On Monday, May 10th, Good Exposure students took a trip to the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood to watch Banksy’s directorial debut, Exit Through the Gift Shop. Exit is a documentary film created largely with video footage recorded by a french shopkeeper named Theirry Guetta whose personal obsession with recording everything in his life led him to recording graffiti artists around the world. His obsession finally leads him to becoming a street artist himself, now known as Mr. Brainwash.
Exit leads the viewer to think about the meaning of art, the art market and what qualifies one to be an artist.
Banksy clearly states his regret of encouraging Theirry Guetta to “go make some art” – transforming this obsessed fan into an overnight self-proclaimed artist, Mr. Brainwash. With little history of creating, Mr. Brainwash sets record high sales and attendance levels at his first art show. While his success is played off as a fluke, maybe the joke is on us all.
I want to hear the students thoughts of the film.
Do you think that Mr. Brainwash is an artist that should be taken seriously?
What did you learn about the formal elements of filmmaking such as, editing, shooting, directing etc?
What did you learn about the subculture of street- art?
Anything else you want to say?
Mallori
2 years ago
Jesse Coyne and I would like to thank the Good Exposure Project and WORKS for taking all of us to see the film.
I thought it was a refreshing dose of sarcasm on behalf of Bansky. He really thought the his work was art, and then MBW stepped in and altered street-art’s individual style, he made light out of the situation. I am sure that Banksy doesn’t give a rats you-know-what MBW does, however, it was BOLD of MrBrainWash to step on all of the artists toes and make his own art and mass distribute it. I am sure that many artists agree that original pieces are valued more than reproduced ideas of existing artists.