Mr. Brainwash Art Museum & the Rebirth of Culture by John Cat

A wall of Mona Lisa's on display at Mr. Brainwash. Who is this woman?

Recycled spray cans as decor.

“Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. “ – Leonardo Da Vinci : A Treatise on Painting. Codex Urbinas written between 1482-1519 & Published 1651

       One fine Sunday we made plans to venture out into the dystopian landscape of sunny Los Angeles to visit the Mr. Brainwash Art Museum in the posh city of Beverly Hills.  A Pop Up museum with plans to travel, it sits in a bustling area and more so on this day when a crowded art fair was open across the street in a park. 
      The moniker Mr. Brainwash, a “nom de guerre” & artistic persona, was spawned out of the 2010 documentary movie, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which is a fascinating  story in itself about an art genre they call “Street Art”. 
   A newer label of art branding, "Street Art" is considered a subgenre of Graffiti or maybe it’s vice versa . Since the term Graffito  (to scratch or draw unto walls) has been around since humanity began, then it’s probably the former.  Mr. Brainwash calls his own movement by the label "Street Pop" and the museum houses some of his oeuvre since he entered the arena of Pop.
      A man larger than the life itself, Mr. Brainwash not only evolves as a work of living art & a busy artist brimming with "ideas" but is also a skillful raconteur who already knows the game well. He seems to be having fun doing it because for him -- Life is Beautiful.
     Two important American artists (both long dead) not mentioned in the amazing  Exit Through the Gift Shop movie yet seem to play an inspirationally important role in the Mr. Brainwash Art Museum concept is Artist/Activist Keith Haring  (1958-1990) & Neo Expressionist artist Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). Both are NYC artists who exploded like rockets into the 1980’s art world money speculation scene yet sadly both succumbed as the decade closed in on their short burst.  Both careers began and ended on the same NYC streets as artists of the graffiti subculture (Street Art) and their resultant infamy catapulted them both into worldwide fame.
     Starting in 1980, Haring’s  animated simple cartoon like imagery first drawn in white chalk on blank black subway advertisements, was seen by millions of people on the NYC subways before most people knew what it even meant or even who was doing it. 
        What is it advertising? Strange lined figures dancing or gesturing up at flying saucers, a radiant baby, many radiant babies, more figures running around a barking dog...
       From 1980 to 1985 it is estimated that Haring drew over 5,000 images in the NYC subways alone and this helped launch a highly successful art career. Haring even opened a NYC retail store called the Pop Shop to purvey his wares he had produced.
 
      Artist Basquiat meanwhile first gathered infamy (along with his art collaborator friend Al Diaz) with the creation of a fake religion under the tag of SAMO. The slogan tag SAMO stands for Same old Shit & according to a later Basquiat interview, was “first created to be a logo like Pepsi.”
SAMO became an icon in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the cultural influences of rap punk and street art coalesced, heavily influencing the aesthetic of the decades to come.

      Starting in 1978 while both were still in high school, the SAMO writings would appear large on walls as words, phrases, bombastic prose and untold truths,. It usually appeared in black writing along with a copyright symbol, spray painted or scribbled on walls as:

MAKE SOUP. BUILD A FORT, SET THAT ON FIRE. - SAMO©

SAMO© SAVES IDIOTS AND GONZOIDS...

SAMO©...4 MASS MEDIA MINDWASH

SAMO© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD

SAMO©...4 THE SO-CALLED AVANT-GARDE

      Al Diaz says “SAMO was like a refresher course because there's some kind of statement being made. It's not just ego graffiti.”
   Art critic Jeffrey Deitch called it "disjointed street poetry" and yet Basquait quickly went onward to capitalize on the attentions generated to quickly becoming a heavily collected & much shown artist in galleries worldwide.   
     Basquiat combined African, Aztec, Hispanic, and ancient Roman and Greek imagery with his own invented iconography and graphic marks in works that emphasized the physical and the gestural aspects of the artistic process.  Repetitions of words, names, scrawls, cartoons, anatomy drawings and voodoo incantations alike, his visual savagery articulated a vivid mind eager to cash in on the buying frenzies at the time.  Art as Art-To-Go became the norm as anything created sold & some artists (Haring) even referred to it as "Fast Art "
    Even before Basquiat ever showed his work in any galleries, Blondie (Deborah Harry bought the first canvas he ever sold when they met on the music video ( 1981) shoot for her hit song Rapture.
      He even befriended Andy Warhol (b.1928- d.1987) & they later collaborated on a series of large paintings together.  The wealthy older Warhol took an interest in the younger artist, even renting him a loft/studio from his real estate portfolio at one point. It was the same loft where Basquiat in 1987, age 27, was later found dead from a heroin overdose. 
 
      In 2017, Basquiat became the most expensive American artist ever sold at auction when one of his “Untitled 1982” skull paintings sold for a whopping $110 million. This painting was first shown and sold at Basquiat's debut American solo exhibition in the Annina Nosei Gallery in year 1982. It is one of the artworks he painted in her gallery basement space there where he ensconced himself to work (a sometimes controversially viewed arrangement in the art world.)
      Annina Nosei will forever be associated with Jean-Michel Basquiat whom she helped launch into the mainstream art world as his first American art dealer, and whom she set up in a spacious studio where he could paint large canvases. Her connection with Basquiat was a career highlight, but only one event in her distinguished and ongoing art career.
The "Untitled" 1982 Skull painting's provenance can be traced from it’s original 1982 studio inception by the artist, to it’s purchase price at the same year's show  for a sum of $19,000 ( of which the artist may have received around $9,000 for it ). Not bad for a painting which most likely took no longer than a few hours for him to paint & later in 2017 sold for $110,000,000.

          Many of the second floor paintings we saw at Brainwash Art museum revolved around a heady display of Mona Lisa canvas reproductions in gold gilded frames with artful scribbles and artfully applied paint added for effect.

       The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, is considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world".   
 
      Enter Mr. Brainwash…

         Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.  Although he is best known for his dramatic and expressive artworks, Leonardo also conducted dozens of carefully thought out experiments and created futuristic inventions that were groundbreaking for the time. His keen eye and quick mind led him to make important scientific discoveries, yet he never published his ideas. 
       His Treatise on Painting,  taken from pages in his notebooks from 1482-1519, was first published in France in 1651. The main aim of the treatise was to argue that painting was a science
    In year 1503, Leonardo began work on an oil painting ( Mona Lisa) that was still in his studio when he died in year 1519. It was painted & worked on intermittently over these many years on a piece of 2′ 6″ tall x 1′ 9″ wide Poplar Wood panel. Later X-Rays have revealed his own fingerprints on it. 
     So we know it was a highly valued treasure by the artist as he carried it with him during studio moves & never parted with it during his lifetime. Some theories, based on his own writings, point to it being a portrait of his own mother, Caterina, whom we know later lived with him under his care.

---

Bellissima Prego ! At the Mr. Brainwash Art Museum. A museum goes wonders If Batman, Picasso & Francis Bacon had a baby...?

   
        Leonardo, a chiaroscuro master of art, pioneered the Sfumato technique, which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated" or “to vanish like smoke”.  It was a method that involved applying layers of thin glazes to inform a foggy, almost ethereal effect & oftentimes Leonardo used his own fingertips to smooth the paint instead of a brush.

     The Mona Lisa (also called Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Italian La Gioconda, or French La Joconde), another theory was that the model may have been Leonardo’s own mother, Caterina, or other suggestions that the painting was, in fact, Leonardo’s self-portrait, given the resemblance between the sitter’s and the artist’s facial features. Some scholars suggested that disguising himself as a woman was the artist’s riddle, while others argue it is a composite painting of different people)

Since we don't know what it all means with Mr. Brainwash and Leonardo Da Vinci, we asked some museum goers what they felt about the art:

 "Ehhh I wouldn’t say he’s a cultural vampire or anything like that. I just think a lot of his works were not very original. Or they were copied from an origin and regurgitated into today's society. “The thinking man” with headphones on. “The Mona Lisa” with a lakers jersey. People want to look at art they can relate to and sadly society is dwindling closer and closer into the screen age where most everyone communicates. I think the whole point is “no ideas original, there’s nothing new under the sun. Or maybe the point of it is there is no point." -- Denim 30, Singer/Musician

A glimpse into the future perhaps? Follow your Dreams.

On the museum rooftop were some cool spray painted metal sculptural car shapes. Maybe they are real cars? We have already delved into Art Cars as the "Ultimate Street Art" genre --   Art, Art Cars & the Beautification of our Urban Societies. Published in November 2021.

      Since Pop Art is a key part of the Mr. Brainwash recipe, we feel that further reading on the subject may help better to sense it all and what better source than Andy Warhol himself to help understand it.
         Warhol wrote two books about Pop Art. Both Popism:The Warhol Sixties and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol ( from A to B & Back Again). The enigmatic, legendary Warhol makes the reader his confidant on love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, success, and much more.
        In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, told with his trademark blend of irony and detachment, this compelling and eccentric memoir riffs and reflects on all things Warhol: New York, America, and his childhood, as well as the explosion of his career in the sixties, and his life among the rich and famous.

     Another best seller Warhol tome is the later Andy Warhol Diaries which also covers his thoughts and relationships with both artists Haring and Basquiat, among many others. Spanning the mid-1970s until just a few days before his death in 1987, the book is a compendium of the more than twenty thousand pages of the artist's diary that he dictated daily to a co-author.
     Filled with shocking observations about the lives, loves, and careers of the rich, famous, and fabulous.  Warhol's journal is endlessly fun and fascinating. 

 " Pop will eat itself " -  anonymous 

   All in all, the creation of the Mr. Brainwash brand itself might be his best work yet as he is now successfully enshrined into the pantheon of the Street Art Gods he himself so enthusiastically encapsulates in this epoch.

     In the Mr. Brainwash religion, his Pop is a regurgitated culture on a continuous loop that will never die but only continue to eat itself (unless he comes up with new ideas). Parasitic by nature, Pop Art as we are led to believe it, becomes both the champion and victim to it's own demise.

   An artist now larger than the life he created, Mr. Brainwash walks a tightrope between his creative evolving persona as a living sculptural entity, acting out his own art history, while also creating, manifesting and spinning a mix up mash of sensitive shlock to the culture which happily laps it up.

  With simplistic mantras like, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, he possesses an idealistic life vision but most certainly not a naive one. Like all great artists in a century, his best work is either what he is currently working on now or has not even been made yet and his largest audience just being born.

 In true Warholian fashion, we also interviewed another Brainwash museum goer about her thoughts on the art inside:
"Idk well his whole thing is art can be whatever you want it to be. You can take inspiration from the past and make it new. He wants people to smile and laugh and to enjoy the art as if they were a child again bringing back feelings of nostalgia.  And to see things from different perspectives. And Life is Beautiful ." -- Tammy 28, Fashion Consultant

Culture afficianado Tammy visits the Mr. Brainwash Museum,