Movies 2010 #12 Exit Through the Gift Shop

After watching this, I’m not sure if we’ve won or lost.

I mean, by most measures the careers of just Banksy and Shepard Fairey alone are enough to signal that street art has “made it,” so at some level we’ve definitely won. Anyone who was searching for legitimacy from the art world has found it. The question then becomes, what do we lose to gain legitimacy? That’s what I walked away wrestling with after seeing Exit Through the Gift Shop.

I guess I should talk about it as a film briefly before I launch into the philosophical bits.

It’s really good. It’s very funny, subversive and full of incredible, clever art. If you’re a fan of street art/graffiti in general or Banksy in particular then you will love this movie. Whatever the concept it’s a brilliant peek behind the veil.

It’s especially interesting because it works as a film (as in “check out this cool ‘documentary'”) and as a piece of conceptual video art (as in “Banksy and Obey, with the character ‘Mr. Brainwash,’ are commenting on the ongoing dilution and commodification of ‘street art.'”)

That it succeeds so easily on the second part is what drives me to ponder the flip side of all of this success.

I guess I need to spell this out since it’s an active controversy. Some people have taken this film and the artist Mr. Brainwash at face value. I do not. I believe that the character of Mr. Brainwash is cooked up as a grand piece of fuck you art. He’s an epic prank. This has been long rumored- as in, well before the movie.

The ease with which ‘MBW’ manages to hoodwink both the art world and the various LA scenesters is the most amazing example of something I’ve seen brewing for the for years. It’s just never been spelled out on such a large scale, with such cynicism, or with such brilliant execution.

Gather round…

Almost every group show I’ve been in has featured a smaller-scale version of Mr. Brainwash- someone who bought a copy of Spraycan Art or Wall and Piece and thought to him or herself “ooh, that looks cool, I’m going to become a Street Artist.” Inevitably, they go out and ape some trends/hot artists without really understanding the original intent and generally produce steaming piles of boring. The point being- this stuff is illegal. That’s not the whole point, but it is part of it and to take the aesthetic, apply it to canvas and pretend that it’s the same thing as this or this is to misunderstand the movement at a fundamental level. Street art is not a medium (spray paint/wheat paste/stencil) or look, it’s an application of will. It’s about taking space, without permission. It’s an egotistical, lawless endeavor that is defined by its lawlessness. To be an active vandal is to embrace that risk. Which is why the very idea of a street artist without the street is an insult to the people who are out there risking life and liberty. To represent that tradition, in a gallery space without actually having put in the time, effort and risk simply isn’t cool.

To be fair, I’m happy that people are down with the aesthetic. I teach people about graffiti style all the time. Just don’t pretend it’s anything more than it is. In other words, if you’ve never so much as put up a tag, don’t tell me you’re a graffiti writer 🙂 Sadly, people do exactly that.

In this film, we’re presented with the ultimate example of this kind of subcultural parasite. MBW is presented is an insider/outsider. A non-artist video documentarian with access to the top artists. He takes up street art only at Banksy’s suggestion. And, in a crass distillation of the path many of these phonies take, he goes from zero to renting a warehouse to put on his debut show, eventually selling paintings (produced by his “factory” style crew) for five figures. No real history on the street, selling “street” by the barrel-full.

If this is all a show, a concept taken to a logical extreme, then it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s still sad because the end result is the same, but at least the impulse is pure.

I mean, what better way to indict frauds (on both sides of the issue) than to create the biggest fraud of them all?