Through the awesomeness of Netflix ‘watch instant’ I watched “Exit Through the Gift Shop” a Banksy film.
A bit of a ‘freeform’ documentary, it follows a lot of famous street-artists around doing their thing. The basis is Thierry Guetta, a vintage clothing store owner and all around do-whatever kinda guy, pretty much video tapes everything he does.
He visits family in France and follows his cousin, Space Invader, out putting up his art around the town. Of course Thierry is videoing the whole thing. It evolves into following more and more artists around. Thierry makes everyone think (or they just assume) he’s making a documentary.
But he never even watches the tapes – they just all go into boxes and boxes… and boxes and boxes full of tapes.
Eventually he starts following Banksy around and gets caught. He holds solid and Banksy then completely trusts him. He eventually does create a film… that’s completely unwatchable. And at Banksy’s suggestion, Thierry becomes a street artist, but he starts at the top. He has a showing and hypes it up with quotes from Banksy and other famous artists.
At the show (and even before), Thierry’s “work” sells for thousands of dollars and he sells over a million dollars with of “art.” Perception is reality. I have to wonder what those people think about the work now that they’ve seen the movie???
It seems the most he contributed to the actual artwork was splattering some paint on the finished product produced by hired artists. He directed them and what he pulled off is amazing, but it prompts the question: what is art? And what is valuable?
Thierry got immediate street value by borrowing on the reputation of others. Does that make it art or is it “fake?”
Anyway, it’s a fun film to watch and brings up a lot of questions about value in art and what art really is: the idea, the execution, the perception? I’d say Thierry’s “art” what his pulling it all off (not that it was a scam… completely. I’m sure he’d say it wasn’t.).
I give it 3.5 Babbles
Aileen
Johnny
Jeff
Tony B Kim
