w 2008 roku była ta wystawa. pamiętam by czytałem o niej na neublack.com oczywiście
zebrała pozytywne komentarze, wszędzie wspominano, że Banksy bardzo dobrze wyrażał
się o mbw. ale pod artykułem pojawił się kolejny artykuł (wiem powtarzam się jestem
zmęczony nie chce mi się ładnie pisać) napisany przez niejakiego juana rodrigueza i
wspomina on tam o wszystkich współpracownikach terry'ego, którzy dla niego tworzyli,
zaznaczając, że poznał też gościa o imieniu Roman Lefeburte i tylko o nim nie był w
stanie znaleźć informacji w sieci. Mam dziwne wrażenie, że Roman Lefeburte to właśnie
Banksy, który współtworzył większość z prac.

załączam cały artykuł, żebyście mogli sobie go przeczytać:

Like John D. Rockefeller Claiming to be Diego Rivera

Most people familiar with art know the story of Rockefeller commissioning Rivera to do a
mural for Rockefeller Center and then, unhappy with the anti-capitalist themes, having
the mural painted over. Rockefeller paid Rivera, bought the work and labor and design
from him, thus, he could do whatever he wanted with the product. Maybe, if Mr.
Rockefeller were alive today, instead of having workmen destroy Rivera’s art with
whitewash, he would grab a spray can, splat some paint onto the workers’ faces,
and claim the “finished” work to be his own.

This week, hanging out every day at Mr. Brainwash’s mega McGallery, it took me a
few days to notice a crew of workmen (yes, all male) hanging out, building, painting,
hanging “art,” and filming. By my fourth day at the gallery, I had picked out who
seemed permanent… and when I witnessed a young guy come outside to the courtyard
and spray paint, I got a hunch that something was rotten in France. I hung back in the
corner as this young guy with a faux hawk expertly tagged a table and then tagged the
two guests books handed him. My days of hanging around and my ability to be
unnoticeable (I am short bald guy that has the uncanny ability of disappearing into the
background) paid off. I cornered several of the workers and found out who was who, who
did what, and what was the real shuck and jive.

PUNK = FAKE

or

The “saddest” artist in the world

According to some of the actual people involved, “conceptualizing” is far too strong for
what Mr. Brainwash does. It is more along the lines of: here is a pile of cast off material,
do something with this – and thus his hired artist does. For further “illustration,”
more along the lines of a patron asking a portrait painter to paint her portrait – no one
would ever confuse the subject of the portrait with the painter of the portrait. No one
would proclaim the brilliance of the subject for suggesting she be portrayed. In short,
this is Mr. Brainwash’s schtick – he gives a loose direction (no design, no
overarching theme, no attempt at coherence or style or comment) to an artist or
craftsperson he has hired to create a work of art. How the artist interprets and renders
this loose direction gets left entirely up to the artist. In some instances, Mr. Brainwash
has splatted some spray paint on top of what his hired artists rendered. In others, not.
And, if, like me, you viewed the show and grasped for what the thread among the works
would be and could find none, you were right because the work was all done by different
people largely left on their own to do the work. You know, like commissioned, rather than
overseen. Yesterday, I even witnessed a fake studio be built upstairs ostensibly as a re-
creation of his own. How sad is this? What prompted him to display, see, I have the toys
to do this if I wanted to!

Now, in earlier eras, like in Mr. Rockefeller’s and Diego Rivera’s day, this was
known as patronage and usually done to support up and coming artists. Certainly,
sometimes patrons suggested to artists what and whom they might render. No one,
though, confused the patron and the artist. But fast forward a century, and Mr. Brainwash
is asserting himself as an artist, just because he had the kernel of an idea. Usually, in
other fields such as screenwriting or movie-making, laying claim to an idea is laughed
out of court. “But your honor, the hot chick and the gun in that movie were my ideas!â
€

Basically, Mr. Brainwash is a very wealthy guy who wants to buy his way into the art world
as an artist, not as a patron. He does not need the money this art show is bringing in as
evidenced by the lack of a price list and a printed catalog, the extreme disorganization of
the selling such as amateurs handling the art and how no prices are listed next to the
menagerie in his main gallery. The first two days, no price list existed, and still, as of
Saturday, none had been printed. In short, this whole exercise is one Napoleonic sized
vanity project.

So why do this? Why does a guy go to all this trouble to pose as an artist, or rather,
assert he is an artist, when he is not? I am reminded of Breakfast at Tiffany’s line about
Holly Golightly — Q: Is she real? A: She is a real phony. That is, I asked people involved
in this for months if this is a Marcel Duchamp hoax and they insist, no, Mr. Brainwash
really believes. As a man, I can only wonder what sadness lurks in this fellow’s
heart at not living up to someone else’s expectations. Is this a “Daddy thinks Iâ
€™m a hapless boob so I’ll show him” kind of trip? Is success more important in
the end in this guy’s heart than achievement? Does he really believe he can co-opt
other people’s talent and one day he’ll magically awaken with some of his own?

The most shocking thing I heard all week was from a man that said Mr. Brainwash said
of all this art that he’d been doing it for ten years and just hoarding it. One simple
test would prove whether this is true – invite in journalists to his studio to watch him
work for a week and create another “masterpiece.” Come on, Mr. Brainwash, itâ
€™s worth it. Like any man worth his street cred, you’ll step up to defend your rep â
€“ you’ll take a punch and come back swinging. Give us your best shot. Let’s
see you, by yourself, at work for a week.

Sadly, the truth is Mr. Brainwash really wants to be an artist; the fact is, he is not. In fact.
these people created most of the work you saw (and imagine if this show were to
support these real artists, like a true patron would, rather than to promote Mr.
Brainwash):

The graffiti on the urinal courtesy of: http://www.stinklikedog.co.uk/

The Campbell’s spray cans, the gargantuan paper bag (apparently already slotted
for a museum display), the Rubik’s Cube, the piles of books, the TV robot, the
hanging shoes (ostensibly, Mr. Brainwash is so unversed in actual street culture that
when he decided to hang the shoes he did not know of their drug dealing reference),
and lots of other cool built stuff: http://www.newcaliforniacraftsmen.com

The cool paint splotches on the wall and the superior layout for the art was done by Mr.
Brainwash’s brother Patric

The super cool person made of film cans, the octopus hanging from the ceiling, and an
assortment of other great sculptures. You can clearly see the line between the
sculptures on display and this guy’s personal aesthetic and style. Take a cruise
under sculpture: http://www.derekwalborn.com

An assortment of local Los Angeles tag teams and graffiti artists (you know who you are)

and, as far as I could find out, a lot of the Warhols, the prints, the record shard collages,
etc. were done by the faux hawked kid I mentioned earlier in the article, one Roman
Lefeburte about whom I could find nothing on the web. Apparently, he is Mr. Brainwashâ
€™s right hand (and also in this case, his left hand) dude, who does most of the art not
done by the folks already listed above. He also reportedly is slated to get a cut of the
profits on the work he did, or should we instead call it pay-off money?

I asked several of the American artists if doing their work and having it sold as Mr.
Brainwash’s was what they thought they were getting into when they signed on. No â
€“ they had expected an art factory of sorts, where someone actually gave them
designs…

And this list here is probably not comprehensive, but it is what I could find out by talking
to folks and watching the goings and comings in the gallery.

Yet, you may ask, at least he discovered great artists and gave them a chance, right?
And where might Mr. Brainwash have found most of these talented people?

Where does everyone else in this town find someone to pay to screw?

Craigslist

Yes, he recruited most of these folks through ads on Craigslist. Yep. For real.

Okay, okay, you say, so what? So what if the guy is a real phony? “His” “work”
makes people happy. My take, after seeing this work again and again, not “his” â
€œwork” BUT the famous folks in “his” “work” or the ones he stole from
make people happy. More than once I heard people say, “How much does the Bowie
cost?” or “Look, there’s a baby Michael Jackson.” The happiness they were
getting, I assert, was not from Mr. Brainwash’s “art,” but from seeing the faces
and things most (well, most male ones anyway) Americans already know and love: Larry
King, Marilyn Manson and Monroe, The Beatles, Britney, Madonna, Scarface, Jimi, Louis
Armstrong, Ray Charles, Mohammed Ali, Elvis, guns, stuffed animals, lesbian kisses,
Billie Holliday, the Rubik’s Cube, Bowie, Jagger, Andy Warhol’s art, Keith
Haring, police cars, books, Alfred Hitchcock, W. C. Fields, Run DMC, beer, etc. The
whole experience has about the artistic merit and appeal of a trip to Madame Toussaudâ
€™s, except that the replicas here are cast with vinyl and paint instead of wax. Modus
operandi: entertain with that which is already entertaining.

As for any more sophisticated commentary, the beer cans packed with “crude” oil
(Petrol Light) were the only things vaguely political in the whole show. The rest was like
watching a “Remember the 30s, uh, the 40s, uh, the 80s, uh, last year” episode on
VH-1, many, “damn, do you remember that?” moments, and the associations into
one’s own experience with the pop person or object, rather than with Mr. Brainwashâ
€™s “art.” And, no, from watching Mr. Brainwash at work, I do not think internal
fantasy escape on the part of the viewer was his intent. Frankly, his intent was to become
a famous artist by using other people’s fame, artwork, and new work to do it. And his
ploy to become famous is working: MTV wants him to be in a video and from the
information I gleaned on my last trip through, LACMA met with him about a show.

Not to say that over the course of this pageant I didn’t see a lot of people smiling.
People commented positively to me that they felt welcome here – it didn’t feel
stuffy or like what they expected from an art show – uptight people drinking wine. They
felt that what they saw was accessible (again, the show is in Hollywood – around the
corner from other tourist attractions designed to be crowd pleasers). For sure, many
people attended this art show that normally would not go see art…. or make it Downtown
to the Thursday Art Walk or over to Culver City to the galleries. Of course, I am happy to
see people happy — but for the most part this really is the kind of happy one gets from
finding a really great fake Gucci bag and passing it off as real, or, frankly, to folks who
wouldn’t ever know the difference (or care). They like the name, the flash, and the bling
regardless of how it gets dished up.

For the record, Mr. Brainwash has decided to extend this self-aggrandizing hoopla one
more week, so if you didn’t catch his lack of cache last week, you can see the works
of the artists mentioned above this week, June 26 – 29.

Article by Juan Rodriguez