Beautiful Losers

Self-described former nerds, freaks, and outsiders who turned to skate board– and graffiti-inspired art, the Beautiful Losers profiled in this high-energy group portrait are now among the art world's hippest participants.

Many of them are featured in the traveling exhibition Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture and are former denizens of the Lower East Side’s Alleged Gallery. The artists include Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, the late Margaret Kilgallen, Harmony Korine, Ed Templeton, and Shepard Fairey (who sprang into mainstream view last fall with his icon-making Barack Obama posters). Director Rose, founder of Alleged Gallery, draws from his own vast archive to celebrate the artists he believes in. As Artforum notes, "cultural history has a way of refusing convenient linearity; perhaps only attitude abides, and Beautiful Losers has that in spades." (91 mins., 35mm)

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Trailer: