Saturday, August 13, 2011

Art Persists


With pretty much everything sliding into the crapper--my personal life, London, the stock market, and new power to the Tea Party front for the corporate interests that won't stop until they've sucked us dry like the world's freaking biggest mosquito, the government having run out of repellent--it didn't look like there was any bright spot anywhere in my vicinity. Until my son and I leaned back last night and gave ourselves up to a film.

Last Christmas I had gravely disconcerted him. We needed something new for the top of the tree. When I stumbled on the image of the dove of peace, above--sporting flak vest and a laser target on his chest--I knew I'd found the perfect thing. So Today. (Unfortunately, also so Yesterday and Tomorrow.) I printed it and tied it on with a silk ribbon. I then had my very own Banksy for the tree; my son, thankfully not yet attuned to the sad ironies of the grownup world, was disturbed. I told him I found it oddly hopeful: at least someone was watching, and speaking the truth. With the keen succinctness of art.

Banksy is a British street artist whose work is subversive, haunting, poignant, knife-sharp, humorous and/or disturbing. It's unrelentingly smart. And--though this seems painfully obvious, even if to me it is the point--he has always done it because he had to, not because he was making things to sell. A lot of it was precisely observant of the institution of commerce, in fact, though one cannot really blame him for the eventuality that its very success in this endeavor has lately made it hugely valuable in the buy-
and-sell art world.

The art world makes me want to vomit, actually, not only because it is filled with reprehensible characters who position their impossibly fashionable selves at the sharp pinnacle of the food chain, but because they eat artists whole and spit out their bones on the sidewalk. I had a taste of this (um, not an artist) working in a gallery in the eighties, and dating an artist. And now I know brilliant artists who can't get the time of day from a gallery; thus they are in despair almost to the point of giving up their work.

Don't give up--take it to the streets! That, in part, is the message of hope in Banksy's marvelous, surprising movie Exit Through the Gift Shop. It is a window on the life of the enlivening world of street art (aka graffiti, in some sense, but a full bloomed, legitimate genre of its own). And it is a subtle, wise discussion of commerce, the necessity of persisting against difficulties, and true art vs. simulacra produced for the purpose of selling--and the fact that the public is often so stupid they can't tell the diff
erence.

I needed to watch this, right now, at this very moment, it seems. Giving up, in every particular, had been looking like the informed choice. But now I don't think I should. Nor should any of us. We need to take to the streets, because that is what is left to us now. There, we can make people wonder. Make people see. Make art, and persist.





11 comments:

Shybiker said...

I saw this movie two months ago; it amused me. (I spent 20 years in the art-world while living with a painter who showed in Soho.)

There are many who believe the second half of the movie is a hoax: that Thierry didn't make the work (which was comically derivative at best) and that Thierry's "success" wasn't real but only a put-on created for the movie. What do you think about that?

I enjoyed the first half's focus on outlaw grafitti-art: its subversive attitude is a welcome antidote to the gated community that the art-world became in the 1980's.

Sorry to hear your life isn't optimal at the moment. Hope things improve for you.

cstatman said...

graffiti? street art? fabulous.

tagging? get a rope!

c'mon, enough with the depressing, life is freaking great. get on a bike, GO

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

It's true, Charles. Miss Pollyanna rode her motorcycle yesterday. She was happy every minute of it. So she needs to do it again today.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Ah, SB: thanks for outing me as the inadvertent butt of my own stupidity-of-others comment--of course. Of course there had to be another full revolution of Banksy's screw here. How could I have not known?

I confess that, watching the story unfold, I found it a little too unbelievable that Thierry's factory of derivative works could have made that big a splash--but then again, stranger things have happened. Mob mentality rules, everywhere.

In my head, too.

Thanks also for well wishes. Since nothing ever stays the same, I'm hoping this too will pass.

cstatman said...

reminds me of watching this hilarious video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Absolutely: beautiful!

Stephen Anderson said...

I have to say, that OK Go video was awesome! Here's another that will make you smile on a tough day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwlMVYqMu4

Frank Zweegers said...

Interesting work!

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Steve, that definitely brightened the day! Thanks.

Demenshea said...

I was so moved by this film that I blogged it in January 2011 when I first saw it. The link is here http://www.demenshea.com/Artist_in_Wonderland/blog/Entries/2011/1/9_welcome_to_the_madhouse.html

but i can simply quote myself... ;)

"Welcome to the madhouse could easily be the alternative name for the new film “Exit through the Gift Shop”, by Banksy. This wonderfully funny and irreverent film examines ART by dissecting process and how a bit o’ hype can redefine an end product over the talent to create it, once again proving the barometer to evaluate art is often arbitrary, contradictory, and can be very idiotic.


This film is a must see for anyone loving art or the art scene and whether a documentary or mockumentary, you will leave knowing it was a great piece of cinema!"
donna rees aka demenshea

Hope life takes an upswing...we could all use it!!

Melissa Holbrook Pierson said...

Great minds think alike, Donna! Thanks for the link. I love your blog--we're on the same page, as it were.