From Duchamp to Banksy: The Consciousness Behind Art
By Anna Biela
Reflections on Art: A New York Art Residency
July 26 – August 4, 2026
As I prepare for my trip to New York, I have found myself reflecting on something I never expected.
Marcel Duchamp has never been one of my favourite artists in art history. When I first learned about the Dada movement, my heart belonged to Abstract Expressionism and the pioneers of abstraction—Kandinsky, Mondrian, and even Picasso. At the time, I saw Dada as something that deconstructed and even destroyed art.
Today, however, I see it differently.
While planning what I want to experience in New York, I realised that one of the exhibitions I most want to see is the Marcel Duchamp exhibition at MoMA. At the same time, I have been mapping out street art across the city, hoping to find traces of Banksy’s 2013 residency, Better Out Than In. It was then that I made a connection I had never made before.
I had always assumed that street art was born directly out of the graffiti movement. But now I see that there is a deeper lineage.
When Marcel Duchamp placed a porcelain urinal in an exhibition, titled it Fountain, and signed it “R. Mutt,” he changed the course of art history. He proposed that art is not merely the object itself, but the idea, the intention, and the consciousness behind it. The artist’s act of choosing and reframing an ordinary object transformed it into art.
Looking at Banksy’s work through this lens, I suddenly recognised the connection.
Street art is not simply paint on a wall. Like Duchamp’s readymades, it is an intervention. The street already exists. The wall already exists. The sign, the pavement, the telephone box, the security camera—all are ordinary elements of public space. The artist enters that space and, through an idea, gives those everyday objects a second life.
In that sense, Duchamp paved the philosophical road that made contemporary street art possible.
Banksy then transformed how the world viewed street art. During his 2013 New York residency, Better Out Than In, he turned the entire city into an open-air gallery, creating a new intervention almost every day throughout October. Instead of asking people to come into a museum, he invited people to discover art while walking through the city. The streets themselves became the exhibition.
Yet perhaps the strongest connection between Duchamp and Banksy came eight years earlier.
In March 2005, Banksy carried out one of his most famous museum interventions by secretly hanging his painting, Tesco Value Tomato Soup, inside the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The work cleverly parodied Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s Soup Cans, replacing the familiar American brand with the budget British supermarket label “Tesco Value.” Museum staff did not notice the unauthorised artwork for six days. By placing his work inside one of the world’s most respected museums without permission, Banksy challenged ideas of artistic authority, institutional validation, and who gets to decide what belongs in a museum.
To me, this feels like Duchamp’s spirit returning to MoMA through Banksy. Just as Duchamp questioned what could become art, Banksy questioned who has the authority to declare it art. The intervention itself became the artwork.
I cannot help but wonder what would happen if Banksy repeated the same intervention today. Would the museum remove it again, or would it preserve and celebrate it as part of contemporary art history? Time has a remarkable way of changing what we value.
This reflection also made me think about my own He[art] Movement.
Like Duchamp’s readymades, it is ultimately not about the object itself. It is about consciousness. The artwork is simply a vessel. What truly matters is the vibration, the intention, and the love that is placed into it.
Perhaps the object is not even necessary.
In the He[art] Movement, the artwork becomes a carrier of love—a wave of consciousness that continues to exist beyond the physical object. The same idea can be extended beyond art itself. Making love is also an act of creation. It is not simply about the physical act or even the relationship. What gives it meaning is the consciousness shared between two souls. As they say, it takes two to tango. The invisible bond, the love generated between them, is the true creation.
In the same way, a readymade is born through the meeting of an ordinary object and the consciousness of the artist. Street art is born through the meeting of the public realm and artistic intention. The object remains the same, but our perception is transformed.
As I prepare to walk the streets of New York, visit the Duchamp exhibition at MoMA, and search for the remaining traces of Banksy’s interventions, I realise that this journey is becoming something more than a museum visit. It is a journey through the evolution of an idea.
This journey has also led me to a new way of thinking about street art.
We often say that street art was born from graffiti, and in many ways that is true. Banksy himself began as a graffiti writer, and the visual language of street art owes much to graffiti culture. But I believe there is another story—one that is philosophical rather than stylistic.
Graffiti gave street art its walls.
Marcel Duchamp gave it its idea.
With the readymade, Duchamp showed that art is not defined by the object but by the artist’s intention, the context, and the consciousness behind it. Banksy carried that idea into the public realm. His interventions are not simply paintings on walls; they are conceptual acts that transform everyday spaces into places of reflection and dialogue.
Perhaps, then, street art should not be understood only as an evolution of graffiti, but also as a continuation of the conceptual revolution that began with Dada. Seen through this lens, street art belongs within the history of modern and contemporary art—not outside it.
This is my own reflection, not an established art historical conclusion. But it is one that has fundamentally changed how I see both Marcel Duchamp and Banksy.
Maybe Banksy should not only be remembered as the world’s most famous street artist. Perhaps he should also be recognised as the artist who completed a journey Duchamp began over a century ago—bringing conceptual art out of the museum and back into everyday life.
And perhaps street art deserves to be recognised not merely as an evolution of graffiti, but as a continuation of modern art itself.