“I like the idea that the more stickers that are out there, the more important it seems. The more important it seems, the more people want to know what it [the Obey image, ed.] is, the more they ask each other and it gains real power from perceived power.” (Shepard "Obey" Fairey in Exit Through The Gift Shop)
I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes. (Banksy, in conversation with Shepard Fairey, Swindle magazine, issue 8)
Also featured on the May 2010 issue of Duellanti (Viggo Mortensen on the cover) is my take on the best documentary on street art of the year, Exit Through The Gift Shop. My working hypothesis is that Banksy's film extravaganza is the greatest documentary on contemporary art tout court. The key assumption is: art is dead because art is everywhere. Everybody is now an artist and everybody is a celebrity (add the micro/nano suffix at your convenience). What we call "Art" is pure showbiz and simulation, as Jean Baudrillard put it a while ago. There are no "real" artists left - or critics, for that matter - there are only convincing simulators. Exit Through The Gift Shop is the apogee of a cinematic crescendo of critiques on contemporary art - think Art School Confidential, (Untitled), and Boogie Woogie, just to name a few recent examples. Banksy does the same of tongue-in-cheek criticism that Ben Lewis, the Borat of the Artworld, has elevated to a form of art itself. Lewis' works - BBC's Art Safari series and The Great Contemporary Art Bubble - are complementary to Exit Through The Gift Shop. The go hand in hand, they play the same games, like Patricia Piccinini's cloned kids.
In short, Art is dead, long live Art!
And don't forget to buy the poster on your way out.
Click onto the thumbnails below to read the article (in Italian)
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