In April 2010 the renowned street artist Banksy visited San Francisco and painted a handful of paintings on nondescript walls around town. Within days, the works were covered over in other people's paint. Seen and documented, they disappeared. One of them, removed along with a chunk of siding from a proud Victorian, has started a second life as a valuable commodity in an art market desperate for new work to get excited about. A new film �" infomercial or documentary, you decide �" follows the struggles of an art collector bent on preserving a genuine piece of Banksy ephemera. Saving Banksy opens Friday at the Roxie.
Brian Greif, a robust quinquagenarian with plenty of time, energy, and resources to throw at his aesthetic quest, is shown driving around San Francisco, looking at the image of a big rat 30 feet above Haight Street, and sometime later lovingly stowing a few planks of vintage redwood wrapped in sheets in his closet at home. The film begins to sag after a blaringly up-tempo prologue devolves into something tediously close to a home movie. Greif is also shown driving around Miami, whining about the disorienting scale of an art fair, and later looking at the reassembled giant rat on an exhibition wall. An executive producer on the film, this earnestly uninsightful fanboy occupies too much of the film's meager 67 minutes.
Greif's predicament is to have "saved" an artwork the artist himself doesn't want saved. Out on a limb, enjoying the spotlight, and striving to be principled, Greif is shown negotiating with SFMOMA, who are loath to collect anything against the wishes of the artist, especially when that means it can't be authenticated. In other words, Greif, whose name is perhaps misspelled, can't give it away. Neither can he sell it, since that would scupper his principles and oft-intoned goal: not to deprive the public of the chance to gaze at a spray-paint-and-stencil giant rat.
The longer Greif holds out against bidders, the higher the price soars, well upwards of half-a-million. His nemesis is tall, flamboyant German art dealer Stephan Keszler, painted as a villain because he makes money selling art. Street art is designed for the street, not the auction house, we're told on-camera by street artist Ben Eine, whose dogmatic dictums wear thin before we've heard the last of them. San Francisco's failure to support street art is glanced at, but not examined. Director Colin M. Day, while dutifully illustrating his subject, fails to have a point of view.
Banksy himself directed a film about street art called Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010). The title shares the passive-aggressive bite of the pithy slogans that often accompany his stenciled figures. Banksy has the soul of a political cartoonist, one who sees beyond parties and so-called issues to deep, troubling sources of sorrow. His film, however, is a grand adventure, which manages both to show him at work and posit as its protagonist a crazy French street artist who stumbles into the success that eludes 99% of his adopted profession.
The best way to save Banksy is not to go around cutting up walls he's painted on, although I sympathize with the executive producer's passion. City governments everywhere must be enlightened, encouraged, or forced to cultivate and protect artists and their works, not just the ones moldering inside the sanctioned vaults of taste. "When you go to a museum you are simply a tourist looking at the trophies of a few millionaires," says Banksy. The daredevil ephemera that randomly appear in unexpected places also need their champion. Why is making images on walls a crime? "Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better-looking place."