Hundreds of people lined up in the cold on Sunday to attend the grand opening of Mr. Brainwash’s “Icons” exhibit in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Astonishingly, most of the diverse mix of hoodrats, art fags, and the cluelessly curious were ardent fans. Undeterred by his negative portrayal in the Banksy film or the naysayers online, they were more than supportive, almost delirious in their affection for the wealthy artist. Read more »
Attention street art aficionados and previously duped speculators, the moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived! After blessing Los Angeles with a tacky, overly produced, thought-lacking exhibit of epic proportions, Mr. Brainwash has done the same in NYC for his soon-to-be-opened “Icons” show. But don’t let the name fool ya, there’s nothing iconic about about it. Read more »
In the spoiler for Banksy’s recently premiered Sundance film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” we noted how Thierry (pronounced Terry) Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash was able to gain access to the elusive street artist’s inner circle because he was cousins with Invader and was introduced by Shepard Fairey, but that doesn’t quite fully explain their camaraderie. Read more »
While everyone’s speculating about the details of Banksy’s new documentary, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” and its connection to universally despised street artist Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash, Shepard Fairey openly discussed details of the soon to be premiered Sundance film in a 2008 video, while sitting on a panel at Bonhams auction house. So what did we learn? Quite a bit, but overall, Mr. Brainwash is the human, performance art version of this Banksy painting and that’s mostly Banksy’s doing. Read more »
After borrowing other people’s art to produce an album cover, Mr. Brainwash took an album cover for his art. The ire-inducing painter is selling stenciled copies of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” album art for $7500 a pop.
Billed as the “ultimate compilation of Madonna songs,” the Material Girl issued a press release this week announcing her latest greatest hits album. And befitting a volume full of warmed-up decades old tracks, Mr. Brainwash pumped out the uninspired and derivative album cover, his latest reworking of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portrait.
Carson Daly sure knows how to butter up his guests. In a recent interview with little-loved street artist Mr. Brainwash, the former MTV veejay lead off with this: “If you ask anybody, without blinking an eye, who’s the most recognizable street artist in the world they’re going to say you.” Wow, did he actually just say that? And then just when you wanted to express utter contempt for his profound ignorance, he piles it on even further with an even stupider follow up: “I mean, define street art. It sounds awesome. Is it legal?”
A painting of Sid Vicious by street artist Mr. Brainwash is drawing the ire of L.A. street art aficionados, in part because the mural covered up a recently beloved mural of a traffic-eating dog by Ericailcane. It also doesn’t help that the work is hardly impressive, “a piece of Sid clip-art with a dash of snot splatter” as one observer puts it. The backlash isn’t surprising though. Mr. Brainwash has never gotten much respect from the street art world thanks to his stylistic similarities to artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey and his overuse of popular images, like the Dennis Morris photo this painting was based on.
Photos by Lord Jim.
There’s a reason why some newspapers are going out business, they suck. The NY Sun, which is standing on its last leg and only had a good art section left to make it remotely relevant, writes about some new wheatpasted artwork making its way onto the streets and wrongly speculates that it’s Banksy. They assumed that since Steve Lazarides is Banksy’s agent, and is launching a New York gallery with a show featuring his crop of public painters, it naturally had to be Sir Banks. The ailing paper must not be able to discern the most elementary characteristics of Robert Gunningham’s signature style: he uses stencils. All the work described by The Sun was wheatpeasted stuff, like the RD bombed JR piece. According to street art aficionado Jake Dobkin, the fresh crop of work was done by Mr. BrainWash who is not even in the exhibit, he’s just in town. Click below for more of Mr. BrainWash’s stuff, including a law officer dressed Warren Buffet, John Lennon with a bindi, a Britney-Michael Jackson fusion, and other Warholian imagery.
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