Mr. Brainwash
Courtesy of Mr. Brainwash
Thierry Guetta, the French street artist known as “Mr. Brainwash,” burst onto the L.A. art scene in 2008, as chronicled in the Academy Award-nominated 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which led many to believe that Guetta’s sudden success was a stunt orchestrated by the mysterious artist-prankster Banksy.
This month, Guetta opened The Mr. Brainwash Art Museum in the former Paley Center for Media on Beverly Drive, slated for demolition next year. A (temporary) wonderland for his pop culture-infused works, it’s billed as “the first contemporary art museum created and run by a living artist.”
The three-story space features, among countless colorful canvases, a dinosaur made of books (a not-so-subtle commentary on how print is going extinct) and a jumbo version of the first Apple computer. Guetta tells THR: “Museums have been the same for many years. I accept it, I love it. But it’s a world of evolution. We need to make evolution, and I’m a person who makes evolution because I want evolution.”
Interactive elements abound – “you will be able to touch some art, and sit on it,” he says – including a hallway of funhouse mirrors, a life-size Van Gogh painting for visitors to walk inside and become part of the scene, an elevator breezeway designed to look like a graffiti-covered New York City subway. The 360-degree rooftop is decked with a surreal, two-dimensional recreation of one of David Hockney’s pools.
“It needed to start because I got blocked from this space for so long without being able to do anything,” Thierry says. “Usually with a museum you get money from everybody, but with me, I’m making my museum myself. And I’m alive.” The artist also plans to revise the museum in pieces over time. “I came up with the concept that this museum is alive, so for two or three days, if I’m not opening the door, I might change something or add something so it’s alive…and! It will travel.”
As time goes on, Thierry says he plans to invite schools all across Los Angeles to tour the creative space, and learn about icons who have made major contributions to California’s cultural landscape (three portraits of Kobe Bryant, Tupac Shakur, and Steve Jobs adorn a wall at roughly 18 feet tall).
“If I can change a couple people’s hearts to do something positive in their life, I win.”
This story first appeared in the Dec. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.