Beautiful Losers
- Posted: 26th Mar 2010
- Category: Reviews
In the early Nineties, a young curator called Aaron Rose opened his own small gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Despite being constantly threatened with closure, ‘Alleged’ quickly became home to a band of misfit artists who shared an unashamed and almost childlike enthusiasm for making art. They became close and supportive collaborators, counting Harmony Korine and Shepard Fairey among the members. The film follows the collective from their early encounters in New York, through the height of the Alleged scene, with its irreverent exhibitions and bohemian parties, to what became of the main players (now mostly in their forties). Beautiful Losers is an exuberant celebration of lo-fi culture that examines the drive to be creative, the nature of collaboration and the intersecting of the artists’ manifold interests, from handpainted signs to skateboarding.
Rose himself made the documentary, but thankfully Beautiful Losers never becomes the self-indulgent hagiography it might have been, in great part thanks to the interviewees’ lack of pretension. Their genuine, and infectious, enjoyment of art and life buoys the film along. Like the movement it explores, Beautiful Losers is endearingly haphazard and digressive, and far more concerned with enjoying the process of creation than with the finished product. As one artist observes of their work, it’s the bits they ‘couldn’t quite get straight’ which are most interesting, and the film certainly bears this theory out. Watching Beautiful Losers is a dreamlike, serene experience: it floats along giving a vivid impression of what it was like to be part of the Alleged scene, though some will find its lack of direction exasperating.The artists’ profound affection and respect for each other is palpable and moving, as is their enduring dedication to their work. Seventeen years after Alleged first opened, it’s plain the Beautiful Losers have lost none of their appetite for ‘making stuff’. Charismatic, entertaining, thoughtful and totally unable to take themselves too seriously, they will leave audiences inspired to head straight for the nearest art shop.
Dir Joshua Leonard, Aaron Rose, US 2008, 90 mins
Beautiful Losers is available now on DVD.
See also: www.losermovie.co.uk
Beautiful Losers is available now on DVD.
See also: www.losermovie.co.uk