nation where artistic pranks are a common thing, but I didn’t want this to be one of them because I really wanted to meet a Vulcan.

Because of this, I shall not be listing the monoliths among my favorite artistic pranks. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternative candidates.

There is, for example, the artist by the name of Nat Tate, an undiscovered painter who destroyed his own work. At a launch event for a book about him in 1998, attended by all the New York glitterati, David Bowie was among those who read extracts and many of the critics and journalists present said they had of course heard of this artist, despite his struggle to be noticed.

They were lying. We know this because Nat Tate is a combination of two London art galleries – the National Gallery and the Tate – and the artist didn’t exist. The book was by a Scottish writer called William Boyd, who made the whole thing up to see how people would react. Bowie was in on the prank, as were others including John Richardson (biographer of Picasso) and even Gore Vidal.

Perhaps the most famous of the “shock” artists in Britain is Tracey Emin, whose installation called “My Bed” contained all sorts of stains, trash and disturbing items and was the talk of the town for years. Two artists originally from China by the name of Yuan Cai and Jian Ji Xi took things a step further when they held a “live art” pillow fight on said bed. I do hope they enjoyed a thorough pedicure afterwards.

Not long after, to promote artistic freedom, they followed this up with a performance that caused a fair few London tourists to stop in their tracks: they wandered across Westminster Bridge completely naked.

They did so while each holding one paw of a giant Panda teddy, which they said had been named after then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. However, they explained they’d had to use the name Tony Bear because the Chinese cannot pronounce the letter L.

Some pranks have not gone particularly well, such as when performance artist David Blaine decided the best place for his next stunt would be Tower Bridge. He sat in a box, suspended over the Thames River, for 40 days and nights without food and water.

I visited him myself one evening, on the way home from a drink with an old friend. He didn’t look happy and I wondered if he’d have fared better if he’d taken a few magazines to read.

Some Londoners found him pretentious. My countrymen are a mischievous lot, so it didn’t surprise me to hear that people were playing golf from the bridge using his box as a target; turning up in the middle of the night with drumkits; and even using a remote-controlled helicopter to fly a burger up to him.

Then there’s a 17-year-old artist known as Cartrain who was told by the much more famous artist Damien Hirst that he wasn’t allowed to sell artwork based on Hirst’s celebrated diamond-encrusted skull. Cartrain got revenge by “borrowing” a packet of pencils from a Hirst installation at the Tate.

He thought it was a harmless tit-for-tat that would do wonders to raise his own profile. Unfortunately, he did not realize the artwork was valued at £10 million and the packet of pencils at a cool half million.

My favorite prank was pulled by a street artist named Banksy, whose beautiful works of graffiti have appeared around Britain and sometimes the world for many years. They are usually intended to be temporary and to carry messages about pressing social issues.

Nobody has ever figured out who Banksy really is, though not for want of trying. What we do know is that he believes art is for everyone and doesn’t like the concept of “empty consumerism.”

He doesn’t much like it when his pieces are placed on sale. One of his most famous works, “Girl With Balloon,” was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2018 and quickly fetched an impressive $1.37 million.

As the auctioneer’s gavel fell, the artwork began to move. The canvas passed through the bottom of its own frame and appeared on the other side in shreds. Banksy, it turned out, had installed a shredder inside the canvas that could be activated if anyone tried to sell his work.

Whether you agree with him or not, it’s safe to say he did an excellent job of bringing his views to public attention. It was a job well done and a point well made – my only disappointment is that he didn’t bring any aliens to introduce me to either.