Street Art's Conflicted Relationship With Commerce - An Analysis of Banksy's "Exit Through the Gift Shop"

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:19:00 -0500

Art and commerce do not always go hand-in-hand. “When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires,” says a street artist whose identity is anonymous and who is very critical of commercialism. Mr. Brainwash – a new pop artist on the scene – is very commercial, starting with his name. Mr. Brainwash produces mass quantities of easily accessible recycled popular images for purposes of selling for large sums of money. He draws inspiration from the original pop artist, Andy Warhol. Warhol was interested in commerce and mass production, as well, but his life also seemed to be its own living work of art which has shaped the way fame and commercialism are viewed to this day. Mr. Brainwash is kind of a living work of art as well, more interesting than the actual art he creates.

Mr. Brainwash is Thierry Guetta, a Los Angeles Artist whose work has appeared in LA, New York, and Miami at solo shows massive in space, quantity of work and attendance. He has designed album artwork for Madonna, while his shirts sell on KCRW.com for $50. He has adopted Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can as his own icon, modernizing the image by reconstructing it as a spray canister. The artwork is Mr. Brainwash’s vision – with the actual labor being conducted by paid graphic designers.

Guetta is the subject of Exit Through the Gift Shop – a documentary by anonymous British street artist Banksy, a provocateur fond of situationist-like public disruption and dada-style art pranks. Since the early nineties, Banksy has been stenciling graffiti around London and elsewhere for purposes of satire and political commentary, often altering the messages of billboards and advertisements. Banksy has also snuck spoof paintings onto the walls of famous galleries, replaced Paris Hilton CDs in record stores with doctored copies, successfully installed a blow-up doll dressed as a Guantanamo detainee at Disneyland, and even grafittied on the wall at the West Bank. Perhaps the most notable street artist, Banksy’s intentionally chooses an “illegal” art form. His work is frequently cleaned-up, taken down, or painted over, shortly after its creation, making the art form and often their locations as political as the messages they contain.

Banksy’s work critiques government propaganda, as well as advertising, which he perceives as a form of cultural propaganda. “The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff,” Banksy writes in Wall and Piece, the definitive published compilation of his work. ”They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you’re never allowed to answer back.” By bombarding the masses with images and messages depicting and dictating what should be consumed, society becomes anesthetized, and subsequently the masses are more apt to accept a system in which they are exploited as something normal. Cultural revolution and resistance is successfully neutered - and these perpetrators (the “culture industry”) achieve what Noam Chomsky refers to this as “manufacturing consent.”

“Well, they started the fight,” Banksy says, “and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back.

Exit Through the Gift Shop - Banksy’s newest weapon of choice - begins, as one might expect, with a montage of homemade video featuring graffiti artists in action on streets around the world. Banksy then arrives, seen only in silhouette with his voice modified, to introduce the film. “It’s not Gone with the Wind,” he says, “but there’s probably a moral in there.”

The story is told through the eyes of Guetta, first introduced as a quirky Frenchman who must videotape every aspect of his life, while also running a boutique clothing shop which repositions affordable clothing as trendy and expensive, catering to celebrities such as Beck. His obsessive filming eventually leads him in to the world of street art, through his cousin, Space Invader, who builds tiled mosaics of characters from the Space Invaders video game and installs them on city walls. Through Invader, Guetta meets Shephard Fairey, the street artist who gained notoriety for his sticker and wheat-paste campaign featuring the face of Andre the Giant coupled by the phrase, “Obey.” Fairey says it started as an inside joke, but became more interesting the more prevalent the art became, stating that it “… gains real power from perceived power.”

For years, Guetta collects video of street artists at work, in preparation, he says, for the definitive street art documentary. Guetta is eventually introduced to the elusive Banksy, and becomes a trusted accomplice, documenting numerous stunts and pranks. Following his first gallery show, attended by the likes of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jude Law, Banksy’s celebrity skyrockets and his work, as well as that of other notable street artists, begins selling as though it were simply legitimate art. This brush with commercial success leaves Banksy a little uneasy, prompting him to push Guetta to finish his film so the masses can see what street art is “really all about.

Banksy however is disappointed by the mess Guetta creates in the editing room, and subsequently takes over the footage, also turning the camera on Guetta. Returning from his visit with Banksy, Guetta sets about becoming a street artist himself, quickly abandoning that to instead hype himself as a pop art sensation. With initial support from Banksy and Fairey, Guetta christens himself Mr. Brainwash, a self-reflexive commentary on art and advertising. “The whole movement of art is about brainwashing,” he says. “‘Obey’ is about brainwashing. Banksy is about brainwashing.”

Hiring a team of graphic designers to bring his ideas to life – recycling, re-coloring and doctoring popular images – Mr. Brainwash’s first show is a tremendous success, landing him on the cover of the LA Weekly, with works selling for tens of thousands of dollars. At film’s end, both Banksy and Fairey show disappointment with Mr. Brainwash’s work, both for being too derivative of their own, while lacking the subversive qualities of street art. (Banksy had wanted Guetta’s film to show that street art “isn’t all about hype,” and instead Mr. Brainwash is all about hype).

The release of Exit Through the Gift Shop prompted debate over the authenticity of the film. New York Magazine asked, “Is Banksy’s Mr. Brainwash an Art-World Borat?” and reviewed his New York “Icons” show with great skepticism:

The show was so wretchedly derivative, repetitive, and insultingly insipid that we felt it could only have been an intentional prank: With its prints of famous figures Mr. Brainwash said he couldn’t name from memory, and art made out of broken LPs (a staple of junk sales), it was as if they were taunting hipster collectors into buying the worst possible art to prove their hideous, herd-following taste. (Not to mention journalists’ unethical gullibility: Mr. Brainwash kept trying to push a framed print on us, while mentioning how much we could sell it for on eBay.) We definitely felt put on (even if we respected the prank), but we couldn’t prove it.

Through Guetta and his alter-ego, we are able to see the evolution of an aesthetic that is illegal, dangerous and subversive into something that is not only commercial but celebrates the icons, systems, and messages, that Banksy has deemed his enemy. This story allows us to understand the complex relationship that Banksy has with commerce, his own celebrity, his acceptance in the art world, and his stature in the street art scene. If Banksy is looking to pull a prank on a gullible art-loving public, the end result is a critique of how the culture industry has co-opted street art.

Fairey appears in the film ostensibly in the role of a protagonist, but he has also drawn criticism for having “cynically turned graffiti culture into a cheap hustle in a way that was no different than the corporate advertising that already clutters up our cities and demands that we ‘obey, ’” argues Erik Reuland in Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority. In 1997, Fairey co-founded BLK/MRKT, a self-described “creative agency best known for our ability to integrate a message directly into today’s youth-oriented culture.” Their mission statement continues:

We maintain an acute understanding of cultural climates and a dedication to precision research to insure campaigns we are involved in appeal to the hard-to-reach trendsetter without alienating the general consumer. We work with our clients to unlock a brand’s cultural energy utilizing effective and inspiring strategies; creative solutions that can penetrate the world of the ad-savvy consumer.

With language like “integrate” and “penetrate,” it’s not difficult to see why Guetta made his observation that Fairey’s “movement … is about brainwashing.” In campaigns and projects for Heineken, Adidas, Absolut and Nissan, the aesthetics of street art and graffiti are adopted, only with the mission of encouraging consumption and fostering brand identity.

Successfully adopting the tools of rebellion and reformatting them to sell an opposite message is a major tool of the culture industry. The culture industry, as first described by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception are the systems and technologies in place to keep members of a society inert. “It is the coercive nature of society alienated from itself,” Adormo and Horkheimer write,

Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together…. It has made the technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of standardisation and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system.

In No Logo, Naomi Klein notes a “paradigm shift” when the world’s largest brands shifted focus towards ”faux indie brands” that didn’t even acknowledge the corporation behind them. ”Levi’s, … Gap … [and] even Coke itself, the most recognizable brand name on earth, has tried to go underground … [f]eeling that it was too establishment for brand conscious teens.”

BLK/MRKT promotes a campaign for Mountain Dew in which the “package design/ image” is “reworked and updated … helping to re-establish brand awareness and positioning in the youth market.” Klein quotes from a Fortune Magazine article “offering … advice on how to market to teenage girls” in which Nina Murk states, “you have to pretend that they’re running things.” Successful immersion into the youth market means the youth believe they are the ones running things; street art to sell brands would be viewed as a sign of progress, not a regression – enlightenment as mass deception.

Banksy’s work is political in the it is a weapon against these corporations, but does not outline a clear political agenda nor provide a blueprint for how the masses can rise up against and stop this cultural brainwashing. Banksy is political, but his work could also be interpreted as cynical.

In a introduction created by Banksy for The Simpsons that aired in early 2010, workers are shown in deplorable conditions producing the show’s animation, stuffing Bart Simpson dolls, and popping holes in Simpsons’ DVDs using the horn of a chained-up unicorn. The scene pans out to reveal a prison within the logo of 20^th Century Fox, before returning to the upbeat, Danny Elfman-composed Simpsons score.

Banksy’s statement is nuanced – asking the viewer to question where their products come from and the unethical behavior of the corporations they support, while ultimately stepping aside, allowing the viewer to not have to engage such questions any further. This attitude towards the limits of his subversive art is exemplified in statements such as, “We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.”

Banksy’s relationship with his own fame and notoriety is nuanced as well. He appears disinterested in celebrity despite brandishing his name across London’s walls and bridges, and maintains only minimal interest in the selling of his work. His website contains a message from his lawyer stating that “Banksy cannot be found on facebook/ twitter/ myspace etc,” while adding, “Banksy has never produced greeting cards, mugs or photo canvases of his work.”

Banksy has established himself as a concept - a ghost-like artist authentically true to his ideals above all else. Fairey says Banksy’s anonymity allows him to “control the way his message is put out very carefully.” Banksy is able to focus analysis of his art on its messages without the distraction of factoring in, for instance, what brand of jeans he prefers. Anonymity or not, however, it’s hard to reach a high level of fame without enduring some critique – how can an anti-capitalist artist profit from their work by allowing it to sell for tens of thousands of dollars?

In the film, Banksy works to distract from his first gallery art show. The film’s narrator describes him as more interested in the risky act of installing his blow-up Guantanamo detainee at Disneyland It seems fitting that on the eve of his show, Banksy would attempt such a risky stunt for something that would be removed from history almost instantaneously (thankfully, there’s video footage). His LA show was a painted elephant in the room representing the elephant in the room - that celebrities and rich art collectors representing the upper crust of society were fawning over an artist that is both anti-capitalist and anti-celebrity.

Prior to Banksy, artists and collectives have struggled with the relationship between subversion and commerce. Banksy partially fulfills this dilemma by turning his own success into a face - another Banksy stunt.

In 1964, Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Boxes“ - “silkscreened ink on wood replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes” - were viewed by some in the art world as a joke. But their arrival was so significant, writes Arthur C. Danto in Beyond the Brillo Box, and “demonstrated that the difference between art and non-art is philosophical and momentous, by constituting itself as an example of the kind that always implies a philosophical boundary.” Danto describes the post-Brillo Box art world as “post-historical”:

Art was no longer possible in terms of a progressive historical narrative. The narrative had come to an end…. It liberated artists from the task of making more history. It really did mean that anything could be art…

Warhol’s ushering in of the post-historical art world was significant. He silk-screened images of celebrities and photos from popular culture, and appropriated objects from everyday life. Pop art was born, and when combined with previous art movements such as dada and surrealism, which had also sought to escape the historical narrative of art, the door was opened for postmodern art forms such as graffiti and street art.

In his famous portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Chairman Mao, Warhol envisioned a society in which the images of icons are reproduced to the point in which all meaning is lost, and it’s clear these silk screen prints were an influence for Banksy’s Che Guevera series on a bridge spanning Portobello Road in West London.

“Every Saturday the market underneath the bridge sells Che Guevara t-shirts, handbags, baby bids and button badges,” Banksy writes. “I think I was trying to make a statement about the endless recycling of an icon. People always seem to think if they dress like a revolutionary they don’t actually have to behave like one.” There are six paintings in Banksy’s series above the bridge - all the same image of Che gradually disappearing from each successive page. As the iconic image of Che is continuously recycled, the image once symbolic of revolution, instead becomes banal, free of its revolutionary context. Such is the risk in a post-historical narrative.

“Icons” was the very appropriate title for Mr. Brainwash’s second gallery show. I say appropriate since the entire catalog of Mr. Brainwash work is about icons. His subjects have included Kanye West in a Marilyn Monroe wig, Elvis Presley with a toy gun, and Beatles in KISS makeup. The aesthetic is Warhol, updated with street-art inspiration, and made possible through Photoshop. Mr. Brainwash’s work, however, lacks the fundamental power of Warhol’s and Banksy’s work. When Warhol recycled or reappropriated iconic images, he removed them from their original context forcing the viewer to look at them in new ways. Similarly, when Banksy paints a portrait that mocks a historically famous painting and then installs it in a gallery, he is asking the viewer to think critically about what they see and where they see it. Mr. Brainwash is further recycling already recycled images and ideas. He is selling celebrity, rather than pushing the viewer to ask anything of themselves.

But Banksy did not make his first film simply to critique another artist - even one whose work “happens to look a lot like” his own. For Banksy, Mr. Brainwash – hoax or not – is an allegory for how the aesthetic of street art has been co-opted, recycled, and stripped of its subversive power. Mr. Brainwash is not the villain of Exit Through the Gift Shop. The villain is the same as in Banksy’s street art – the “companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses” and the culture industry.

Mr. Brainwash is the culture industry – with a most fitting name. Like the culture industry, Mr. Brainwash has carefully followed and documented subversive street artists, adopting and appropriating their aesthetic, repacking it in a more commercial, less political fashion. An aesthetic once established to disseminate messages encouraging free thought has instead been re-programmed to “penetrate the world of the ad-savvy consumer” into “feel[ing] inadequate unless we buy their stuff.”

Banksy’s critique is not of the masses who flock to a Mr. Brainwash show. Instead, Banksy is further critiquing the culture industry for actively working to create a culture in which the masses can easily be sold on the latest brand of cool. Banksy takes ownership of his roll in allowing this to happen. He takes responsibility for the creation of Mr. Brainwash, understanding how his rise to prominence partially allowed for the exploitation of street art.

However, Exit Through the Gift Shop is not a tragedy. It forces the viewer to ask so many questions but the most important question being asked is if we are smart enough to recognize something that is inauthentic, doesn’t this make us still able to critically examine the messages being fed to us? In other words, if we can see-through Mr. Brainwash, can we avoid being brainwashed? And, if these questions are difficult to answer, at least we can go shopping to console ourselves.

WBB

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Street Art's Conflicted Relationship With Commerce - An Analysis of Banksy's "Exit Through the Gift Shop"