I would love to say that I am starting this blog because of my deep and profound love of art but the cold hard truth is that my wife if forcing me to write for her otherwise she won’t cook me pasta anymore. I love pasta. So needless to say here I am. Luckily for me I live in London where you can’t take a piss without hitting some famous piece of art, a gallery, an artist, something cool, etc....

Anyways, i was at work the other day when a buddy of mine told me about a new piece by Mr. Brainwash that he ran across while on his way home a few nights back. As luck would have it, we had an extra 30 minutes for lunch that day so an adventure was born. I would like to say that the trek across central London followed changed me forever, but sadly no. It was a beautiful day—sun shining, birds singing and all of that crap. We shot through Oxford Street, dipped through Soho and found ourselves on the other side near Holborn staring at a giant mural, a spoofing the famous “With the Beatles” album cover. In this case Mr Brainwash changed it up a bit and covered their faces with bandanas and added a few extra street related themes thrown in for good measure.

I’m a street art novice but it seemed okay to me, however my friend the street artist expert complained that it was just a poster designed in a studio, printed out and stuck up on a construction site akin to any of the thousands of advertising posters found all over the city. Then he pointed out the new gallery down the street selling Mr. Brainwash’s work that just opened down the street.

To be honest, all I know about Mr brainwash I learned from the documentary 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' which i'm not sure i believe. I really don't think he is real. Or if he is real, he is real in the same way the guy from Levi’s jeans is real. But gauging by the numbers of people lining up to pay way too much for his art, it doesn't really seem to matter if the guy is real or not because he is selling his art for a shit load worth of cash. His art is on the wall and in the time it took my friend and I to drink a beer in the pub across the street at least a hundred people stopped to take a photo.

And just to start a rumour I think the PM David Cameron is Banksy, but that’s the subject of a future post.

http://www.mrbrainwash.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_Through_the_Gift_Shop