Thierry Guetta's Exit Through The Gift Shop

“In contrast to government-commissioned public art, street art is illicit and subversive in nature. Therefore, most street artists, including Banksy, use pseudonyms to avoid legal prosecution for vandalism.”(Chung 27) Banksy’s street art does not focus on competing with rival artists, but focuses on engaging with a broader audience in a deeper level. He provokes his audience by deeply expressing out various social practices that helps viewers to reflect and confront certain aspects together as a community. (27) The underlying message of Banksy’s art can lead towards an active involvement of street art within the community.

Banksy has essentially the exact same style and le Rat, almost to the point of ripping off le Rat’s style entirely. It’s very sad, because Banksy makes more money and is more well known than le Rat, and le Rat’s pieces are often mistaken for Banksy’s. Le Rat is of two minds on this topic. On the one hand, he only thinks that anything he says about Banksy will be taken out of context and he will be the one under fire (Battersby). However, he does think that Banksy helps to call attention to street art, saying “‘It is important that people recognize what we do, and accept it for what it is," he states. "It is art. Urban artists are forced to write on public property because there is a lack of space assigned to us’” (Philby), which goes back to the idea of gallery space being both too restrictive and too selective for street artists. One of the more recent pieces Blek le Rat created was on the topic of homelessness. He made his signature black and white stencils of homeless people sitting and lying on the ground. The idea was to call attention to the homeless people living in cities that people see every day and disregard. It’s an ironic subject, as the popularity of street art makes le Rat’s art a hot topic, but homeless people are not a popular subject at all. “…people will walk directly over actual homeless people, but will stop to discuss a painting of a homeless person on a wall” (Stencil

Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged from the punk scene in New York as a street-smart graffiti artist. He successfully crossed over his downtown origins to the international art gallery circuit. Basquiat’s work is one of the few examples of how an early 1980’s American graffiti-based could become a fully recognized artist. Despite his work’s unstudied appearance, Basquiat very skillfully and purposefully brought together in his art a host of disparate traditions, practices and styles to create a unique kind of visual collage. His work is an example of how American artists of the 1980’s could reintroduce the human figure in their work after the wide success of minimalism and conceptualism.

The reason he is able to continue to release controversial art in highly populated, public places without consequences to his person solely because of his anonymity, and that his work represents itself enough without him. His work is criticized by many, but as it is an inanimate voice of opinion, Banksy is able to use it to his advantage, and plaster his opinion on current issues, wherever he can/wants.

Banksy is a very well known street artist and filmmaker who after years of having Thierry follow him around filming everything tells Thierry to make his own art. Thierry in returns does something even better he creates his on alter ego named Mr. Brainwash whose art is nothing more than copycat off of other famous art works but, with added color and a few different designs. Thierry then opens his own art expiate where he shows off and sells his artwork. This kicks off his career as an artist. But, upsets many other street artists who feel Thierry never really had to struggle like they

As seen in the movie, Thierry (Mr. Brainwash) plans to open a gallery as soon as he becomes a street artist. While most street artists hone their craft for years, Thierry immediately considers himself a professional even though he has no experience of making art himself. As a result, one might assume

The film, Exit through the Gift Shop, describes the story of Thierry Guetta and how he became a somewhat famous “artist.” Thierry is a guy who loves to film anything and everything that he can. One of the reasons he loves to record things is because as a child his mother had gotten sick and died, and Thierry was kept in the dark about her condition. His mother had died without Thierry knowing she was going to die or even that she was sick. Because of this, Thierry thought that it was important to film everything because he didn’t want to miss out on anything else in his life or in his family’s life.

With help of Thierry Guetta, a French boutique owner turned freelance videographer, the world of graffiti and its artists are exposed in Exit through the Gift Shop. Well-known artists such as Shephard Fairey, Invader, Borf, and many others are captured by Guetta’s camcorder. Guetta captures the art chronologically from beginning to end all while avoiding law enforcement. His efforts led to following around the extremely talented, Banksy.

Banksy is one of the most famous and mysterious street artists in the world. Helen Weaver, the art in an American magazine writer stated that,” Banksy was born in 1974 and was raised in the Bristol UK area. When he first started spray painting, he was ten years old.” “(1). Weaver Helen.” Banksy.” Art in America. Sep 18.2009. Web.11 Nov.2015. Banksy enjoyed the attention he received from the public. He loved using street art to express his inner feelings. He mostly uses graffiti to express his feelings. In the early years the authorities worked hard to remove his pictures from public places. They considered his art vandalism and destructive to the public. Vandalism is when someone deliberately destroys the public or private property, however, the public fought to save some of his pictures from authorities. Banksy is a very influential artist in his time. He was well respected and recognized by his fans all over the world.

While his identity remains unknown, it is believed that he was born in Bristol, England in the mid-1970s. In the beginning of his career, he started doing graffiti in the early 90s and collaborated with other street artists. His artwork at the time consisted mostly of freehand, but starting in the late 90s, he predominantly used stencils as it was deemed more efficient. With this technique, his work became more well known around Bristol and London. In the late 2000’s, his work surfaced all over, even being on buildings in different parts of America, predominantly New York City. While some of his work seems to be humorous and satirical, they mostly relate to war and capitalism. His work often times are parodies of historical images, such as the piece being focused on in this analysis (“Banksy

What makes him different from street artists is that he does not devote his work to one specific area. Banksy went from traditional street art painting on walls to spray painting into vehicles. During his art movement in New York he sprayed painted an extravagant art piece that tied to political spectrum, the Horses in Night-Vision Goggles and the soundtrack to go with it made it so realistic. He did a very good job with the color tone that went with the spray painting. He wanted to make it realistic by including the soundtrack in the background; this caused a big crowd of New Yorkers at the location. All in all the art movement done in New York brought people together. People who were appreciative of his art and to collaborate to one another about his work were special. You had to be at the different locations to see the art in person to see the impact it has. Although, it brought people together it also cause some chaos. There were people that vandalized his artwork because they were so tired of his

The shaky and handheld footages documented by Guetta to showcase the street artists at work, his family and his misdemeanor tryst at Disneyland with Banksy, gave a sense of real life unfolding before the audiences’ eyes. After all, the audiences are easily convinced of what is real if the handheld camera movements are shaky because the event being captured is fast-moving (Chapman 2009, 21). Yet, it is interesting to note that during one of his film premiere interviews, Banksy had mentioned that rolls of these archived footages taken by Guetta were impossible to watch and that he and his small team of editors spent a year trawling through 10,000 hours of footages only to find mere seconds of usable footages (Leopold, 2010). If this was the case, then it poses questions on the realism of the footages that were put together in the film - were they real or mere reenactments to construct realism since the depiction of truth in documentary can be challenging; “it can tell a truth, but not the entire truth” (Chapman 2009,

Banksy or as said to be shortened for Robert Banks is the graffiti artist who will never be caught. His technique of stenciling makes it easier for him to get the job done fast and efficiently. Banksy states that being anonymous can be “crippling” and hard to do. In an anonymous email said to be from Banksy he states,

This is the story of Thierry Guetta, who would later come to be know as Mr. Brainwash. He was a French immigrant living in Los Angeles that ran a successful vintage clothing shop. He fell in love with recording things on his video camera, everything. He would eventually be introduced to Shepard Fairey (OBEY PROPOGANDA) by his cousin Invader, another well known street artist. While visiting him in France, recording his cousin producing his art a spark ignited inside of Thierry, he became enthralled with street art. When he gets back to LA he begins filming Shepard’s art escapades, with the intentions of making a street art documentary. Thierry then starts to seek out and film many other well know street artists. He is slightly misleading in that he never watches any other footage, he juts packs it in boxes, at times not even labeling the tapes. Next Thierry is miraculously called by Banksy, the world renown extremely secretive street artist. They also began collaborating, Theirry begins documenting the production, application and crowd reactions of Banksy works. Finally, Theirry pieces together several thousands of hours of footage, and calls it Life Remote Control, it turns out to be terrible and “unwatchable”. So Banksy suggests that he create his own art, instead of a documentary. So he does, he refinanced his house, sold his business and put all he had into an art studio with equipment and staff. It was capable of making street art on a commercial level. Mr. Brainwash is born.

Banksy is a very renowned street artist who keeps his identity unknown. His artwork is portrayed by “striking images, often combined with slogans, [which] engages political themes, satirically critiquing war, capitalism, hypocrisy and greed” (“Banksy Biography”). He first started his bold street art in Bristol, his hometown located in London, but quickly spread to the United States of America. In the U.S., Banksy targeted the most populated cities; this was due to the fact that it was easier for him to spread his messages. With a crowded location, his lessons will extent over an audience much quicker.