Exiting Through the Gift Shop

January 6, 2011 1:34 am Sir Haxington Art

“I don’t believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.”

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.”

– Pablo Picasso

Banksy is one of my favorite artists for a number of reasons. I dig good street art (graffiti!), but Banksy has always impressed me with his skill in creating a mixture of pop culture references, political messaging and dark humor in his work. I remember the first time flipping through a book of Banksy pieces and thinking “Who does political graffiti of this size and scale on the West Bank barrier of all places? The balls on this guy!”

I know a few self-proclaimed stencil graffiti artists, and they just quickly spray on a side walk or wall. That’s it. But actually trying to post it somewhere, in public, highly trafficked areas, in extremely dangerous places, in broad daylight- I always wondered how someone did that. On top of it all, Banksy stays anonymous. Very few people know who he really is. Banksy is some sort of subversive genius street artist millionaire man of mystery.

Admittedly, I’m not up on movies or TV much. I don’t watch them hardly… ever. No, I’m not one of those people. I just use my giant plasma TV almost exclusively for video games. As a necessity I rely heavily on recommendations from others on what’s good to watch. So a few art and design friends start telling me about Exit Through the Gift Shop, a documentary… something about Banksy… it’s really good… I should check it out, some other artist is mentioned and people are hating on him… I’m not really sure what’s going on but I’m intrigued.

Then I forget about it. It was Christmas. I had no broadband. But tonight it hit me. Oh shit! Banksy documentary!

So I fire it up and watch the whole the damn thing, not knowing what to expect, other than Banksy is involved somehow.

Now, if you plan on watching the documentary (which I strongly suggest you do if you have a creative bone in your body) now is a good time to stop reading. I’m going to spoil a lot. If you’re not, knock yourself out with the reading of the words.

Anyway, I’m pulled into the world of Thierry Guetta. An eccentric Frenchman with a cousin who he discovers is a street artist named Invader. So, Guetta goes around filming Invader on his street art adventures. Guetta turns out to basically have some sort of video camera OCD, taping everything he can, no matter where he goes. He ends up generating hundreds of hours of footage of just about everything.

Guetta has an unhealthy video camera fetish. But as he follows Invader, he meets more and more street artists and ends up getting heavily involved in their scene. While Guetta doesn’t directly paint any graffiti himself, he tapes everything they do and even assists artists with their work.

This goes on for some time. Eventually through being the only person taping their work in action in the street art scene, Guetta meets the infamous Shepard Fairey in Los Angeles, who is known for his “Obey” graffiti and lately, for his rendition of the Obama Hope poster. Guetta makes a great connection here, becoming an assistant to Fairey, helping him mount massive Obey posters all over the LA area.

Time goes on. Guetta gets more and more connected to the street art scene, taping everything the entire time. Finally, Fairey asks him what he intends to do with all these tapes. Guetta says he’s going to make a documentary.

It turns out, he’s not. Guetta is simply taping all this stuff because it’s his personal obsession to tape… everything. And because he’s so helpful and agreeable, people are willing to let him.

Crazy. But Guetta gets away with it! But there’s huge piece of his collection he’s missing.

Banksy.

Guetta tries and tries to get in touch with Banksy who is notoriously anonymous to no avail. This goes on for sometime. Guetta is about to give up hope of ever filming the infamous Banksy when Banksy decides to make a trip to LA. Banksy knows Fairey and asks him if he knows anyone that could be helpful to him in finding good spots to place art in the city of Angeles. Cue Guetta.

So Fairey calls Guetta, who rushes over. Guetta is  simply gushing but immediately attaches himself to Banksy. At first, Bansky is sketched out, but eventually eases up on Guetta.

Over time, the two become friends. At one point they even make it into Disneyland where Banksy places blowup dolls of Guantanamo Bay prisoners inside the park along rides as Guetta films the process and reactions of park-goers. Guetta is apprehended, and while being interrogated, deletes all pictures the second he’s asked to show security the pictures on the camera! Banksy escapes, and Guetta is eventually let go as there’s now no evidence of the event happening.

So, Guetta has now earned a huge amount of trust from Banksy. Banksy starts opening up more. Some of Banksy’s closest assistants in the UK (where Banksy is from) are upset because this crazy Frenchman is taping him, something that’s gone against the grain of one of their core principles: Remain secretive.

Fast forward a bunch. Banksy is becoming a name in the art world at large, and he ends up putting on this crazy show filled with his works in LA, in an abandoned warehouse, in the ghetto. He ends up getting a live elephant which he covers completely with (kids) paint which the media freaks out about. Tons of A-list Hollywood celebrities attend the show. As a result of this amazing event, Banksy works become must haves for art collectors. Money starts pouring in and street art becomes main stream, thanks to Banksy.

Banksy basically tells Guetta, “Now is the time to make your documentary about street art. It was never about the money or the fame. You need to show that.”

Guetta realized he has to do something. So he takes six months and makes a documentary. He shows Banksy.

It’s complete crap.

The “documentary” is comprised of something like 90 minutes of randomly spliced together footage with crazy visual effects.

So what does Bansky do? Tells Guetta to become a street artists himself, and to give him all the footage so he can make a documentary too.

Now this where things get weird, as if they weren’t already.

Guetta mortgages his house and business. He hires an entire team of people and a commercial level set of production equipment to start making his art come to life! He’s like, screw all the intermediary steps, he just goes for it. He’s maonly hands off. He’s the “idea guy.”

Guetta takes on the moniker “Mr. Brainwash,” or MBW.

MBW then decides he’s going to put on a big show as well! He ends up renting an 18,000 sq. ft. abandoned building (sound familiar?), much larger than Banksy’s, and just fills it to the brim with this crazy art that looks pretty much like every other piece street or post modern art anyone has ever seen. Derivative. It all looks like basically something you’ve seen before.

He then asks Fairey and Banksy for positive quotes for the Mr. Brainwash hype-machine, which they begrudgingly give. They spent so much time with Guetta in their lives that they feel obliged. Banksy gives a tongue in-cheek quote, Fairey gives a short blurb on his website.

The show featured in LA Weekly as a result, which draws huge crowds. And people come in droves, over 7,000 attend.

And the people eat it up. They buy the hype! Mr. Brainwash becomes an overnight success and street art phenomenon. MBW art was generated from practically nothing over a few quotes from a couple of legit street artists and a ton of arguably crappy pieces created by his assistants.

The documentary ends with Bansky wondering what he did, the monster he created, how it got to this point, and wondered who was the joke being played on. Mr. Brainwash is now a millionaire in LA and he still puts on shows. He’s done covers for Madonna albums.

So I’m enjoying this crazy story. It’s unbelievable but here was a documentary about it. So I think to myself, “Can this be real?”

I start doing a bit of research, and it turns out more people than myself are skeptical. Going as far as proclaiming that Mr. Brainwash is in fact just another work of Banksy and probably Fairey as an accomplice. People think Mr. Brainwash is another hoax because hey, that’s what Banksy does. Why would he come out and be serious now?

I’d like to think it’s all a huge conspiracy theory, but I’m fairly certain it’s real. Why? Because this kind of thing happens all the time across all sorts of mediums. I’ve seen it first hand on much larger scales than Banksy or MBW art, even if Mr. Brainwash is all a hoax. From simple idea thievery to funny sets of circumstances, I’ve seen much stranger things unfold over time that I would not have been able to convince an earlier version of myself would have been possible. Fact is stranger than fiction, and all that. Maybe one day I’ll go more into it, but today is not that day.

I only wonder how many other things I’ve been excited or passionate about are products of a surreal combination of hype and accidents. In either case, hoax or not, it just goes to show how easily the inhabitants of the globe are manipulated by a very few people under the right circumstances. It’s an anthropological and sociological wet dream.

In addition, either case only makes Banksy a stronger artist, either for creating such a complex hoax to expose the state of the art world, or for inadvertently creating an artist that exposes the art scene for what it is. Purposefully or not, Banksy has blurred the lines so much that no one knows what to think. When people start questioning reality because of you, you know you’re onto something. Picasso would be proud.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, but people often simply want what others have and like what others like for the sake of feeling like they are part of something bigger. It’s human nature.