Word: paint
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...analyst at Standard & Poor's: "It doesn't make sense to dump a solid business like Du Pont, which throws off good dividends, and take on a much riskier investment in MCA. But then the press accounts of Edgar Jr. don't give him a lot of credit. They paint him as a Dan Quayle who is ready to wreck Seagram...
...Maestro has filled his backyard with cow sculpture, created hundreds of clay cadillacs (the modern cowboy's horse), painted with air brushes and fabric paint and appliqued sequins and playing cards onto his works. Though the work does a very good impression of kitsch, it is distinguished by its relentless variety and Gaxiola's unique, informed stance towards the art World...
Taking Andy Warhol as his most frequent target, Gaxiola launches pot shots, often witty ones, just as often literal, paint-ball ones, at the money grubbing art world. The commodification of art sickens and provokes Gaxiola, who rebutts Warhol's statement, "Business art is a much better thing to be making than art," with the ardent, "Art is a religion, not a business." More stunningly, the Maestro does not sell his paintings, preferring the freedom to do what he wants when he wants to the lure of the greenback...
Towards the end of the film, Gaxiola travels to see Christo's yellow umbrellas in the Southwest desert. He strides into the beautiful hills as he loads his paintgun. As he prepares to deface the umbrellas with a vigilante's red paint (a scene Blank does not film), he explains that it isn't that he doesn't respect Christo. Rather, he is "trying to becomes part of the history of his umbrellas." This type of language punctuates the otherwise campy (and fun) side of Gaxiola's personality with the happy result of widening the intellectual scope of the documentary...
Gaxiola lives vigorously and with all the defiantly independent spirit of the cowboy. With the example of his extraordinary life backing up his attitude, the whole takes on rather more than the sum of its parts. The Maestro bright paint stands out against the muddied horizon of the conventional art world with a surprising vigor...