First, newbie.... please look up the myriad of posts about MBW that have been put up. Info about what is known has been explained pretty throughly. To reiterate as quickly as possible:

At Seth Carmichael's Bonham's event that Shep spoke at, Shep made a point of clarifying things about Mr Brainwash - namely that he was a documentary film maker and a hanger on who used his contacts, partly as a relative of Invader (I believe his cousin), to get access to Shep and other people in the urban art scene. Shep supposedly introduced him to Banksy.

Thierry never finished the film as he started getting into urban art. He's been an urban artist in Los Angeles for years... I put up a picture on this board of early work of MBWs dating back to at least 2006... and according to my hazy recollection, I think I saw crappy early street work well before that.

Because he had actual footage of Banksy's face and because he was just sitting on it, doing nothing with it... according to Shep, Banksy bought the footage back in exchange for doing something for Thierry (and partly because Banksy was frustrated with Thierry)... Shep seemed to suggest at the Carmichael event that Banksy intended to finish the film for Thierry and implied that the film would take a turn of showcasing Thierry as little talent documentary filmmaker, turned artist.

According to MBW, Banksy told Thierry a basic plan of how to become a (successful?) street artist. Thierry shows this sheet of notes in his interview with Carson Daily.

The speculation is that MBW is a project of Bansky's. That is not 100% factual by any means, as all evidence suggests he produced work well before he met with Banksy, much of that work was consistent with a low level street artists trying to find his style (complete with oversprays and all in the same area of LA), and the narrative I've heard from other sources suggests he was dabbling with graf art well before the supposed "Banksy" meeting - a meeting taht seems to have been completely overblown by art speculators and gossip.

Thierry supposedly has a lot of family wealth and even prior to becoming aware of him as one and the same with MBW, I would see him hanging out with Mark the Cobrasnake and DJ Steve Aoki - basically behaving as your typical rich, trust fund, wannabe art scene guy.

He used his personal wealth to finance his art career and leveraged his contacts that he made partly as a rich kid and partly as a hanger on to launch his show in LA in which he went from a largely unheard of, largely ignored low level graf artist to an overnight "success."

But factually, his "Life Is Beautiful" show employed a slew of hired artists that produced most of the work for MBW and he hired many of the same show producers who helped get Banksy's 2006 LA show off the ground. In essence, many people in the LA art community allege that MBW went so far as farming out some of the conceptualization of his work.

And might I also add, that much of the work in the Mr Brainwash "Life is Beautiful" show was more or less copied from other artists, including his vinyl record art (which could be found being done by outsider artists at flea markets), his almost direct copying of Rene Gagnon with the Campbells Spraycan Images, his modernization of old paintings (which was practically directly copied from Banksy), and a slew of other images.

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In summary, my conclusions are that Thierry is a rich guy who has very good publicists and contacts and very little actual talent - and I'm not alone in my conclusion this way. I strongly believe (keyword believe) that Banksy shares this opinion but chose to help Thierry because:

1) He wanted the footage back

2) Has (or had) a cynical view of the urban art world and felt that the best ending for this supposed documentary would be showing that Thierry could easily become an urban artist in his own right (although not necessarily a talented one)

3) Thierry really is an unbelievably nice guy

I would easily bet a Miss Bugs print that Banksy had nothing to do with the creation of any of MBW's work beyond referring staff from his 2006 LA show.

MBW is a joke, but only in the sense that 95% of his work is total crap and yet you idiots (or Moron's) still buy it, and the other 5% isn't worth the price he's selling it at. I think even Banksy is laughing that a no talent Frenchmen who can't really paint has somehow gotten this big. He is not a "joke" in the sense he is a Tony Clifton figure or a manufactured entity of any other artist.

No, MBW is not Banksy. Not at all. Not in any sense. They are 100% separate people. And no, they do not produce each others work. I repeat, NO, don't buy MBW thinking you're buying a Banksy, you're not. So rid yourself of that ridiculous accusation as well. Enough naive art collectors wasted too much money on inferior work because of that silly rumor which plenty of publicly available evidence disproves. (For starters, the fact we have pretty credible pictures of both producing work)

At best, MBW will be remembered as the Steve Kaufman of the urban art world, a hopeless imitator. Look him up... you'll agree its a pretty good parallel. I personally wouldn't own a Steve Kaufman because I think he's just a poor man's Warhol (and his work doesn't retain its value). I don't own MBW because I think he's a poor man's (but high priced) Bansky, an imitator and not originator, and his work won't retain its value.

At worst, I've made the point MBW will be the urban art equivalent of Thomas Kinkade - and with the frequency MBW is churning out work and the amount of misinformation that's fueling MBWs market, its not a bad parallel.

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I'm going to book mark this entry finally so I can just refer everyone to it every three months when some hopelessly retarded newbie to the urban art scene posts some inane question about MBW.