Street Art Saturday -- July 15

I have a confession to make.  Art museums, while educational and often beautiful, are a little too static for my taste most of the time.  I breeze through them pretty quickly and then I'm ready for the next thing on the day's list.  I don't really like Shakespeare either, but that's a whole other story.  Give me a science museum any old day.  

That said, I have been really excited about today since I started looking for things to do in Paris.  Today was all about STREET ART.  First, I had a tour with an artist and then, I went to the World of Banksy exhibition.  

When I thought about street art before coming here, I thought mainly about graffiti.  And while there's some of that in Paris, most of the artwork is more complex than that.  Marie, our awesome guide from Street Art Tours Paris today, introduced us to the 3 main types of street art in Paris: collage, stencil, and freehand (either painting or drawing). The artists think of putting their work on the streets often as a gift to be freely enjoyed...and as a way to get their work seen if not in a gallery.  Some pieces are commissioned by the government...and some are not.  

Collage is done in a workshop on a special kind of paper and then affixed to the wall with wallpaper glue.  Marie said that street art can stay up for quite a while -- until the cleaning crew decides it is time to come down/paint over it.  And, just like that, it becomes a canvas for the next artist.  Here are a few of my favorite collage pieces. 

The french fries are seen in different colors all over the city -- same artist, just different colors and different locations.

This Adam and Eve collage was one of the coolest things we saw.  See if you can figure out what some of the differences are as compared to the original biblical story. 

 

An artist named "Beast" does some cool skeletal work with stencils -- and while the animals are different in different locations, you can tell that the artist is the same. 

 

Some pieces use both stencil AND collage -- like this huge Michael Jackson inspired piece.  The Michael Jackson part was done using stencils, but all the colored pieces are collage.  If you look carefully, you can see the names of other pop culture icons like "The Goonies." 

When you think about the skill it takes to free draw anything (stick people your level of skill or is that just me?), doing it on a wall with a much larger canvas is super impressive.  Marie said it can take people years to learn how to use the spray paint (if that's their medium) just right. 

This first piece is by a local artist who gets to know people in the local community, and then paints them as a tribute.  Marie said that he often chooses elders in the community to honor them. 

The second piece was created to tell the story of the COVID-19 pandemic in France.  It wraps around a corner using 2 whole walls -- I've tried to capture it and then I got some close ups of some of the more interesting images to me. 

Here are a few other random pieces that I liked.  The photographs are worth mentioning because all around the city, the artist puts them in "frames" like you see here -- with the goal of making it feel like a gallery on the street. The picture in the middle is by an artist named "No" who uses children as his inspiration.  The painted column is one of many on a street that are all the artists that gave inspiration to street art -- think Monet, Picasso, etc.

  

The green one with a head sticking out made me laugh...and reminded me of the Jolly Green Giant.  The femme fatale is done by Miss.Tic who was one of the most well-known street artists in Paris before her death last year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss.Tic).  The street art community is working hard to help preserve her work since there will never be anymore.  The metal piece was at the top of the hill in Montmarte by the Sacre Couer (which is also in this group of pictures). It is the highest point in Paris (at least that's what Parisians tell me!).

   

After a stop for brunch, I went on to my next destination of the day -- the World of Banksy exhibition (https://museebanksy.fr/en/).  While still in the same flavor of the earlier art today, Banksy's work is definitely more on the graffiti end of the spectrum.  His work can be seen across the world -- the US, the UK, France, etc.  He used art very much as a political vehicle for sharing his opinions on the world and that comes through clearly in this exhibition.  Think of going into a dark alleyway somewhere and that's what the museum was like.  If you'd like to learn more about Banksy, here's a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy#Banksy_effect_(2006%E2%80%932007)

 

 

 

So, I very much jive with the French perspective that art should be for all -- and it doesn't have to live in a museum.  Today was such fun learning about art on the streets. 

Until tomorrow...