British graffiti artist Banksy used his latest art piece to attack The New York Times for rejecting an op-ed he wrote criticizing the new World Trade Center tower.
On a piece that went up Sunday on a wall in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, he wrote: “This site contains blocked messages.”
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The elusive artist went on to give more explanation on his website.
“Today’s piece was going to be an op-ed column in The New York Times,” he wrote. “But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this…”
Posted below that message is a mockup of The Times with his op-ed, which he headlined: “The biggest eyesore in New York is not the graffiti, argues Banksy, it’s under construction at ground zero.”
In the op-ed, Banksy called the new building a “disaster.”
“One World Trade Center is a non-event,” he writes. “It’s vanilla. It looks like something they would build in Canada.”
He also calls it a “shyscraper,” arguing that it “lacks any self-confidence.”
“How does it stand up without a spine?” he writes. “It looks like it never wanted to be built in the first place. It reminds you of a really tall kid at a party, awkwardly shifting his should trying not to stand out from the crowd. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a shy skyscraper.”
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Banksy is reportedly on a monthlong “residency” in New York. He previously referenced the Twin Towers on a piece in Tribeca on which a bright orange flower represented the Sept. 11 plane crash.
A spokesperson for The Times confirmed that the paper’s editors had rejected the op-ed.
“We couldn’t agree on either the piece or the art, so we did reject it,” Eileen Murphy told The New York Post. “What he has posted on his site is not exactly the same as what he submitted.”
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