Beautiful Losers

Everyone loves a bit of ‘street art’, right? Brangelina have shelled out more than £1 million to throw a few ‘Banksies’ on their wall; rumour has it that Kate Moss owns a HUSH; and, after rousing apathetic voters and getting the masses queuing at the polls, Shepard Fairey’s iconic HOPE poster of Barack Obama now hangs in the US National Portrait Gallery. As for whoever dipped into their hedge-fund for the £228,000 it took to bag Banksy’s ‘Laugh Now’ at Bonhams in 2008, well, you can bet they didn’t opt to hang it down some dingy alleyway.

Back in the early ’90s, it was a different story. Street art was an oxymoron, graffiti was vandalism, and breaking into the art world was all about coming from the right school and schmoozing with the right crowd.

Then a bunch of losers changed everything. Gravitating together like outcast moths to a countercultural flame, a loose-knit collective of self-styled artists sparked an underground scene that would go on to take the art establishment by storm. Somewhere between the West Coast world of skate and punk and the hip hop and graffiti seeping on to New York City streets, guys like Geoff McFetridge, Thomas Campbell and Ed Templeton converged with talented folk like Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee with the shared understanding that doing-it-yourself was better than any post-grad degree. The zeitgeist was ripe for what they had to offer – subcultures were colliding and ‘street culture’ was about to be coined. And whether they were hitting the streets under a moniker like TWIST, or paying homage to the arts and crafts movement with their folk-infused brand of doodles, the bottom line is that they were making stuff – and putting it out into the world.

Beautiful Losers is the story of those artists, told from the inside out. Cottoning on to the fact that something big was underway, Aaron Rose – then curator of the Alleged Gallery in NYC – picked up his camera to document the storm as it brewed. The film is a collaborative effort, but in Aaron’s words, “someone had to be credited as director”, so he stood up to take the role. And as a collective offering, it hits the spot – titles from über-talent McFetridge mixing with intimate shots of talking heads.

But if art’s not your thing, you could walk away thinking one of two things: either that, falling prey to the post-modern trap of being a little too self-aware, Beautiful Losers fails to understand that if great artists can’t be appreciated in their own lifetimes, they probably shouldn’t be immortalising themselves on film; or, if you’re prematurely middle-aged and can’t remember the simple joy of making something out of nothing, you could be forgiven for “wondering if a few of them might benefit from a proper job and a light slap,” as the Guardian suggested.

Beautiful Losers is not the definitive story of how the low-brow scene infiltrated the world of canapés and high art. But the losers-turned-leaders profiled are as important as Basquiat and Blek Le Rat in hastening the winds of change. And in the words of Aaron Rose, “If someone’s choosing to make something and put it out into the world on their own volition, that’s a positive thing, always.”

Andrea Kurland

Anticipation:

Geoff McFetridge, Thomas Campbell and Mike Mills in one place? Sold.

Enjoyment:

A story worth telling, but a little too early to be told.

In Retrospect:

Cynicism is a drag... Hand us a paintbrush, let's make art instead.