Don't exit until you've seen this gem.By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee
"Warhol repeated iconic images until they became meaningless, but there was still something iconic about them. Thierry really makes them meaningless." Bansky
A short film called "Folk Art Found Me" introduced me to the colorful world of kitschy but lovely local art work and enhanced what I had suspected to be valuable expressions of non-art-school sensibility. Now Exit through the Gift Shop illuminates the sometimes absurd world of street art with its infamous avatars like Bansky and Thierry.
Gift Shop is as good an introduction as you will find to an Andy-Warhol world of wacko "artists" who provoke the average bloke into art rhapsody while suspecting the artists are phonies and we willing accomplices in the corruption of art.
Thierry Guetta is a mutton-chopped vintage clothes retailer who videos every moment of his day and decides to document graffiti artists at work, the apex being the elusive Bansky. But Bansky takes over the unedited ramblings and fashions a superb documentary that not only chronicles his own late night expeditions but also the rise of Thierry to a major artist on the strength of an LA Weekly article and a spectacular "art" show.
No use trying to decide for sure if Warhol-like Campbell soup cans made into spray containers are art at all; it's the juiced populous that decides by buying millions of dollars in prints and collages from new-artist Thierry. No use even trying to decide if it's promotion or art because it's both with a heavy emphasis on promotion.
Graffiti artists Shepherd Fairey and The Invader don't exactly praise Theirry, nor does Bansky, who ultimately says, "I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore." If you're not sure if it's art or pretense, then gently exit through the gift shop and enjoy the memory of art as an expression of . . . Oh, I don't know either. I do know it's fun.
"There's no one like Thierry, even though his art looks like everyone else's." Bansky
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com