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Permalink Reply by stipe on September 13, 2011 at 4:57pm

it looks authentic.

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Permalink Reply by Matt on September 13, 2011 at 5:31pm

Ok I do know a great deal about art so I'm fairly certain that this is not legit. Not 100%, but fairly sure. 

 

First off the capital M seems weird (to slanted). Some of the letters are connected where they shouldn't be and all the "r"s look off. Second whenever I've seen something MBW signed I've noticed he tends to add a little message  like "life is beautiful". He even signed a spray paint can for someone and it had the "life is beautiful" on it.

 

But lastly MBW is not Banksy and Banksy is not MBW. And take a look at Exit Through the Gift Shop and then read some interviews about the behind-the-scenes you'll see what a crazy guy/crook he is. He gets his elves to design everything and just slaps his name on. Plus he's been spewing out crap for the last few years. However I will admit his "Life is Beautiful" print is amazing, if only he kept that same creativeness up through his whole career 

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Permalink Reply by Matt on September 13, 2011 at 5:34pm

Here's a little interview you can read on the guy too:

 

"As a quick bit of background: "Exit at the Gift Shop" is a documentary of questionable authenticity that is largely about Los Angeles resident Thierry Guetta, who is portrayed as a French immigrant who obsessively films his life and the things happening around him. He has a deep fascination with street artists like Shepard Fairey, and has more than a little bit of hero worship. He eventually works his way into the secret society of street artists and meets Banksy, and they all sort of come to trust him as this well-intentioned if possibly somewhat unbalanced individual. Eventually he creates his own street art persona as "Mr. Brainwash" and sells his own works for big bucks. The film has been praised for its vision but people have asked questions on whether it's all a joke, whether Banksy arranged its events, etc, etc. In talking to English, who appears briefly in the film, he offered a number of revelatory pieces of information.

* Thierry Guetta is exactly like he is on camera in real life, and is no hoax, nor is he Banksy himself, as some have suspected.

Ron English: He's quirky-crazy but he's not stupid, he's kind of like Columbo or something.

* Guetta is actually wealthy, and is not depicted this way in the film, having apparently come from a very well-off family in France. He became an associate of most of the artists simply because he owns a collection of buildings that were good for drawing on and didn't mind them using them for street art.

English: The only glaring detail that they leave out that helps you understand the story is that Thierry is like a billionaire, a very wealthy guy. He doesn't come off as wealthy. His family are some kind of merchants from France, and when he was 17 years old he met with his financial advisor and told him that he wanted to move to the United States. His financial advisor says "It's very hard to immigrate to the United States, but it's a lot less hard if you own a bunch of property in the United States." So the family bought a bunch of buildings up and down Melrose and some other really prime real estate in Los Angeles.

So then Thierry went out there to manage the properties, and it just so happens that his cousin who is out there is another well-known street artist, Space Invader. Thierry really loved the idea of celebrities and was always chasing them with his camera, but then Space Invader turned him onto the world of street art, so he started following us around, and we let him film us because he just seemed like a harmless fan. The artists all tolerated him because he hooked you up, when you went to LA, the first thing people told you is "You have to meet this guy Thierry because he's got all the main spaces, all the best walls, and you can do something without getting arrested." So first he hooked up with Shepard, who turned him onto Banksy. Suddenly he was in with all the street artists.

* The artists seemed to consider Guetta as a larger-than-life part of the L.A. landscape.

English: You talked to other people and they were all kind of amused by him. I was in Palestine, on the other side of the world with Spoon (another street artist) and for some reason she starts asking me "Did you ever meet this French guy in LA? He's always in your face and he holds the camera way too close and sometimes he doesn't make any sense?" He's very tenacious and makes an impression. He's a great character. Of course now, he's really into being famous and almost always has two bottles of champagne in his hands.

* Guetta, English says, is just a completely compulsive filmer, with the camera always running.

English: He just films everything, absolutely everything. Later, when they finally went through all his footage, Banksy said that although he was always filming, he never seemed to be filming the right things. Banksy first thought that Thierry had a collection of the greatest street art footage ever filmed, that all these major moments had been captured, but when they looked at the footage they said ‘he had the camera pointed the wrong way almost every time.'

* The actual filming of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" sprang out of a disagreement and intended lawsuit between Fairey and Guetta, moderated by Banksy.

English: Here's what actually happened: When we first met Thierry, he was supposed to be making a movie about Shepard. He was filming Shepard all the time, wherever he went. They made a deal, 50/50, we'll make a movie. They shot for five years doing this, Shepard in his Spiderman prime, leaping off buildings and stuff. At the end of five years, Shepard says "Alright, let's put the movie together," and Thierry said "I'm not giving you the footage." He's actually quite smart and can be a little devious-he figured "I just took away five years of your fame," because in his heart, Thierry always wanted to be the artist. He figured he was messing up his competition, in a way, and holding onto valuable footage. Shepard didn't quite know what to do and filed a lawsuit against Thierry.

Then Banksy figured "I'm in the same situation, he has tons of footage for me." He had some of the only footage of Banksy where you could actually see who he was. So he calls up Thierry and said "I'm sending you a first-class ticket to London, get on the plane, I have to talk to you." That's when he told Thierry that he would make a movie about him instead, in exchange for the footage, which Thierry turned over to Banksy. That's when they realized that the footage wasn't nearly what they thought it might be, but it turns out they did get a different sort of treasure trove, because you've got a portrait of this weird guy, Thierry.

* Banksy is as smart as people think he is, and then some.

English: Banksy is incredibly intelligent and clever. He's very smart and very cynical. Of all of these guys, Banksy is probably the smartest. Shepard might be the second smartest."

Read more: Ron English Revelations http://herald-review.com/blogs/decat...#ixzz1WSFFX3UH

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Permalink Reply by Chantal Paula Rosengurt on September 15, 2011 at 6:52am

Many thanks for the information about both artsits! so in your ipinon it wouldn´t be authentic.

Anyone else have the same or different opinion? i really like that poster, dont want to miss it or to be fooled. thanks again!

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