Agnès Varda's Faces Places is a Perfect Antidote for This Ugly, Ugly World

Faces Places (2017) - Varda

You really gotta give it to Agnes Varda: at 89, our pint sized grand dame of French New Wave is still incredibly open, generous and always searching (into both past and present). In doing so she inadvertently raises some interesting questions when it comes to what constitutes public art and what's personal without bombarding us with schoolmaster rhetoric. There are also a lot of reflections in Faces Places on impermanence of human existence, art and mortality.

Varda, always keen on meeting new people and discover new things, pairs up with a 33 year old wheat pasting street artist known as JR. Together, they take a road trip to the northern French coastal towns. There they meet various working class people and their families - a postman, cafe owners, butchers, factory workers,miners, longshoremen, goat farmers and they take their pictures, print them out from the side of JR's portable printer/van and wheat paste them on the large public spaces, relate to the subject's environment.

The conversation is not always one sided- Varda doesn't have to exert herself into every story. She's fucking Agnes Varda. Things naturally come out. She's visited many many places and full of memories and mementos. In turn, JR is a jovial and energetic, and very good with dealing with elderly people (he lives with his grandma). Lanky with sunglasses glued to his face, JR reminds her of Godard and this train of thoughts plays out near the end, for better or worse.

It's not a typical light and fluffy travelogue of the rich and famous that would end up in travel channel. It's more about ordinary people. In this day and age, Varda believes in face to face human contact and genuine friendship. Except for some corny intros, Faces and Places feels very improvised and light and ultimately very touching and beautiful without trying so hard.

So they arranged the meeting with Godard. When they get there, the reclusive director and long time friend is not home. He scribbled a cryptic message with a marker on the window that upset's Varda almost to her tears. "If he tried to hurt me, he succeeded. That rat bastard!" One sentence is about the death of Jacques Demy, her husband, the other is a jab at the very same film she is making now, suggesting Faces Places is a fluffy travelogue of the bourgeoisie.

So there you have it. Godard has always been an innovative, genius filmmaker, brilliant researcher and historian, but an extremely cynical one who has long lost the ability to see the brighter side of humanity. Varda is totally opposite - completely open, transparent in what she sees and does and incredibly giving and sharing with her being. Which do we need more in this ugly world right now?

Faces and Places is a perfect antidote for the grim reports on the news these days. Please go see it.

Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere

My lady Nicole had her mural dedication today. It was commissioned by a Dutch Human Rights Lawyers group Miles4Justice and co-led by our artist friend Chris Soria. The mural was designed and painted by young adults (14-20yrs old) from Red Hook Community Justice Center and after school program ran by Groundswell Mural Projects under Nicole and Chris's guidance. This is her 4th Summer mural.




These small pictures really don't do justice. Hopefully Groundswell would load up bigger pictures on their website soon.

The Mural overlooks the waterway between Brooklyn and the Statue of Liberty on the Valentino Pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It's on the side of an old box factory right at the edge of the pier. It's massive and very awesome!

Art as Commodity: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) - Banksy

Banksy, an elusive underground British artist who's known for the stunts he pulled at various museums (sneaking in his incongruous, ironic art and place them in between classics) and his witty stencils and sculptures on the streets all over the world, is credited as the film's director here and also in it with his face forever under the hood and his voice distorted for legal issues. But the film belongs to a little fat Frenchman with mutton chops named Thierry Guertta, aka. Mr. Brainwash.

Guertta was an accidental tourist to the scene. Following his cousin known as Invader (he started putting up the Space Invader mosaics all over Paris in the late 90s) with a video camera forever attached to his hand, Guertta rides the tide of this DIY guerrila movement with Shepard Fairey (whom he runs into at a LA Kinkos making gigantic copies of his now-famous Obey Giant) and slew of other artists including, Neckface, Swoon and others in other cities. Guertta was a fanboy of sort, documenting all their activities in thousands and thousands of videotapes. His white whale was Banksy. There is a funny bit in the Guertta interview where he becomes speechless when he recalls the first time he meets the notoriously reclusive artist. They become a good friend after Guertta being a Banksy's posse during the artist's stunt in Disneyland with his Guantanamo inspired orange-jumpsuit-and-black-hooded blown up doll on the anniversary of 9-11.

The origination of the doc in itself is an interesting story (if everything told here indeed is true): Encouraged by Banksy, Guertta makes a street art documentary from his extensive footage- which the artist later describes as utter shit made by a madman with a very short attention span (we get to see some of the unwatchable collage of random images). After that, he makes Guertta leave all his tapes with him with the intentions of making this doc and advise him to concentrate in his own street art activities. Guertta follows his idol's advice to the heart.

Having studied studio art for three years in school and been married to an artist with a considerable talent and dedication, I've always had strong opinions about what is considered art. When street art took off last ten years or so, peaked with Shepard Fairey's Hope poster for the Obama 08' campaign, I was thoroughly disgusted by its rampant commercialization.

Personally I like art that shows the signs of artistry- labor, thoughts, something created by artist's own hands. The biggest problem I had with Shepard Fairey is that he doesn't have any skills nor wits other than tracing the original imagery and putting some color over it (he has a clothing line and is getting sued by an AP reporter who took that Obama picture for copyright infringement). I love the work by Swoon, whose intricate, beautiful wheat pasted paper-cuts all over NY show she can really paint and draw well.
*On a side note, I recognized her when I saw her on the screen, she is that very attractive waitress at a now-defunct Latin bistro in Brooklyn I frequented. Regrettably- I was just one of those yuppie customers for her. I should've said hello had I known!

Banksy does two things right in this doc: It is a very well made, good archival material for street art movement, with a lot of humor: the guerrilla style, tag-and-run aesthetic brings a lot of funny, entertaining moments.
It also questions the nature of art and art as commodity- Guertta, now Mr. Brainwash, tries to become an 'artist over night' (in his own words) by having a solo show titled, Life is Beautiful, in grand scale, taking over a huge space in LA, churning out one bad street-art-meets-pop-art print after another, then promotes the hell out of it and makes millions (and the whole process is hilarious).

Banksy himself is not immune to the commodification of street art. He is the one who had a grand art show in LA (featuring a painted elephant no less) that attracted Hollywood's who's who and made street art the toss of the art auction houses over night. Whether Exit Through the Gift Shop is one of his elaborate joke or not, Banksy raises some interesting questions about the legitimacy of being an artist by presenting his own creation (figuratively or otherwise), Mr. Brainwash.

*Shepard Fairey criticism by Mark Vallen for anyone interested.