Posts Tagged ‘Banksy’

Vandals get validation from contemporary art world

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

By Tali Zeloof

Installation view of Art in the Streets at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, April 17-August 8, 2011. Photo courtesy of Brian Forrest

Adopted from the streets after being forbidden by law, graffiti finds an unlikely home scribbled, scratched and sprayed onto the walls of the Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles. Art in the Streets, the first U.S. museum survey of street art, offers audiences an entrée into a countercultural movement that has overcome odds to cement itself in the contemporary canon. Director of the museum and curator of the exhibition, Jeffrey Deitch, stated that he ‘put street art into the context of the museum to engage new audiences’ (Lyn Winter 2011). While Deitch’s innovative curation and mega-marketing budget brought in a diverse crowd, the record-breaking attendance is largely due to the generous donation made by acclaimed British street artist, Banksy. Justifying his sponsoring free admission every Monday, Banksy claimed, ‘I don’t think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it’ (Juxtapoz Magazine 2011). Although spoken with tongue-in-cheek humour, his statement highlights the ambivalent relationship street artists have with the commercial art world, while insinuating that despite the recognition of graffiti as a legitimate art form, street artists still grapple with their dichotomous insider/outsider status.

Entering a grunge warehouse turned contemporary art museum in the middle of Little Tokyo, Los Angeles audiences plunge into a cross-cultural environment evoking the mash-up of eclectic genres and styles that influence street art. It feels like the Geffen Contemporary has been put in Little Tokyo to gentrify the downtown area, which is brilliantly appropriate when you think about graffiti as beautifying a city. Twice a week the Nike skateboard team visits the museum to perform freestyle tricks on a series of custom-made ramps designed by pro-skater Lance Mountain and artist George McFetridge. The skate-ramp, located at the beginning of the exhibition, instantly arouses an atmosphere of fun and frivolous youth. The wheel tracks marking the steep inclines of the structures offer metonymic traces of risk, rebellion and raw adrenalin, the vibrancy and precision of design fulfilling the duo’s ‘goal of making an artwork truly skatable’ (Salo 2011). The building’s acoustics enable the sound of skateboarding to echo throughout the space to assault and amplify audiences’ sensory experience.

The introductory ‘period’ rooms historically contextualise the street art movement. Curators have done this by displaying authentic newspaper clippings of anti-graffiti campaigns, photographs capturing early attempts of political street art as well as a collection of spray paints that dates back to the 1960s when it was first invented for industrial markets. Exhibited in transparent vitrines, the spray paints are artifacts of the graffiti movement, tangible evidence of the art-making tools used by countercultural creatives before pre-made stencils were invented. By charting street art’s evolution, Deitch encourages visitors to shift perceptions of graffiti as vandalism and try to understand the political dimension of this democratic practice that implores the public to engage with the semiotics of the street (Deitch 2011). Although the period rooms seem to offer audiences a holistic history of the street art movement, the absence of female graffiti artists perpetuates the idea that street art is a ‘boys club’ (Acevedo 2011, p.1). So while Deitch advocates the democratisation of image-making, his egalitarianism fails to translate into equal representation of genders.

Although the curators concentrated on street art in key cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sao Paulo, it was a rookie error to leave out Paris, where graffiti art has its genesis with the Situationist movement and Guy Debord. Debord was the founder of the anti-establishment movement known as the Situationists. Their famous slogan “Never Work”, graffitied on Parisian streets, signalled the start of street art as a form of social and political critique (Andretti & Xavier 1996). The Situationists significantly influenced the oeuvre of stencil and graffiti artist Shepard Fairey whose iconic Obey sticker (displayed in numerous incarnations throughout the exhibition), drew inspiration from Debord’s critical theory on the predictability of bourgeois urban life. According to the exhibition wall text, although the Obey sticker started as a stencilling experiment, it quickly turned into an international phenomenon with pro-wrestler Andre the Giant’s face becoming ubiquitous in major city streets around the world. In contrast to the signage associated with advertising campaigns, the Obey sticker has no apparent commercial motives and so it forces the public to read further into the image and question other manipulative forces enacted by the ruling class.

A visual emblem of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, Fairey’s Hope poster employs a Russian Constructivist colour palette to depict the then presidential candidate with the words ‘Hope’ printed beneath his portrait. The iconic poster appears in the exhibition next to a letter from President Obama thanking Fairey for his contribution to the campaign. However, there exists an irony in the head of state sanctioning images which he claims, ‘have a profound effect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign’ (Fairey 2008). While Obama’s letter recognises the potential of street art to polarise public opinion and bring attention to global issues, his praise perpetuates double standards in street art culture. While an unknown graffiti artist would be fined for sticking his/her stencil on public street signs, the rock stars of graffiti receive thank you letters from the President. Even in a movement characterised by democratic values, there is still hierarchy.

The majority of the exhibition space feels like a candy-coloured jungle gym with ramps constructed to seamlessly guide visitors from room to room. The vibrant murals depicting cartoon creatures with bulging eyes, bucktooth teeth and distorted features create a carnivalesque ambiance that is at times dizzying. In stark contrast to this lollypop land is the immersive installation entitled Street Market, a facsimile of a bleak narrow street. The brainchild of legendary street artists Todd James, Barry Mcgee and Stephen Power, Street Market reflects society’s disillusionment with the ‘new consumer culture that emerged after World War II’ (Los Angeles Times April 15 2011, p. 2). Lit with cheap neon lights and lined with miniature shops, some of which have bullet holes puncturing their front windows, it is an attempt by the artists to authentically simulate society’s moral decay, but the installation felt contrived, over-worked and at times indulgent. Perhaps installing a pseudo street in an exhibition about street art is a little too obvious.

Installation view of Art in the Streets at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, April 17-August 8, 2011. Photo courtesy of Brian Forrest

A taxidermist dog casually marking his territory on a serrated steel gate greets visitors as they enter the central gallery. Could the dog be the animal incarnation of a graffiti artist who marks public property as a way of conquering and reclaiming public space? Furthermore, the urine, which is an abject bodily fluid that causes a visceral repulsion in audiences, parallels the negative view of graffiti as a desecration of public streets. In the same gallery, a stencil of a male figure kneeling next to a bucket of paint in a prayer position is superimposed on a wall that Banksy and the students from the City of Angels school graffitied on to resemble a stained glass window. This image of worship perhaps alludes to the ritualistic strategies employed by street artists, some of which include working late at night, wearing inconspicuous attire and signing their work using pseudonyms. The quasi-religious iconography aroused by Stained Window is juxtaposed with war arms that include a gun sporting a string of coloured pencils instead of bullets and an army tank with a heart-shaped balloon hanging from its rocket launcher. Violence is subverted with quirky creativity that articulates Banksy’s anti-war stance.

The Italian street artist known as Blu by his peers also offered a politically charged critique of war. However, his large-scale mural that depicted wooden coffins draped in American dollar notes instead of American flags had to be painted over due to the controversy it generated. Although Blu’s mural had a fleeting life on the outer wall of the Geffen Contemporary, it achieved exactly what a lot of street art tries to, and that is make people question political ideology and no longer accept it as gospel. His correlation between capitalism and causalities offended Bible-belt America; however it is through provocative content that Blu was able to bring the uncomfortable question of  ‘Who profits from war?’ into public consciousness (Lambert 2011, p. 2). By refusing to change the subject matter of his mural, Blu preserved his integrity, autonomy and credibility in the street art world. The erasure of his mural highlights just one of the dilemmas that arise when taking art from the streets and inserting it into the museum (Lambert 2011, p. 2).

The exhibition is littered with Banksy works that subvert street signs’ original meanings. A personal favourite was a sign that read ‘any person found painting graffiti on these premises will be reported’ and then crudely scribbled underneath Banksy wrote ‘to the nearest art dealer’. Although this text-based work critiques surveillance and the commodification of art, it’s an ironic statement coming from Banksy who counts Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as clients and whose works are held in major museums worldwide. So while Banksy has maintained a mystique around his true identity, his status in the art world and the $500,000 price tags his works fetch makes one question whether he is complicit in his own commodification.

Art in the Streets amalgamates under one roof some of the most cutting-edge, creative and thought-provoking graffiti art. If you have ever paused to contemplate urban art on a brick wall, stop sign or highway, this exhibition is a must see.

Art in the Streets, The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 17 April-8 August 2011.

References

Acevedo, L 2011, ‘Few Women Artists in MOCA’s Record breaking ‘Art in the Streets’ Exhibit,’ Her Circle, 12 August, accessed 27 August 2011, < http://www.hercircleezine.com/2011/08/12/few-women-artists-in-mocas-record-breaking-art-in-the-streets-exhibit/>.

Andretti, L & Xavier, C 1996, Situationists: Politics, Urbanism. Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona.

‘Art in the Street at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA’, Los Angelis Times, April 15 2011, p.2, accessed 26 August 2011 from Culture Monster Arts database.

Deitch, J, Gastman R and Rose, A 2011, Art in the Streets, Skira Rizzoli, New York.

Fairey, S 2008, Mediatemple, California, accessed 19 August 2011, < http://obeygiant.com/headlines/check-it-out>.

Juxtapoz Magazine 2011, Banksy Pays for your Monday Moca Admission, accessed 20 August 2011,< http://www.juxtapoz.com/street-art/banksy-pays-for-your-monday-moca-admission>.

Lambert, N 2011, ‘The problem with taking “Art in the Streets” into the museum’, Artinfo, 11 January, accessed 25 August 2011, < http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36721/the-problem-with-taking-art-in-the-streets-into-the-museum/?page=2>.

Salo, A 2011, Skateboarding a part of MOCA Exhibit, ESPN Action Sports Archive, accessed 24 August 2011 < http://sports.espn.go.com/action/skateboarding/news/story?id=6363739>.

Winter, L 2011, Art in the Street Record Attendance Release, media release, accessed 21 August 2011, < http://www.moca.org/pdf/press/Art_in_the_Streets_Record_Attendance_Release_.pdf >.

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Comics aren’t what they used to be.

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Josh Skinner

Super Man painting. Mixed media on canvas 2007 170cm x 170cm painted in Brooklyn

Pulling a coloured spray can away from his dripping canvas of a semi-naked Wonder Woman, Brisbane born artist Anthony Lister peers into the camera and announces that ‘he is not trying to change the world or save it; he’s just reacting against the world trying to change him’. Lister, who is known for his diversity – Roy Lichenstein / Ralph Steadman-inspired amalgamations of Superheroes – has ultimately conjured a different perspective on the real life crisis that binds superheroes and reality’s pin-pushing ideas together (Crawford, 2010 p.210). For Lister, Jesus “may as well be Superman, God is better understood as the force, and the Devil is more easily recognized within the actions of our politicians and global corporate entities”.

Beginning as an urban artist in the backdrop of Brisbane and Sydney’s inner city suburban streets, Lister incorporated and pioneered styles and trends much anticipated from international booming artists at the time like Banksy, Neckface and Blek Le Rat into a movement, which placed Brisbane on the map in stencil art. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at the Queensland College of Fine Arts in 2001 and then moved, in 2003, to New York under the mentorship of Max Gimblett (McGregor 2010 p.31).

Finishing his mentorship with Gimblett, Lister moved his style into a botched and visceral depiction of television, pop culture, comic book imagery and cartoons. For Lister, “Television is everywhere, Australians are raised by Americans on TV. TV has become the contemporary mode of meditation, to replace the fire place”. This allows Lister to paint the ‘parodies of modern life’. He continues, “What I read, what I see, what I do, who I know and what I eat for lunch, it’s all relevant for me. I guess I am in a perpetual state of accepting the obvious as a valid source of inspiration”.

Lister’s work, like Alan Moore’s celebrated Watchmen or Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight, began to reveal unsuspecting facets of re-examined and glorified characters of comics and televised super heroes (Farr 2007). His depictions of heroes like Batman or Captain America aren’t depictions of heroes fighting crimes and saving the world from stereotypical evil masterminds, rather they are fallen, often tied up or ‘just plain downtrodden and vaguely abstracted, much like our childhood memories’.

However Lister is an artist that ‘one could say is in an unique position’, in the sense that he is both accepted in the underground art community as well as the mainstream (Sherwin 2008). More importantly, he incorporates his family’s values into his work. In an interview with MyArtspace in 2008, Lister remarked that his most innovative experiences with art are with his children and their works on paper.

Lister has presented solo exhibitions in London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, and has work represented at the National Gallery of Australia Canberra. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with his family (McGregor 2010 p.32).

Sources:

  1. Interview with Anthony Lister. MyArtspace Feb 05, 2007
  2. Crawford, Ashley “Anthony Lister” in Australian Art Collector Magazine (Issue 51 Jan-March 2010)
  3. McGregor, Ken & Zimmer, Jenny Anthony Lister: Macmillian Mini Art Series Number Thirteen Macmillian Art & Publishing, Victoria (2010)
  4. Farr, Kristen “Anthony Lister: Cracker Got Snapped By The Pops” (Jul 17, 2007) in “Art Review” at KQED Arts. A.C.T. San Francisco, CA  4 Aug 2010.
  5. Sherwin, Brian “Art Space Talk: Anthony Lister” (Jul 28 2008) on MyArtspace>Blog Palo Alto, CA, 1 Sept 2010.

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Lupin the Phantom Thief in the Arts: Banksy

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Young-Gu Kim

Banksy

Transforming Mona Lisa into a new shape

Date unknown

Spray paint stencil

Dimensions unknown

More of Banksy’s work can be found at http://www.banksy.co.uk

In last August 2009, Bristol, the most populous city in South West England, was packed with a huge crowd. In front of Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery, people had to stand in line for up to six hours to see an exhibition of their own world-famous artist, Banksy. Bristol is his hometown and he is an artist who tends to hold a narrative structure and investigate public aspects of the visual art by various methods. He raises diverse contemporary issues through his famous street art, and questions what is the essence of the art, the role of artists and the nature of appreciation behind his insistence. Banksy has concealed himself thoroughly behind a veil of anonymity. He makes his art under an assumed name. People call him a ‘guerrilla artist’ or an ‘art terrorist.’

One of his famous quality vandal performances was to stealthily hang his own work, ‘Early Man Goes to Market’, in the British Museum. It even had a caption that the work was an example of primitive art, which was, of course, a hoax. Besides the British Museum, he secretly exhibited his novel artworks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Museum managers never realised that these works were hung inside until the artist revealed their presence. Surprisingly, the British Museum made the decision to add the work to a list of permanent collections. Banksy’s intention to perform these events was that he had a strong desire to ridicule art gallery managers who were not able to draw a line between masterpieces and counterfeit works, and suggest sarcastically what criteria made a great piece at the same time.

Banksy is a public artist and the form his public art takes is what is often described as graffiti art. His subjects are mainly issues such as politics, society, environment, capitalism, anti-war movement and peace. However, his motivation is based on the idea that he would like to change the world to be better and brighter by reporting the irrationalities of society to the public and satirizing absurd stereotypes. He once said ‘Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place’ (2005). The reason why he has managed to maintain complete anonymity and even entrusts an interview to his representative is because under British law, graffiti is considered an act of vandalism. In order to avoid any illegal excuse he remains anonymous which means he enjoys the freedom of outspoken creation.

Parody is one of mechanisms that have had more than enough usage in contemporary art. An issue is that parody in a work can be defined differently amongst other mechanisms such as plagiarism, theft, citation, borrowing and pastiche owing to the direction of intention. Banksy’s strategy is to borrow old master paintings everyone knows and indicate the source clearly so that he cannot be accused of plagiarism or theft. Therefore, no one has objections to the rationality and legitimacy of his works by disclosing the source. Instead his parody seems to be utilized as a tool to bring up universal issues such as environment, religion, war, race and recovering traditional values against authorities. As a parodist, Banksy’s work contains his strong insistence on returning to tradition in the true sense of the term by obviously showing pre-existing issues of our society, and he demonstrates his interest and consideration of historicity and sociality.

One of his outstanding parodied works is based on Edward Hopper and Jack Vettriano. Hopper’s Nighthawks is parodied to criticize British chauvinism in dispatching troops to Iraq for the Iraq War, and he parodied Vettriano’s The Singing Butler to demonstrate opposition to the war. In particular he transformed Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa into a combatant with a rocket launcher. Also, naughty Mona Lisa lifting her hips is a kind of gesture to take off the masterpiece’s mask of authorities symbolizing the highest masterpiece in history.

Rats and children are his most frequently used images. They are often used as a tool of personification and their roles vary. A rat holds a placard while wearing a ‘peace sign’ around its neck, sometimes they carry a marker or a spray can for graffiti. The implication of using rats seems to be a desire of the artist himself. As rats rummaging through a ditch ask for peace and freedom, they play a role to speak for the minorities who were castrated by the authority.

Children are also one of his favourite subject matters. They are often used in scenes in which they are sacrificed to violence and unfairness. The famous Vietnam Napalm Girl who ran through flames during the Vietnam War now comes out along with Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse, which makes for a bittersweet comment on today’s consumerist society based on money and greed. Apart from these kinds of works, which criticise capitalism dominating the mind indirectly, innocent children in Banksy’s works are constantly suffering from an unjust society. Even though his works make people laugh because of a keen satire on society, they also encourage people to think and question the world around them.

Most of his works comment on the Government and/or authority, which are always depicted in a negative view. He calls himself an anarchist. Uniformed police officers in his works uncover their personal desires. When they get undressed out of their uniforms, they are no longer police officers and reveal insidiousness of authority and power behind uniforms.

His main canvas is the wall itself. Like more established artists such as Barbara Kruger and New York’s Guerrilla Girls he also uses the wall. As well as painting directly on the wall, he sometimes uses more traditional mediums such as paper and canvases. In particular, he loves to use the stencil technique, which allows a graffiti artist a neater and more desired effect. It is a popular technique for many street artists as is allows for a quick departure. Banksy is not tied down by a need for specialised spaces for exhibition such as more typical art gallery and museum settings. Moreover, he attempts to communicate with the public transcending both legality and illegality, which is why his paintings should be included in the realm of public art.

While stenciling on walls around the city, Banksy shows his artistic attitude, which is generally based on urbanism. His main stage is, as everyone knows, the city and his works are quite provocative towards oppression, coercion, hypocrisy and authority for indiscriminate development by people living in the city. In instances where Banksy has hung fake pieces of ‘art’ in world-famous galleries including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Louvre Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, the purpose has always embodied a message of resistance. His principle aim is for an open society escaping an inflexible thinking posture and liberating people’s pressure from uniformed governance in terms of showing interest in minorities and the Third World countries. At this point, Banksy seeks to revive a neglected class of people who do not fit in to the typical high-art scene largely due to elitist nature of the arts.

Banksy says, ‘As far as I can tell the only thing worth looking at in most museums of art is all the schoolgirls on daytrips with the art departments.’ He casts blame with the modern art galleries who choose to display artworks in the middle of white-painted spaces and announce that it is art just because it is in the art gallery. In one of his particularly famous displays of revolt he sprayed ‘Mind the crap’ on the steps of the Tate Britain before the Turner Prize ceremony, unlike other artists, his works do not need the white wall of art gallery to make a statement. Strong images involving social issues attract people’s attention and can have a lot of influence over their values and opinions. His underlying attitude denies the commercialisation of the art. In the mean time, Banksy paradoxically has become commercialized, as a result of his notoriety, and the fact that his works have now been hung on the white walls of art galleries, he has forever resisted. It could be seen that what people want to get from Banksy’s works is not an earnest discussion over a true value of the art or discussion on social issues which Banksy likes to evoke, but instead a hot issue or easily accessible topic in order to satisfy their curiosity.

It is noteworthy that Banksy has now become a figure of the artistic establishment, despite his best efforts. It will be interesting to keep an eye on his position in the art realm, to see whether he will be remembered just as the Lupin, the phantom thief in the arts, or rather will be seen as a creative pioneer in the evolution of making and displaying public street art.

Bibliography

Banksy, Banksy; Wall and Piece, London, The Random House UK, 2005

Brassett, James, British irony, global justice: a pragmatic reading of Chris Brown, Banksy and Ricky Gervais, Review of International Studies, 35, 219–245, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Weaver, Helen, Banksy Bristo city museum and art gallery, Art in America, Vol. 97 Issue 8, p.157, 2009

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Make a joke out of art? We’ll make a joke out of you!

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Katrina Dunn-Jones

DVD Release 13th October 2010.

‘Everything you are about to see is true, especially the bit where we all lie’ says Banksy of his debut film, Exit through the Gift Shop. (Sundance, 2010)

In this film, Banksy makes a joke out of the art world, just as the art world has made a joke of art. Underneath the jest, however, is a serious and important message.

Exit is the story of the industry’s subjugation of art. It is a cautionary tale about art, culture and capitalism. The villain of this tale is the ‘Culture Industry’; a factory, of sorts, that takes art and the avant garde, strips it of its subversive content, and churns out ‘pastiche’, the mere image of the avant garde.  As this image is disseminated through the many structures of the Culture Industry (film) art is steadily replaced with the image (the brand) and after a certain period of time, we, the public/consumer, can scarcely tell the difference between the imitation and the real thing. Banksy, through this film, revolts against the Culture Industry, by graffiting the medium that originally subjugated it. He makes apparent the power that industry images have over people; undermines the authority of the medium and the industry’s players; and reveals how art has been transformed into pastiche, ripe for consumption. In doing so he reveals the way we, the audience, have been manipulated by the Culture Industry and urged into consumerist passivity. The moral, don’t believe what you see and hear, don’t believe the hype, think for yourself!

Exit uses the Culture Industry’s ubiquitous images in order to undermine its perceived power. From the first moment, Banksy uses Street Art’s techniques of subversion to highlight the way images operate in culture. Exit opens, as almost all films do, with the logo of its production company, Paranoid Pictures. Paranoid Pictures, however, is not a production company; it is a Banksy stencil (available for purchase at Guy Hepner Gallery). Banksy has appropriated the Paramount Pictures logo; retaining the iconic snow capped mountain, replacing the halo of stars with bullet holes. It is only when the bullets begin to tear through the image that we become aware of the difference; the distinction between the two is not noticed at first glance. In that moment of revelation, the power of the Culture Industry’s images becomes apparent. We, the audience, suddenly realise how readily we accept—rather than question–the images depicted on screen. This opening sets the tone for the remainder of the film; encouraging the audience to question rather than accept what the film ‘tells’ them.

The power of the Culture Industry lies in its perceived authority and thus holds the power to define the avant garde and strip it of any subversive power. Exit constitutes Banksy’s attempt to resist documentation, which is ‘the worst thing that can happen to an avant garde’. He turns the camera away from himself (to the disappointment of the audience) and onto the documentarian, Thierry Guetta; an eccentric Frenchman who accidently ‘falls into the biggest countercultural movement since punk’. He is obsessed with filming the world around and for this reason resolves to make a documentary about Street Art –with little thought of what it would mean to document an art that is by nature, fleeting, and reliant on the invisibility of the artist. Guetta is shown to be a clumsy half-wit who does not understand the art he is documenting. This is made apparent by his attempt to describe Banksy:

He was incredible, he was cool, he was…, he was…eh, he was, human, he was…, he was…, he was…eh, he is…, he is, you know, he is really like, eh, what he represent, you know. I think he is really like, eh, I think he is really like eh…I really liked him!

This point is furthered by Guetta’s ‘documentary’, Life Remote Control:

An hour and a half of unwatchable, nightmare, trailers. [It is] essentially like someone with a short attention span with a remote control, flicking through a cable box of nine hundred channels…everything about it was, well, ‘shit’. (Banksy)

Banksy concludes:

It was at that point that I realised maybe Thierry wasn’t actually a filmmaker and was maybe just someone with mental problems who happened to have camera…So I though maybe I should have a go, I mean I don’t know how to make a film, but that didn’t seem to stop Thierry, so…

Through the example of Guetta, Banksy shows how the Culture Industry makes a joke out of art and how those that document and define a movement are generally ‘half wits’ who do not understand the art they are documenting, nor the implications of the very act of documenting. This destruction of art, by the industry, is contrasted with Banksy, an artist who creates art that speaks for itself. Though this film, Banksy undermines the industry and the ‘information’ it espouses, in so doing, he re-empowers Street Art and breaks the spell the Culture Industry has cast.

Banksy shows the art world to be a sham, through the character of Guetta, who, through the tools of marketing and advertising, is transformed overnight from ‘humble shopkeeper’ to ‘art-world sensation’. In the beginning of the film, Guetta is introduced to audience as: ‘the owner of a vintage clothing store in the city’s most bohemian shopping district; he made a good living selling wears to L.A.’s more fashion conscious citizens’. Guetta explains:

at that time I used to buy old adidas and old things, things you couldn’t find here…and when the sewing was different, I call it ‘designer’, and I put the price up, I say ‘four hundred dollars’. So from fifty dollars I could sometimes make, five thousand dollars.

Guetta and his store are metaphor for the art world, which routinely picks up a trash, calls it art and hikes up the prices. Guetta takes this same approach when he reinvents himself as ‘Mr Brainwash’ – artist extraordinaire. With his Warhol-esque factory Guetta recycles virtually every avant garde since POP, producing hundreds of meaningless pastiches. Irrespective of the quality of his work, Guetta’s debut show Life is Beautiful was, in industry terms, a great success:  ‘the ultimate validation was measured in dollars and cents, by the end of his opening week Thierry would sell over a million dollars of art’. Guetta’s ‘success’, as we are shown in the film, was entirely the result of the Culture Industry’s publicity machines — after hearing about the show in publications such as LA Weekly, over two thousand people lined up at the gallery door on the day of the opening. The public are shown to be completely ignorant of the influence of publicity and are unaware that their interpretation of the work is merely a recycled press release; where Banksy notes that Guetta’s art ’looks like every one else’s’, a visitor describes Guetta’s works as ‘a mixture of street art and POP, together, really interesting stuff, very modern, no one has really done it the way he’s done it’. This film shows how the Culture Industry makes consumers out of us all. The customers of Guetta’s store—‘typical arty types’—are shown to be no different to the philistines who praise the work of Mr Brainwash. If the Culture Industry were a puppet show, in this film, Banksy reveals the strings. He shows how we, the public, after of decades manipulation, can no longer distinguish between art and pastiche. In doing so Banksy subverts the Culture Industry, clueing us up to ‘the culture of mass deception’.

Banksy turns the tables on the Culture Industry to make the following point: don’t believe the hype, don’t believe what they tell you, don’t even believe what I tell you, look at what you see and think for yourself!

___________

Bibliography:

Adorno, T. W. & Max Horkheimer. ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. 1947. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.

ACMI: The Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Droney, Damien. ‘The Business of “Getting Up”: Street Art and Marketing in Los Angeles’. Visual Anthropology.  23: 2, March, 2010.

Huyssen, Andreas. ‘Back to the Future’. In the Spirit of Fluxus. Minneapolis: Walker Art Centre, 1993.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.

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