Shulman and a buddy came equipped with screwdrivers and stole the Hitchcock/Happy Mother’s Day work. The bit-actor’s most recent role: a street art enthusiast with questionable taste. With Mr. Brainwash’s “Icons” exhibit still looming in a Meat Packing District gallery nearby, it looks like the celebrity-genitalia-adjacent Shulman was used in a perfectly executed PR stunt. |NYP|

This is the Deitch Wall this morning. Before Shepard Fairey left around 3am last night, he was good enough to answer a few questions on video about the new mural, Obama and Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Highlights: Fairey thinks the Democrats are being pussies, why you should get off your ass and do something about it, Marc Schiller’s non-involvement in Exit Through the Gift Shop (though Schiller admitted to curating the intro) and Fairey acting out the “enigma” of Mr. BrainWash with a scene from the Princess Bride (it’s kind of adorable).

Unless blogging negativity is on his mind, Fairey is very affable and is quite earnest in explaining the current political zeitgeist to the observers.

Checking in with the mural this morning, a Deitch Gallery representative was on site to protect it from being bombed before it’s completed (the Os Gemeos mural was tagged and took 12 hours to fix). Fairey’s “These Parties Disgust Me” will stay up for a while as an ongoing project and others will be invited to collaborate.

Photo/video: Marina Galperina/ANIMALNewYork

Last night was the Los Angeles premiere of Banksy’s documentary and to help feed the hype machine, the theater was littered with what looked more like a bunch of paint-slapped props than it did an art installation. From the ski-masked ushers to silly actors in cop uniforms and Brainwash-looking vehicles, the ultra wealthy street artist definitely created an apt circus atmosphere. As Banky noted in his recent interview with LA Weekly, it’s hard to be artsy in “conservative institutions” like theaters:

Normally I like to take over a run-down warehouse and do something on my own terms, but the plan for the American premiere is to surprise everyone by not doing anything very surprising.

At least he kept his word. Then again, it is LA! See more of the tomfoolery over here: |Arrested Motion|

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.

In an effort to understand this infatuation with fraud, I descended upon the crowd and mustering my most obnoxious nasal fervor—which is my voice—asked one simple question: “Is Mr. Brainwash a terrible artist or the worst artist ever?”

One part of me likes to believe there’s something I’m missing. Here is this guy who everyone knows is a Banksy prank and yet he still has devotees, but I fear the truth is a lot simpler and more depressing. In a culture where people consider: Kid Cudi hip hop, the cast of Jersey Shore A-listers, and everyone dresses the same, it only makes sense that someone like Brainwash, could be called a “street artist.” Or maybe it’s that he touches every person coming in to the gallery? The mystery continues.

Photos/videos: ANIMALNewYork

Although freshly installed, the large-scale work, all bunched together, in 15,000 square feet of space in the Meat Packing District, already seems awfully stale and in signature MBW style, completely devoid of originality—just like depicted in the Banksy documentary unless oversized kitsch and parking a yellow cab in a gallery is groundbreaking. Click over to the Art Collectors to see the rest of the well-funded show or if you dare, venture to the official unveiling in person (415 W. 13th Street) on February 14th and marvel at the throngs of people that actually dig his work! |Art Collectors|

However, Banksy’s account of MBW getting interrogated for filming the installation of the infamous Gitmo doll at Disneyland in 2006 does shed some more light on the matter.

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.

1. Mr. Brainwash is cousins with world renowned, French street artist Space Invader, which explains how he got access to the Shepard Fairey and Banksy in the first place.
2. Mr. Brainwash is rich and has lots of assistants. This is important because he owns a lot of property and was more than happy to allow street artists to legally paint there.
3. Shepard really doesn’t like Mr. Brainwash’s work and thinks its too derivative and not done by the artist himself, which madethis endorsement all the more puzzling, until you realize that he is in on the prank.
4. Shepard introduced Mr. Brainwash to Banksy in 2005 and MBW “fell in love with Banksy.”
5. Mr. Brainwash set out to make a film about street art and shot lots of footage of Banksy, Shepard, and others.
6. Banksy flipped the script, literally, and convinced Mr. Brainwash to let him direct the film and make it about MBW, allowing Banksy to take control of the footage, protect his identity, and turn their roles 180 degrees.
7. Banksy set the agenda and was instrumental in helping Mr. Brainwash execute an over the top gallery exhibit in Los Angeles, that had some wondering whether it was a hoax.
8. Banksy has a “sick sense of humor” and, in Shepard’s words, the “coup de grâce of the film is Terry transitioning from being just a voyeur and admirer of street art to being a street artist.”

So there you have it. Video footage of Shepard’s discussion below (7:01 mark is when he gets into it).

Transcribed below from 7:01 mark.

He’s cousins with Space Invader, he lives here. He owns a lot of property around Hollywood. And he got hip to my work through Space Invader, went out with me and starting documenting me, and then in 2005 I introduced him to Banksy and he really fell in love with Banksy, and he wanted to make a film about me, a film about street art in general with several artists including Banksy in it.

And then it just turned into his obsession with the art form switched over to him becoming an artist, but the thing about him is, is that he is motivated, but he also has a lot of money and a lot of assistants and so a lot of that work doesn’t even have his own hand in it. And I have mixed feelings about all of that.

But His show was a very manufactured thing, in that Banksy, in order to try to get Terry’s film that he never completed to come out said ‘why I don’t make this film about you and I’ll direct it and then can I get the footage of me back, so I can put that into the film.’

So the coup de grâce of the film is Terry transitioning from being just a voyeur and admirer of street art to being a street artist which I think is part of Banksy’s sick sense of humor. It’s a very complex situation, but I personally think he kind of rushed things to suit Banksy’s agenda and a lot of his work was derivative of Banky’s work, Warhol’s, my work, Damien Hirst, But anyway I don’t know it’s weird….