“Banksy Can’t Draw Legs.” Art Dealer Rom Levy on How Street Art Became a Multimillion-Dollar Business

 — What is street art? How is it fundamentally different from what we see at the Louvre, the Uffizi, or the Hermitage?

— Both are works of art, of course. The only difference is that street art is about as accessible as art gets. Today, the whole world knows who Banksy is. His work is probably far more recognisable than that of many classical artists represented in those museums. That is precisely why wall art is the most widespread and popular form of art.

 — Where is the line between art and vandalism? When I was a kid, I wanted to spray-paint all over the walls, but back in my hometown of Smolensk, that was something you could get arrested for. All over the world, police go after people who create street art without approval from the authorities.

 — And you decided to write about the rest on StreetArtNews. How did you come up with the idea for a street-art website?

— When I was younger, I used to hang out with fashion designers and was into fashion, art and design. Street art was my main passion. I didn’t just see it on walls; every evening after work, I spent hours reading everything I could find online about new forms of art. At some point, I’d gotten through pretty much everything there was on the subject. Then I thought, why not put it all in one place so the next poor soul interested in the subject could save some time?

And so, I created a simple webpage where I collected examples of street art I liked, along with photos of public spaces that had been transformed by artists. I then launched the StreetArtNews website, and it quickly attracted tens of thousands of unique visitors, which was a huge audience for the time]. Back then, there was no social media, so accessing visual content wasn’t quite as easy as it is today.

 — So it was essentially a constantly updated niche media outlet?

— Exactly. If someone somewhere put up a great mural or created a new artwork, we’d immediately run a story on it. So that readers who lived nearby would at the very least simply know it was there. And people literally started coming to see the art.

 — Was this whole thing a business for you? Or was it simply a passion for culture?

— Misha, I dropped out of school at 15. I have no formal education in art or economics. Everything I did was driven by a genuine impulse because I was part of bohemian circles. I wanted to tell the whole world about street art. When I first started out, street art had no money to offer.

 — But eventually that changed?

— As I said, street art has become the most accessible form of art, in part thanks to my website. My friends and I hung out with some talented street artists. It was a whole teenage movement, a kind of youthful rebellion. Then we started travelling abroad, sharing ideas and learning from each other. For example, we spent several years painting in China. But even then, there was still no money in the industry.

 — And then you got yourself a Patek Philippe… (laughs).

— That’s rich coming from someone with a Rolex on their wrist. Yeah, the market eventually took off, and artists and galleries started making good money. Working with developers, we began to see a new trend: contemporary art was driving urban regeneration. “Yesterday, this was a rough, half-derelict ghetto. Today, it’s a hip neighborhood.» That sort of outlook attracted a creative crowd. A crowd that wanted to live in places where art had become part of the neighborhood.

We gave cities around the world a facelift, and they reinvented themselves in the process. Art was literally flowing through the streets, and we were creating landmarks with our own hands. Our business operated at the intersection of urbanism, social expression and street art, breathing new life into the aging urban fabric.

 — Did your art ever face a risk of becoming commercialized?

 — So you know Banksy? Who is he, really?

— I’d rather not discuss that on the record (smiles).

 — Got it. Still, I have a couple of questions…

— His work raises a lot of questions, and not all of them have been answered. I really have been there alongside him throughout his career. And I’m considered the leading expert on Banksy. That’s exactly why, whenever a new work of his appears, I get calls from the BBC, CNN and other major media outlets around the world. StreetArtNews is usually the first to feature Banksy’s new works.

 — Is that magic?

— It’s an ecosystem (laughs).

 — And once again, everything is perfectly clear. So what do you think of him as an artist?

 — Okay, tell me something about his art that I don’t know.

— I’ll give you two facts that may not be widely known. First, Banksy wasn’t initially seen as a great artist. He said that one day he was painting in Bristol when the police showed up. Banksy ran off and hid under a truck. A serial number had been stencilled onto one of the parts under the chassis. That was when Banksy realized that using stencils could let him work much faster. “Damn, that’s exactly what I need to keep from getting caught by the police! Stencils, so I can paint five times faster.”

 — Do you get caught by the cops often?

— Not for a long time. The projects we work on now are completely legal. But in the past, artists could run into trouble with the law because they painted without permission.

Once, we were in Miami making a mosaic with Space Invader, dressed in workwear and hard hats, and I was mixing cement by hand to fix it in place. It was the middle of the night, pitch-black all around us. Just then, a police car pulled up next to us. The cops got out, and they liked our work. I said, “Could you point your headlights this way so we can finish up?” They agreed. It was one of those rare moments when law enforcement and artists unexpectedly found themselves on the same side.

 — The police helping people. Okay, what about the second fact about Banksy?

— There’s one thing I often joke about: Banksy can’t draw legs. This is hardly a scientific way of assessing his work, but just look at his drawings. In the vast majority of them, the characters’ legs are simplified or cut off. Once you know about it, you start noticing it.

 — Hah, I’d never thought about that. But I couldn’t care less. His work sells even without the legs. Please say hi to Banksy from Konev, the writer from Moscow.

 — So when did street art start making good money? I’m curious about how the market developed.

— Developers, brands and collectors were the first to take notice of us. Then social media came along, and the whole world could see new works within seconds of them being created. Clients started writing to us: “We’re putting up a 25-storey building. Can you paint something on it?” We started getting invitations from cities around the world where local authorities were working to revitalize their urban spaces and shape their cultural identity. They would simply ask us to come and paint the walls. That was our business.

More and more cities started doing this. We also started working with brands. Street artists made it into galleries, where they could sell their work to private buyers rather than businesses.

 — Describe your typical buyer.

— At first, they were really young people, friends of the artists and part of the same scene. But today, even hard-core contemporary art collectors have embraced street art. Today, I sell works by Banksy and other contemporary artists to older collectors who already own Basquiats and Warhols.

Still, we always try to not stray too far from young collectors and artists. We release limited-edition prints that are far more affordable than works by big-name artists, so young people who don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare can still afford to buy art.

We’re a new generation of gallerists. So we try to spot talent early and help artists become successful. For example, a couple of years ago at Art Basel, I ran into one of the executives and said, “Here’s an artist who’s going to be huge.” They laughed at me, patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good luck.” When we met again later, the price had skyrocketed, and I said to him with a smile, “Well, how about that? A million dollars! Take that!” (The last phrase is a loose interpretation of untranslatable French idioms. — Author’s note.)

 — How do you know which work is going to take off? Do you control the market? Or are you speculating?

— It’s a lot like the stock market. But the art market is much narrower and less transparent. It’s not just driven by numbers, but also by aesthetic judgement.

 — What about insider information? Is it a part of it?

— Not literally. You need to stay on top of things. You need to understand prices, market sentiment and trends. And, of course, you’ve got to have a feel for art.

 — Speaking of intuition, how do you choose young artists?

 — You keep saying “we.” By “we,” do you mean you and the artists?

— “We” means me (laughs).

 — So it’s the royal “we.” That’s how Russian emperors used to refer to themselves.

 — So by “we,” you mean you got the artists together, rounded everyone up and said, “Let’s go paint!”

— When I say “we,” I mean first and foremost my agency, made up of artists, curators and producers around the world.

 — So your business has three parts: an agency, several galleries and a media outlet. Does it all function as one integrated operation?

— Basically, it’s a vertically integrated structure. It all started with the website, and the other parts grew out of it.

We also recently launched an international art logistics company. Anyone looking to move a major exhibition while meeting the required handling and storage conditions for valuable works of art, as well as all customs and insurance requirements, comes to us. That became another part of our global ecosystem.

 — Are international street art festivals part of the business too, or do you do them just for the love of it?

— It’s part of the business and helps us grow our audience. Money matters, of course, but what matters even more is giving people access to art. Art is beautiful, and beauty will save the world.

 — Beauty is everything to us. But speaking of money, you have the Dubai Street Museum. How do you measure its economic impact? Where does the money come in?

— About ten years ago, I lived in Puerto Rico. Then, out of the blue, I get a letter from the Dubai government. They invited me to the UAE and told me they had a number of projects and challenges in the arts. I don’t think even they knew exactly what they wanted at the time. So I asked for a meeting with a high-ranking official in the UAE government.

He asked me, “So, what do you think of our projects?” And I told him exactly what I thought.

 — Were you harsh?

I’m always drawn to a blank slate, a place where you can experiment from scratch. Dubai was already developing rapidly as a global cultural hub, but what mattered to me was being given the opportunity to create what was essentially a new open-air street art district. St Petersburg has the Hermitage, and Paris has the Louvre. But Dubai had no such institution.

It became a major growth driver for my agency. We showed what we could do, and people started trusting us with bigger, more ambitious projects. One project I’m particularly proud of is the world’s largest marble mosaic, created by my agency on a dam in Hatta. It covers 2,200 square meters, consists of more than a million pieces of marble and depicts Sheikhs Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. The project made it into Guinness World Records

 — Wow! Now I see where the money comes from (they laugh). Where does the global street art movement stand today?

 — What do you think of Russian street art?

— It has long been part of the global art world.

 — I wonder why that is?

— An artist may feel that Russia alone is enough. Russia is so vast, so great. There are so many walls to paint in Russia. “Why go anywhere else?” an artist might think. But I believe international exchange benefits not only the artist, but our entire industry.

Some Russian artists have moved abroad, but most have stayed in Russia. Pokras Lampas is considered the most commercially successful of them.

 — I know him. He’s great.

— He not only makes good money, but has also developed a distinctive signature style. In my view, his greatest achievement is drawing on established calligraphic traditions to create imagery in Cyrillic. Thanks to him, this approach has become an important part of contemporary Russian street art.

 — Actually, I thought he was an innovator…

— It’s hard to be an innovator in calligraphy. Something new often emerges at the intersection of context, scale, language and audience perception. Still, every letter has already been drawn and written.

 — Okay, who’s the best Russian artist?

— I worked with the Russian artist P183 (he passed away in 2013. — Ed.). And Misha Most. And Ozzik (also known by the pseudonym 0331c. — Ed.) is one of our guys. There are many talented artists in Russia. They have everything they need to break onto the global stage and become commercially successful. All it takes is building international connections and helping them find their footing and take off.

 — So, what do they need to do to become stars?

— It is absolutely essential to build bridges between artists, government institutions and the global market.

 — Maybe they should write to you or give you a call? That could work well for both sides.

 — It would be great if you ran courses like that in Russia. By the way, what projects have you worked on here so far? And what projects are you planning?

— We did a major project in Odintsovo, and later we were in talks with Vinzavod. There are also a few private clients interested in bringing my artists here. And you’re one of them.

Right now, I’m interested in developing long-term projects with Russian cities and cultural institutions. I’d like to launch a programme that helps international artists come to Russia and work here, while also helping Russian artists break into the global market. The most effective model is cultural exchange, a two-way street.

 — I’ll help with that. By the way, aren’t you worried about being canceled for coming to Russia so often? Or for talking to me, for example?

— I believe cultural exchange is the very foundation of my work. Years ago, when I flew to Ufa, my mom called me and said, “Oh my God, where are you going? Haven’t you seen the news?” (laughs). I reassured her and said that art brings people together, especially when politics has such a negative impact on intercultural dialogue.

I work in culture, not politics. I focus on the connection between artists and people at a time when other forms of communication are disrupted. Besides, Russia offers enormous scope for my work and for the creativity of the artists I work with.

 — Be honest, do you love Russia? Or is it just a new market?

So being a foreigner in this situation is useful. I look at the place with fresh eyes, but at the same time I understand that the project should not look imported. Russian artists and local identity must remain at the center. And my background is unusual enough to connect these worlds: I can talk to an artist covered in paint at three in the morning, and then discuss a budget with a government institution at nine.

I came out of street culture, but today I work with museums, galleries, collectors and cities. I understand both the freedom of art and the mechanics without which ambitious ideas never become reality.

 — I know you came back from Ryazan a couple of days ago. What were you doing there?

— I recently travelled to Ryazan with my impresario Ilya Vdovin, President of the Russian Skateboard Federation to discover the BRICS Skate Cup project. I wanted to see the competition, have a couple of meetings, drink a little vodka and go home. Instead, I found myself inside a former power station: walking through it, looking at the future gallery and imagining what the place could become.

I have a serious weakness: when someone shows me an empty cultural space, I immediately start inventing its future. Ryazan surprised me because it combines deep history with open space. There is Yesenin, there is architecture, craft and a very strong local identity. But there is also room for something that has not existed yet.

I am not talking about another pretty building with white walls and a predictable exhibition. I am talking about the possibility of museum-level exhibitions, important international artists, ambitious commissioned works and cultural events that people would travel to Ryazan specifically to see. But an international level does not mean bringing in a famous artist, taking a photo and sending them home. That is cultural tourism for creators.

What seems truly interesting to me is exchange: international stars discovering Ryazan and something that can exist only there. And Russian artists meeting new curators, institutions and audiences abroad. Knowledge moves in both directions, and the connection remains even after the exhibition is over. It continues to live on.

 — The idea is not rubbish, I really like it, honestly. And you also visited the Moskino film park, met with the Mayor of Moscow, and afterwards we had dinner with the director of the entire Moskino institution. What were your impressions?

— That topic was a surprise for me in Moscow. You remember: at the table we started talking about walls, images and cinema, and I left the meeting thinking about a place where contemporary art and film production could truly collide.

Cinema already creates entire worlds. Contemporary art creates worlds too. What happens if these two forms are brought together for real? I have touched this territory a little through music videos, the NBA, the UFC and video games. Sometimes a work goes beyond the gallery and reaches millions of people who do not even know they are looking at contemporary art.

That is much more interesting to me than another exhibition opening with white wine. It is too early to say anything specific about my possible cooperation with Moskino, and perhaps that uncertainty is exactly what makes the future interesting. There is a conversation, there are ideas and there is a very large space for creativity. I will leave the rest as a mystery for now.

What all of this has in common is that I am interested in building cultural bridges at a time when the world is busy destroying them. I want international artists to discover Russia beyond the usual perceptions, and I want Russian artists to have stronger connections with the rest of the world.

I came to Russia expecting a skateboarding competition and a couple of meetings. I returned thinking about power stations, museum-level exhibitions, cinema and new cultural bridges. You can dream. But usually that is exactly how the best projects begin: with a dream, a few ideas and a vision.

 — To be honest, I really want you to work on educating artists here. What do you need for that? An invitation from officials?

— I need a stage, a microphone and reliable local partners who are in it for the long haul.

 — That’s it? No money? (They laugh.)

 — Do you have a personal collection?

— Over the years, I’ve collected quite a few works. I buy a lot of work, sell a lot and show a lot in galleries.

 — What works do you have hanging on the walls at home?

— There’s so much art in my life that sometimes I actually prefer bare walls. My goal today is not so much to enjoy art myself as to share it with as many people as possible. And to preserve it for future generations.

 — I’ll ask again: what do you have hanging at home? I don’t believe your walls are completely bare.

— Dude, there’s so much art around me every day that I keep things as calm and low-key as possible at home. If you’re that curious about what I have hanging at home, I’ll show you. It isn’t street art. Do you know Toulouse-Lautrec?

 — Of course. I’m offended you even have to ask (Mikhail was lying. — Author’s note).

 — Holy crap. It’s gorgeous. Is there anything you would never sell?

— Yes, there are works like that. But I genuinely enjoy finding the right owners for works, real collectors who are a good fit for them. I’ve seen many artists develop in remarkable ways and become commercially sought-after, but getting the right price isn’t everything. The right collection and context matter too.

In a way, I archive art. I’d like to create a museum for my personal collection that my daughter could one day run, if she wants to.

 — What did you dream about as a child?

— I grew up in a place where people don’t really have dreams. The outskirts of Paris. No education, no money. People there are just trying to survive. They don’t have time to dream. We were thinking about where our next meal was coming from. That was the dream.

 — What do you want to be when you grow up?

— I want to be the coolest art dealer in the world.

 — Aren’t you already?