Exit Through the Gift Shop

One of the most talked about documentaries of last year was the film Exit Through the Gift Shop.  There's been a lot of buzz it'll be up for an Oscar.  Given the hype, I was quite surprised to see it has popped up on Hulu for a limited run (you have until February 15th to watch it).

The film consists of Banksy making a film about a Frenchman named Thierry Guetta who is making a film about street artists. Guetta starts out following various street artists after finding out his cousin is Invader (an artist who places mosaics of video game characters around the world).  Guetta films everything and claims he plans to make a film but has no intention of doing so.  Eventually he hooks up with Banksy around the time when people started looking at Banksy's work as worth a lot of money.  Banksy encourages Guetta to finish his film to show it's all about the art and not money, and the film turns out to be crap.  At this point Banksy takes over as filmmaker encouraging Guetta to return to LA and become an artist himself.  Guetta becomes Mr. Brainwash, hires a bunch of assistants to manufacture art based on his ideas (ala Damien Hirst, most highly overrated "artist" ever), and becomes a hit artist who gets to design Madonna's album cover.

It is a really interesting film if you take it at face value.  Guetta is a character just crazy enough to be real.  Of course it is equally possible the whole thing is a huge joke.  Banksy is known for humor and social commentary, so it is quite conceivable that he would invent this character of Guetta as a way of commenting on the insanity that is the modern art world.  The whole thing is kind of brilliant and insane.

On a side note, I would also recommend Robert Hughes' The Mona Lisa Curse which is available on YouTube or collected nicely in this Mental_Floss post.  Hughes is an art critic and curmudgeon who has a lot of interesting stuff to say on contemporary art.  Hughes has a view point and has no problem with telling the rest of the world it is wrong.  If you like art and crotchety old geezers, this is the documentary for you.