`` a media star ... but popular long before any of this high-profile activity -- simply because the people love his stuff . '' While he set out to lampoon the establishment , he has now been wholeheartedly embraced by it . Fans include Hollywood A-listers , including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera who bought three of his prints in 2006 , including one of Queen Victoria sitting on a woman 's face . The recent sales of his work put him on a par with Jean-Michel Basquiat as the best-selling street artist . He is feted by art dealers and artists , including Damien Hirst , but he regularly mocks the art world that is so enthralled by him with ingenious stunts such as hanging his own work in the Tate gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . It took the British Museum eight days to discover the `` prehistoric '' rock painting of a man with a shopping trolley in the British Museum Banksy has hung on a wall . There is often a political message with this work , too . He left an inflatable doll dressed as
LONDON , England -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Banksy is Britain 's most wanted artist -- his art sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars , but he continues to use public spaces as his main canvas , while all the time keeping his identity a secret . Banksy 's latest piece in East London where a passer-by claims to have taken a photo of the artist . The guerilla artist has been spray painting his stencils around Britain and further afield for over ten years . Last week ten of his original pieces were sold at Bonham 's auction house in London for over $ 1 million , while on the other side of the city Tower Hamlets council authority pledged to remove his graffiti from its streets . From his beginnings as a graffiti artist in Bristol , England , Banksy has become the darling of the art world for his subversive and satirical public art . Depicting things such as riot police with smiley acid-house faces and camera-wielding rats , his work is now sold now by major art galleries . Lazarides Gallery in London is one of the main dealers of his work and describes him as