Sponge Bob Shoefiti in Paris

Hanging from a wire in the fifth arrondissement, is Sponge Bob. He's been there since, like forever. Always smiling.

Paris today

Paris is full of pollen this Spring.

And rainbows.

 

The Luxembourg Gardens are always beautiful but this Spring the layers of green are more evident than last year.  Last year Spring exploded in one week.  The pollen didn't have time to build up.  This year, Spring is what we imagine and expect. 

I haven't posted in some time because I'm busy rewriting and planning a new website where I can encorporate my two blogs.  No idea when that will be because in October I have a show and have to produce 80 paintings.  Plus finish this rewrite.

Luxembourg Gardens is tourist Paris, though locals hang there too.  I do. It's in my hood.

But there is another Paris, a street artist's city. It's grungy and dark.  Here is a mural, in the 13th arrondissement, near the Biblioteque François Mitterand.  Notice the trees have no leaves.  This photo was not today.

 

The other side of Paris, the street art scene, is important in the manuscript I'm rewriting.  For the last year I have immersed myself in street art and graffiti.  It's exciting stuff, like the manholes on boulevard Saint Michel, where taggers descend into the catacombs -- backpacks full of goodies.

The working title is White Sky of Paris.  See the sky is?  In Paris the sky is often white.

An artist once told me he would mix phtalo green with quinadricone red and add white.  It was the perfect color for the Parisian sky.  I thought, yuck, you can't mix those two colors but he was right.

History of Graffiti - Documentary: Writers 20 ans de Graffiti a Paris

This 90 minute documentary explains the rise and change of graffiti in Paris starting from the great NYC influence to the newest generation.  It's in French.

Graffiti is a term that derives from the two words, writing and calligraphy.

Graffers did not say, "Hey, let's go grafffiting." They said they were going writing.

A tag is a linear drawing of a name or pseudonym. A graffiti is the stylization of letters.  A graffiti gives form and volume to the letters.  It is personalized.

Wild style was developed in Paris, then freestyle came along, then throwups.

According to the photographer, Henry Chaftan, who documented the book Spraycan Art, Parisian graffers style was "art school" compared to the energetic New York City graffers. 

Street art fascinates me.  I don't condone it or condem it.

Street art is on the street, not in galleries.

H is for Heaven - glossary of graffiti

 High up on buildings and other spots, writers paint messages and tags.  The idea is to place their designs for maximum visibility, to increase their notoriety.  These peices are also hard to remove.

This one is one of my favorites.  

 

It’s on rue de Rennes.  How did they do it ?  Probably scaled down with climbing gear  and swung across the wall. The smiley mouth is about three meters across.

 Graffiti Heaven by Marita Hansen is worth reading.  It's harsh.

Check out what’s on tumblr under graffiti heaven spot.  You can see it’s extremey dangerous to tag these spots.  Crews of writers use climbing equipment to dangle and spray their works.  Some hang on with one hand over highways.

Writers can fall and die, thus go to heaven.

Here is an imformative video about graffiti art called Heaven Spot.  Why do writers do it?  Not for money.

In Portland they consider this a problem.  One of the graffiti removers talks about it.

Contrary to Portland, Paris embraces street art.  Even stores are using it as publicity to tell us about their back to school sales.

 

The store is just ahead.  Their logo is in the heaven of the hopscotch game.

Heaven is part of my upcoming book.

But in Paris, though there is a tolerance, I wouldn't say they condone tag runs and acid writing.

Here's another tag in heaven.

A is for Acid

 

Acid etches glass.  

What kind of acid? 

Hydroflouric.

Gee, what would it be like to come to work and see this on your window?  Nothing can remove it, just replace the glass.  Freakin expensive.  

 

Here is an article on Worksafe about the risks of using hydroflouric acid to tag.  Watch your skin,  your lungs, etching goes on for days.  There are other products one can use.  Check out art supply stores.  

Is this vandalism?

Tags like this are everywhere but we sort of don't see them. They are on phone booths, mail boxes, subway windows. You name it.

Here is an article in the NY times dating from 2006 about acid tag-etching in the metro.

Paris is the place for street art. Read it here on Bloomberg. 

TH is for throw up

 

Recently I went to Les Docks  on the quai (the banks) of the Seine to see the super hero exibit of Marvel comics at the Musée de l'Art Ludique.  Don't ask me to translate it just click on the link, ok?  Unfortunately we didn't make the exhibition because tickets for that hour were sold out.  Definitely book ahead. We queued up, hoping to enter, but when a lady came out and told us there we'd have to wait at least an hour we moved on and under.

We descended the plank stairs and found an amazing gallery of urban art. 

 

This is a simple throw up or throwie which looks like it was painted over another work, or several.

 

Here are some others.  FCK happens over and over....

see the wino?

So does DERUB.

 

Notice the tags in red underneath, could this be the crew members who frequent the place?  Who knows.

 I like the wild style on the left but the following was the best in the "gallery".

 

It looks lide FCK was part of this.  The whole throw up is not shown because there was a fashion model doing a shoot to the right. 

Most of the cement pillars were painted as well.

 

I guess that this was done not with "bomb" (spray paints) but with acrylic applied with brushes.  LOVE was abundant and so were debutant roller bladers.

 

There were also some guys practicing hip hop.

Judging by the throw ups there is a specific crew of graffuer which inhabits this this place.

Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and Gainsbourg's tomb

 

Friday I went to the drawing session at the Academie de La Grande Chaumiere   on rue de la Grande Chaumiere in the 6th arrondissement, near Montparnasse.  

Above is the scene.  The dust on the atelier walls looks like it's been there for one hundred years and the stools and grimy plank  floor are speckled with paint like millefleur.  

The model, who is an actress, was fantastic. She obviously knows what she's doing.

  

Here is the façade, a peice of authentic Paris.

A  scene in my story White Sky of Paris happens here.   

 This is Serge Gainsbourg's tomb at the

Montparnasse Cemetery

Also part of the story. 

Look at those metro tickets.  They must have cleaned up, 

usually there are more.

 

Outside the cemetery on Boulevard Edgar Quinet, a tagged truck caught my eye.

 

It's one of the better one's I've seen around Paris. 

Sous-street art in Paris

The city of lights has a dark side, the catacombs of course.  Not only are crews of taggers and graffiti artists painting walls up high above the roof tops like this round lettered throw up in Place Italie

look at that white sky, shall I say achromic?

and trucks you can see almost anywhere

 

but they go underground hauling their materials down man holes and through metro tunnels to paint images like the Hokusai wave in a room called the Beach.

 

photo:  Gakuranman

Here is a blogpost by GAKURANMAN whose photo I borrowed.  

National Graphic printed a special issue in Febrary 2011 about the underground art scene in Paris. Here is a video on vimeo about sous-street art in Paris.  Don Duncan did a story in 2010 for  The Wall Street Journal.

I think I'll take their word for granted and just stay above the tarmac.

Street Art in the fifth arrondissement of Paris

 

This is Invader, I think. It's a mosaic made from bathroom tiles, somehow applied to the facade of buildings.  I haven't read the laws yet on street art in France but from what I've heard something applied cannot be punished because it's not permanent.  I'd love to get this off the wall and hang it in my house but look where it is.

 

The fruit stand on Rue Mouffetard is just below this little roof.  I don't think I'll be jumping up there anytime soon with fresh strawberries in my sac.

 Now look at this street sign. See anything funny?

What about that no entry sign?

 

This also is applied, just black plastic cut out and stuck on.  A French artist living in Florence named Clet Abraham does these.   I'm not sure if this is his, looks like it.

Rue Pascal and Rue Claude Bernard.