'Losers' who really made their mark

YOU MAY not know their names, but you likely recognize their work. Emerging from the Alleged Gallery in New York, the artists featured in the new documentary "Beautiful Losers" created imagery that has gone from being off-the-map to mainstream and a vital part of contemporary visual culture -- Andre the Giant posters by Shepard Fairey, the graphic design and commercial work of Mike Mills and Geoff McFetridge, the sophisticated, knowing amateurism of Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee.

Compiled from archival footage and contemporary interviews with many of the artists involved, the film is co-directed by Aaron Rose, who started the Alleged Gallery and co-curated the long-traveling exhibition that showcases the work displayed there. Other artists featured in the film include Jo Jackson, Ed Templeton and Stephen Powers, and the milieu of the gallery also included a young Harmony Korine -- an excerpt from an early film by Korine is included in "Beautiful Losers."

The gallery ran from 1992 to 2002, so it may seem strange to already be looking back at a period that occurred not so long ago. Yet in the time period portrayed in "Beautiful Losers" information traveled much differently, and it seems very much of another era.

"Sometimes it takes 20 years for something to feel important," Rose said of the decision to make a documentary of this particular time and place. "But still it seemed, even to me, a little funny to be like 'back in the day, '96.' It just seemed like it was yesterday.

"But it was important to me this film got made when everyone was still kind of youngish. I think the film wouldn't be as inspiring if it was made 10 or 20 years from now. Now the artists are not that far removed from the archival footage, so it's easier to draw connections."

"A decade is a decade I suppose," said Templeton, via e-mail. "1994 does seem like another life at this point."

The title "Beautiful Losers" was chosen for the traveling exhibition when Rose scanned a shelf of books and noticed the 1966 novel by Leonard Cohen of that name.

The artists of the Alleged Gallery had strong connections to the subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti and punk/indie rock, such that the film might just as easily be called "Revenge of the Nerds."

"I always thought of the gallery more like a record label than something in the art world," said Rose. "It was an attitude, it was a punk gallery. I wasn't thinking about auctions or art collections. There were no collectors. The first time we sold a drawing for $20 I was just totally blown away that somebody bought it."