To celebrate my birthday this year, I, accompanied by several of my favorite faces, invaded a row of the Angelika in Dallas to see EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, the new “documentary” by acclaimed street artist Banksy. The quotes are in place because there seems to be an on-going debate as to whether the events in the movie are genuine or if it’s a plot/prank orchestrated by the anonymous graffiti guru.
My two cents (OBO): I not only think the film is fiction, I actively HOPE Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and the rest, developed the plotline. Not because I can’t bear the idea of living in a world where events and people like those depicted in the film exist, but rather because I hope this film came from the frustration Banksy and Fairey both express at the movie’s end: If street art is no longer an illegal, renegade act of defiance, but a marketable (not to mention insanely profitable) enterprise, with enough recognizable elements anyone can start to spray paint by numbers and set the art world aflame, well…what’s the point?
I want these 21st century artistic icons asking themselves this question. I want them worrying about it, worrying about it so much they have to invade a completely new artistic medium just to try and express their own baffledness. I want this so badly, because I believe this question being asked at this time might be the first step towards a new 21st century attitude.
I realize what I’m about to say is a broad, generalized, debatable statement, so in case the fact that you’re reading it on MY PERSONAL BLOG isn’t enough of a clue into the fact that this is MY PERSONAL CONTENTIONS and nothing else, well…there, now I’ve been more blunt about it.
I think in many ways art in the 20th century was defined by the question of Why not? Why not paint a face with the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth twisted stretched and out of place? Why not just drip paint on the canvas? Why not make a career out of painting soup can labels? This attitude (arguably) began when Marcel Duchamp and the Dada movement at the century’s beginning submitted a urinal as an example of sculpture, but the same sense of curiosity at possibility could be found in other artistic media as well. Composer John Cage, for example, composed the infamous 4’33” a classical musical piece for piano in 3 movements, all of which are silent. Cage said the noise made in the room then became the music, so the piece was actually a different symphony of sound every time it was played. And why not?
In literature, e.e. cummings wrote poems that rejected conventional attitudes toward grammar, spelling, punctuation, and even the idea that reading is done top-to-bottom, left-to-right. And why not?
By the 1950′s the beatnik generation began to see the existential beauty in anything being art and art being everything. In many ways it seems artistic minds throughout the 20th century were building for the moment Andy Warhol forced them to look at the things they were already forced to look at on an everyday basis as being the art of modern life.
Punk proved not knowing how to play an instrument (much less what words like stanza or fortissimo mean) should not be a hindrance if you really want to be a musician.
Followers of outsider art insist that the only people capable of creating great art these days are those who know nothing about it.
In these and countless other ways the beatnik dream has now been realized. Congratulations, if you have a blog you are a writer, if you have a youtube account you’re a filmmaker, if you have an iHome you’re a DJ, but that’s just when you’re not being a real musician with Garage Band. We are all artists and everything we do is art, damn those who don’t “get it.” Isn’t it wonderful?
Well, maybe not when the top read blogs are about celebrity sex habits, the most viewed youtube videos involve cute puppies, kittens, babies, or some combination there of, and have you heard the crap coming out of most iHome’s and Garage Band programs these days?
As a generation we have had national tragedy and war, but we have not exhibited the selflessness that defined the “Greatest Generation.”
We’ve had political unrest and social inequality, but we have not stood-up to demand change like those still glorified idols from the 1960′s.
We’ve watched our last remaining romantic ideals fall in the waves of cynicism, but instead of creating punk rock we sold it to Disney and the Jonas Brothers.
Admittedly, I’ve moved a bit beyond the frustration of the street artists in the “documentary” that began this post, but I feel that frustration is at the root of these issues as well. To quote another great film of the 21st century, “When everyone is special, no one is.”
I hope the street art community is able to regain its ideals as it transitions from anarchic movement to established institution. I hope they find new guidelines, new beliefs. I hope they re-learn how to say: “This is art and this is shit,” with unhesitating unity. And perhaps when they do, one of them will create something that will inspire, enrage, and enthrall a generation so in need.
