Field Trip #1

Field Trip #1

This review is for one Field Trip event credit.  The two other member of my group were LeeAnne and Shelby we met on the 30^th of October, at night, to watch Exit Through the Gift Shop.  The big questions the film was asking the viewer were what is art?  And what makes someone an artist?

            Does art being in a gallery or a museum make it art?  Is it only art if it’s recognized and displayed in a traditional way?  Banksy and Shephard Fairey thought they were artists moving outside the conventions of art as being something recognized only when put on display in a designated space and in the conventions of museums and galleries.  They thought of themselves as artists with a sense of aesthetic and technique that were taking this notion of art as a discipline to intentionally convey some sort of effect or message.  They thought that art shouldn’t be an elitist possession.  That you shouldn’t have to run in circles to be in the presence of and only then have an appreciation of art.  It was that resistance to the elitist validation of art in private space that brought artists to the streets, thus complicating arts form and its place.

Terry almost seems to be an inversion, the antithesis of the statement artists like Banksy and Shephard are trying to make with their street art.  Terry doesn’t seem to use any method or intention for the composition of his work other than it having a certain “look”.  The scenes of Terry’s workplace and the artists he’s employed seems to show that his “process” is using sticky notes to mark images that interest him and then appropriating them in the same manner as his contemporaries but with the only intention of keeping with their aesthetic sensibilities.  In other world that it “look like something Banksy might do”.

Then in poetic irony Terry takes street art off of the streets and puts it back in the gallery and sells it, for a lot of money.  It’s a complete reversal and re-appropriation of street art.  It’s taking free art off of the streets and putting it back in a commercial space.  Now that street art has been monetized and privatized it’s no longer its own form outside of convention.  It’s melded into the conventional fold and becomes another artistic movement to be analyzed and codified and it even comes with an easy little label, “street art”.

The joke is on everyone at the end of the movie, street artist or not.  Towards the end of the film, we see the hype built around Terry’s upcoming art show, he advertises himself everywhere and gets some big name artists like Banksy and Shephard Fairey to drop his name and all of a sudden he’s a “rising star”.  We see this and Terry’s “process” of haphazardly slapping classical and popular culture together and watch as unwitting critics attempt to impose and ascribe some sort of authorship to his “work”.  Everyone but Terry feels as though the joke is on someone but they can’t say who it is.  Credit needs to be given to the director of the film Banksy for recognizing and incorporating this ironic joke that he very may well be on the receiving end.  This film asks and explores questions of art and artists but never answers, because they can’t and they know it.