Exit Through the Gift Shop

www.banksyfilm.com

What I thought was going to be a documentary about Banksy, was really actually a documentary about Thierry Guetta. Thierry went on a mission to document street artists and it snowballed. He ended up meeting world-famous street artist Banksy and had tapes upon tapes upon tapes of unorganized footage of street art in action, and when he put it all together...it wasn't that great. Banksy decided to take matters into his own hands and created "Exit Through the Gift Shop." Upon Googling "Exit Through the Gift Shop," Google suggested to me "exit through the gift shop hoax," which piqued my interest. While it definitely launched Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash's career, I'd never suspected it to be a hoax. Conspiracy theorists, which seems extreme in this circumstance, suggest that Guetta is just a front for Banksy, or even that he is Banksy himself. They suggest it is a "satire of the contemporary art scene" ("Is Banksy's 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' a hoax too far?"). However, I have a hard time believing it was just some joke to make a lot of money, but if that was Banksy's intention, he pulled it off really well. Banksy is notoriously sneaky. After watching the documentary, you definitely get the feeling that Banksy does not take Guetta very seriously, but he does think of him as a friend. Personally, Guetta's insta-success made me face-palm on more than one occasion, mostly because he churns out art like a machine, but doesn't seem to have the same kind of passion for it like Banksy or Shepard Fairey. If it is a hoax, if it just happens to be some ploy by Fairey and Banksy to make a statement or some PR campaign to boost their popularity and make more money, way to go them. They really thought everything through. Thierry Guetta is a weird French guy who mumbles and bumbles and he's "making" art (aka hiring graphic designers off craigslist to go through "The Art Book") that basically rips off Warhol and other artists and he's making upwards of $500,000 for pieces of his art. It's a brilliant statement about commercial art. Thierry Guetta's probably just a really skilled actor. We'll probably never know.