Greatest Art Documentary

Ok well there is soo much layers to this film that it’s a bit difficult to say what it is definitely. Now it took me a while to get to writing about Exit Through the Gift Shop because I felt compelled to fact check it. When I have to get my ass off the couch and look through my computer to find out if a movie is accurate then it is successful on just accomplishing that. Now to reiterate, I do consider myself an artist and am subject to all its trappings and biased so my review of this film is going to have its preference.

I have been a fan of street art since I got hold of the book Dirty Graphics & Strange Characters back in 1999 when a fellow art student recommended it to me. But the film is awesome not simply because it’s a documentary on street art, which it is to an extent but more over that it’s a study on Mr. Brainwash aka Thierry Guetta. For the first quarter of the film we get a feel on all the major players of street art, Invader, Shepard Fairy, Swoon, and Bansky to name a few. Get a sense what they stand for and what they are trying to say with this movement of a new wave of graffiti art and it relevance today. But to my confusion it takes a crazy turn to covering this french man, Guetta and was wondering why should I care about this guy. The reasons reveal itself in the end of the film in a very satisfying way.

There has been a lot of questions as to how real this french man is. People have speculated that it’s Bansky’s prank on the art world since he directed the film. I am not in that lot, in fact I believe Bansky has realized the irony of what Guetta really is, what he has done and what he continues to do to street art. After all he has shown during Art Basel this year.

To anyone who has seen this film and continues to believe that Mr. Brainwash is a fabrication, I say they miss the point completely.