A shrouded Banksy gives an interview in "Exit Through the Gift Shop."

(Banksy, 2010)

July 20, 2010

by Joel Crary

There’s a “Pop Life” exhibit currently running at the National Gallery in Ottawa until the third week of September. I saw it a couple of weeks back after a bit of the controversy had calmed down, controversy that amounted to little more than a soundbite snub from Conservative Canadian heritage minister James Moore, who effectively damned the exhibit as being not worthy of consideration. One of the rooms had been transformed into a replication of the Pop Shop in SoHo where artist Keith Haring sold merchandise featuring his iconic images. You can buy that merchandise in the “Pop Life” exhibit, well before it’s time to exit.

I felt funny about that, especially when the loud music from the overtly commercial Pop Shop replication bled into the adjoining room and thus took me out of the experience of looking at works of other artists. But maybe that’s kind of the point. The “Pop Life” exhibit does indeed raise questions about what popular art has become and how modern art may be classified by the institutions that promote it. Regardless, “Is it art?” is a question that persists, and it persists in part because art has been made an enormous facet of the marketing machine.

I’m fascinated by hype, the way it moves opinion and public interest backward and forward in waves, seemingly without rhyme or reason until it’s examined closely. Hype is a commodity in the art world, and a dirty word. Art continues to have the ability to change lives and perspectives, yet we’ve become so critical of how and why art is presented to us in today’s contexts that hype seems guaranteed. Nothing can live up to audience expectations anymore because so much art is both created and presented under the hand of capital. Hype has taken the art world over like a parasite hungry for bills. Warhol would have loved it.

This raises the question of integrity. Who are the real artists? What are their intentions? How are their works seen, and can they be seen on a mass scale? Therein lies the case for the validity of street art, which assaults the physical infrastructure of office towers, businesses, city streets and sidewalks with the out-of-place. “It was never about the money,” world-renowned and anonymous street artist Banksy notes in his “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” Easy for him to say, but when I see a guy like Shepard Fairey posting his Andre the Giant “Obey” posters, a weird slice of pop propaganda, on the sides of high buildings, hanging precariously under the cover of darkness, I believe it.

Fairey doesn’t look or sound like a punk graff writer. In one scene, he slaves over his enormous posters at Kinko’s, cutting them to size and shape with scissors while the people around him photocopy expense reports. I have my prejudices against people who leave tags on public property, but it’s hard to doubt the artistry of guys like Fairey and the score of other artists caught in their act in “Gift Shop.” There’s a renegade beauty to the way they stalk the streets of Los Angeles in the middle of the night, gauge heights and locations, and paste the material in place with enormous brushes.

But “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is sly and unsuspecting. It isn’t all about how these artists get away with it. It’s about how they’re filmed and why that’s important. Many will be drawn in to see and hear Banksy’s interviews. Keeping himself hooded in the shadows, he makes candid observations through a machine that deepens his voice, often to comic effect. But he submits, accurately, that the real subject of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is Thierry Guetta, the man who captured the exploits of street artists on film, and what ultimately became of him.

Sporting a thick French accent, Guetta reveals himself to be obsessive compulsive, resourceful, unquestionably ballsy, and not quite all there. Hundreds of videotapes adorn a room in his house, packed with hours of footage shot simply because Guetta had such trouble putting the camera down. Tracking the street artists became his vocation. Hooking up with the elusive Banksy became his Holy Grail, and the film’s most compelling sequence showcases their efforts together to install a blow-up doll of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner on a Disneyland ride. Guetta’s ability to outwit Disneyland security in the park’s underbelly assured him Banksy’s trust, and eventual half-hearted promotion.

The artists took to welcoming Guetta on outings because they felt that keeping a record was important for the art form. Banksy encouraged him to cut a film, and the results were a disturbing disaster. This is where “Exit Through the Gift Shop” really becomes something special. Guetta had already been experimenting with street art of his own, having familiarized himself with the techniques of the artists he watched through a lens. Inspired by the success of Hollywood-attended art shows put on by Banksy and others, Guetta abandoned his documentary, hired a team, and spent six months coming up with a show of his own, all before he had shown a single piece to anyone. Calling himself “Mr. Brainwash,” the show became a total exercise in overindulgence, hype, and an unfortunate case of a man completely missing the point.

Brainwash’s art output is comprised of copycat Warhol pieces, twisted slightly in less-than-fascinating ways. He showcases a series of Elvis portraits in which the singers are holding machine guns instead of guitars. “These are called ‘Don’t Be Cruel,’” he explains. Warhol’s Elvises and other silkscreens provided the effect of seeing an icon repeated to the point of meaninglessness, but they were always tinted by the artist’s persona. Warhol was obsessed with celebrity and his art put it under the microscope, whereas Brainwash seems to have done little more than take the formerly fresh shit of art history and rinse it off so that it will stick to the wall when thrown.

Or so Banksy and the street artists believe. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” becomes an exercise in thinly masked contempt for Guetta’s work and attitude. But I can’t help but think that Warhol would have taken pity on this interesting character. There is no doubt that the success of Brainwash’s LA show, which was ultimately attended by thousands, was the result of an obsessive mentality that equated mass production with artistic success. Guetta’s chief failing as an artist is that he neither questions authenticity nor concerns himself with intention. Is it art, or is it simply for sale?

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” is showing at the ByTowne Cinema through Sunday, July 25th.