English
Banksy, the famous British graffiti artist know for using walls the world over as a support for his political stencils, this time fixes his critical gaze firmly against the contemporary art market. “Exit through the Gift Shop” which he directed, is determined to prove how ridiculous, elitist, bourgeois, and capricious the contemporary art market really is.
Graffiti artist Banksy is the most controversial and mysterious figure in contemporary art. The son of a photocopier technician, Banksy, as he is known globally, zealously conceals his identity from the press and all those curious fans who keep up with his art all over the world.
In the documentary film he directs “Exit Through the Gift Shop” the famous stencil artist picks on art institutions, museums and galleries, providing a critique of the system through an analogy between the art market and the gift shops found at the exits of these cathedrals of aesthetics. Banksy criticizes the elitist type of system which institutions like the Tate Modern exemplify, and proposes resistance to these hierarchizing art machines through guerrilla art interventions and popular street art.
His is argument is based on the position that the art featured in these institutions is generally tinged with cryptic secrecy, and comprehension of the works at hand leaves out all but a few “informed elites,” who despite consuming this art, don’t understand it either.
With his film, the British artist reasserted his anarcho-punk ideals, and rubbed them in the face of the elite art consumer, whom he considers rather stupid, for spending millions of euros to support a superficial circus built on mutual misunderstanding.
The documentary chronicles the construction of a fraud and shows that some, because they belong to a certain sector of society, can be manipulated into buying whatever they must in order to stay fashionable. Finally the joke is that these people can not distinguish a work of art from a drill. The emperor is always naked.
But for critics of Bansky´s irreverent view of contemporary art there are many arguments that would serve to undermine his constructed image as romantic idealist, for example the news that many of his works were auctioned at Sotheby´s for thousands of pounds and famous stars Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Christina Aguilera have purchased jovial stencils to embellish their ostentatious mansions and, of course, increase their cool points. The art vandal who was born in the streets now finds his work in the places he was most critical of, which may be more than a bit contradictory?
Laura Aurelia
Form your own opinion about the interesting debate in this documentary, which was presented at film festivals in San Sebastian, Berlin and Sundance, and has screened in cinemas like Verdi and Yelmo Cineplex Icaria in Barcelona. Rent apartments in Barcelona and enjoy the lively debate surrounding the role of street art in the urban fabric?
