Outside of the Box, Often on the Building

Couldn’t help myself. If you follow this blog, you’ve seen a number of artists. I feel that the fine arts are, for a number of reasons, integral to design work, and, more personally, to my thinking. Recommended by my brother-in-law first, then in David Edelstein’s Best of 2010, we saw “Exit throught the Gift Shop” last weekend. As Edelstein puts it, this movie, ostensibly a documentary about a graffiti artist named Mr. Brainwash, “may or may not be a prank, but that doesn’t matter…As far as I’m concerned, Banksy can vandalize our movie screens anytime.”

There are a number of graffiti artists who are highlighted in the picture, and I thought I’d shine a light on a few. Here is some work from Shepard Fairey, made famous by way of the Obama “Hope” poster, was tagging long before, (theoretically) Thierry Guetta, aka Cyprian, aka Mister BrainWash, aka MBW, Space Invader, and Banksy.