Only a few years ago the names of street and grafitti artists were unknown to most people. If you weren’t part of a subsect of insiders, enthusiasts and participants, a tag was just a tag and wheatpasting wasn’t even in the lexicon.
Now guys like Shepard Fairey and Banksy are famous for their work, street art idioms show up in corporate branding, and you can find entire catalogues of t-shirts emblazoned with graphics influenced by the form. And while there have been a few documentaries about grafitti and street art, there’s always room for one more.
Beautiful Losers follows a select group of artists chosen to be representative of several regions, cities and art styles. Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Stephen Powers, Thomas Campbell, Margaret Kilgallen, Shepard Fairey, Jo Jackson, Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge, Chris Johanson and Barry McGee are represented in the doc, which tries to take the very broad movement as one that’s still kicking and expanding, rather than looking at it as a scene that passed.
The trailer, which is streaming on the film’s website, shows off some of the fantastic art on display in the doc. (The site also has info on each profiled artist.) Beautiful Losers played SXSW last month and will be hitting art houses this summer.





9 comments
BBBOOOOORRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!…next: documentaries over living works of art whose job it is to stand perfectly still..also, windowdressers…be still my beating anus!
I was hoping for some Bob Seger news…
Banksy's shit is pretty damn cool. He did the Cover of Blur's Think Tank and if you check out his website has some pretty intersting pieces like a maid lifting up a wall and sweeping the street under it. He also was responsible for replacing Paris Hilton's album with a different CD(with her picture) with actual good music, by Danger Mouse, and pictures of Paris Hilton with stuff like "I can't sing, but I have money". I am not a tagger, but have known people who are and it is actually pretty interesting. A good place to start would be an old doc "Style Wars" or the recent movie "Bomb the System", which has a badass soundtrack by El-P for all those underground rap fans out there(What up all 3 of you!). Check this out and tell me this shit isn't pretty cool………..http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html……….
Wow. So pretentious. I would have a lot more respect for these guys if they weren't so into self promotion. The one thing I never want to hear from anyone ever again as long as I live is… "I'm an artist" Please people. Basically this movie looks like a bunch of hipsters sitting around jerking each other off for 90 minutes. As far as banksy is concerned, here is an article from Charlie Brooker about his art:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1878555,00.html
Unless I see "Mighty Horse rocks the fat ass" tagged somewhere in this film, I'll be greatly disappointed.
Congrats, RCA. That was your most interesting post. Ever. Style Wars was ill.
One of the best docs I saw at SXSW… if you're not into the art please stay away but if you're at all interested in the development of the contemporary art scene (Giant Robot, Superflat, toy art, etc) I would suggest it. Plus Harmony Korine is a fucking riot.
I've seen Beautiful Losers at SXSW too and thought it was actually a special film. And I would also say it's not pretentious at all, in fact these guys are the opposite of that. This is a story not just of art and artists but about people who were regarded as nothing and created something by doing it themselves outside of the mainstream and even inspiring a whole new generation of artists-even shaping pop culture as we know it. It's definitely not what you would expect from a documentary about "art". There's a real story and some real characters with some great moments in the film. If you're a creative person and you just want to go and make stuff, you can't help but feel inspired after watching this.
p.s.-Great call on Style Wars! In a way it's Style Wars for a different generation. And actually clips from Style Wars are even in this movie.
you should see it before dropping some stupid opinion…sure, it looks like a hipster beatoff, i had the same worry before seeing it in Austin. My preconception was wrong. It easily could've been shitty, but filmmakers definiitely put some hard work into it to avoid the easy way out…and it shows.
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