Where to draw the line between art and mass production...

I just watched a documentary via Netflix titled "Exit Through the Gift Shop." It was about street art, and also about the nature of art. After buying a book of Banksy's work while I was still in high school and hanging a poster of several of his locations in my room, I was definitely interested in what I thought was going to be a documentary about art's role in cultural critique.

The documentary was really interesting, though admittedly not what I was expecting at all. Thierry Guetta was the central figure. He was a French guy that live in LA and was obsessed with videotaping everything. Just by chance, he started taping one of his relatives that was Invader. From there he met and started taping Shepard Fairey and others on a pretty obsessive basis. He told them he was taping for a documentary though this wasn't true. Due to the nature of street art, things don't remain permanent, so it's easy to see why videotaping the art and its process had such an appeal. Guetta began pursuing Banksy. Eventually he met him and became one of the few people Banksy trusted with protecting his identity.

After shooting a ton of Banksy work, and seeing the huge response to Banksy's exhibition in London, Banksy asked Guetta to actually put together the documentary he had been saying he was going to do. The commercial success of Banksy's work meant street art as a whole was being commercialized and sold at extremely high prices, and its roots were being forgotten. Guetta took his boxes upon boxes of video tapes and produced this drawn out, heavily edited, unwatchable, almost schizophrenic compilation of some of the footage he had taken of street artists. Guetta seemed to have viewed it as his own creative endeavor rather than a showcase of street art talent.

Upon seeing it, Banksy told him that he should try making his own art. Well, he did. Starting off small, he used the same stark stencil designs and pasting techniques that other artists had. He called himself Mister Brainwash. Using mostly Photoshop and a horde of outside sculptors and designers, Guetta made his own army of artwork. It sounded like everything started off as his ideas, but that he hired outside people to make everything actually happen, which is something I have a problem with. Using all of his money and resources, even refinancing his house and using other more extreme measures, Guetta produced a lot of stuff in a very short amount of time and found a space to showcase his work. He got a promoter, convinced Banksy and Shepard Fairey to endorse his work, and gained a ton of hype overnight. He never took the time to develop as an artist, or pay his dues so to speak. He drove his construction team crazy because he just didn't know much about much. He had no experience with anything, he couldn't make decisions and he seemed to resent listening to people who did know what they were doing. His work sold for outrageous amounts of money. His art show had a huge crowd and was well-received. It made him a millionaire.

So what it art? What makes Guetta different from Banksy or a graphic designer, or some mass-produced snarky silk-screen tee-shirt? Where is the line, if there even is one? As for me, I don't know, but I've never thought of art in this way. I have a problem with anything made with a computer being considered art, but I can't really articulate why. I like Guetta prints as t-shirts, but I don't know if it's art.

The documentary also raised a lot of questions considering how modern technology is changing art. Just today, I read about how Urban Outfitters is stealing designs from indie artists. I could paint or write something, put it up on the internet, and someone on the other side of the world can see it instantly and use it if they want. Copyright exists sometimes, but it gets kind of hazy. Everything gets kind of hazy. Art seems to have this essential primitiveness, but essential elitism built in. But is that putting an emphasis on the process and not the result? It that right? I'm really not sure. I'm not an art student, so I don't know what theories and such are involved in these questions. I'm not even sure if any of this makes sense. But, until this documentary, I never really thought of art in this way.

Oh, I should also mention that some people think that Guetta isn't actually Mister Brainwash, that this whole documentary was furnished by Banksy as some sort of meta critique of the nature of art. I don't know if I believe that or not, though it would make it even more interesting.

But whatever. Just go watch it. It's cool.