A bit of history 7: the story of Le Bateleur

Le Bateleur was a very talented street artist who diedyoung, in his early thirties, in 1996. Like many of the greats of Paris pochoir art, such as Nemo, he came from the poor 20th arrondissement of Paris, in his case Menilmontant. When he was 3, with four brothers and sisters, his mother died and his father, a service-station attendant, lost the plot and neglected his children, who soon ran wild in the streets. His grandmother tried to help but when she died, the children were taken from their father. At the age of ten, Le Bateleur was put in a children's home, where he spent the next 8 years. It was, as he said in an interview(you can see it on http://www.chris-kutschera.com/) fine materially but emotionally a disaster which affected his whole life. He left at 18, in revolt at society and soon fell into drugs and crime, eventually ending up going to prison for 3 years. He'd always loved art and was always drawing but was not encouraged to do so--at the home he was trained as a cook. A love affair in which his girlfriend had his child encouraged a new beginning, and he got off the drugs and put his life back on track. He did all sorts of things, ran a bar in Marseille, went to live in the Antilles Islands, but on coming back to Paris decided to start creating street art.

He took the name Le Bateleur--which he'd used from the age of 15--because it was the Tarot figure that kept coming up in the readings he did. (Le Bateleur in French is the Tarot figure known in English as the Magician--traditionally on French Tarot cards he's depicted as a street magician.) Le Bateleur's striking pictures, mixed with text, started to make their impression on the walls of Paris but though the artist started to become more famous, he didn't give up on his ideals of simplicity and a refusal to cave in to what he saw as a twisted society's lack of care for human beings, and its concentration on status and money. When he did sell artworks, he never asked for much money, and very often he would give them away. And of course his street art was freely created..Poor, still living in a squat and battling bravely for his living, Le Bateleur epitomised the rebellious, suffering figure of the artist. His untimely death robbed street art of one of its most amazing figures. RIP, Le Bateleur. You are sadly missed.

In 1997, a year after Le Bateleur, fellow street artist and friend Nemo created a tribute work to his memory. You can see it at the top of this page(the other three are works by Le Bateleur).

A bit of history 6: Miss Tic and Jef Aerosol

Miss Tic is one of the few female pochoir street artists working on Paris walls, but her very distinctive work, which blends text and picture, philosophical aphorisms, bits of poetic wisdom and elegant, stylised Parisian women based on her own silhouette, has become a favourite of many people. Most of her work is concerned with love, seen from a feminine angle, and in fact it was love--the pain of losing it--that drove her, to coin a phrase, to the wall! It was out of the ashes of her relationship with Blek le Rat that Miss Tic the street artist was born, in the mid-1980's. Before that, she'd been a poet, newspaper critic and street theatre performer. She considers herself to be both writer and artist: as she put it, 'the wall is my publisher'.

Jef Aerosol also started in the 1980's, but in Tours, not Paris(though now there's a lot of his work in the capital). A lover of punk music, especially The Clash, he started painting on walls because he wanted to attract the attention of the local music scene to his potential as a record-cover and poster artist! It certainly worked and he soon found himself hobnobbing with all kinds of musicians. His work is still very much inspired by music--not just punk, but rock and blues too. But also by the 'man in the street' passersby, his family, friends etc.

a bit of history 5: Mosko et associes and Jerome Mesnager

In the same generation of street artists are two(or rather three, you'll see why in a moment!)of my other favourites, Mosko et associes and Jerome Mesnager. They also started in the 80's. Mosko et associes are actually a duo of artists, Gerard Laux and Michel Allemand--the name Mosko refers to the Moskowa neighbourhood of Paris where Gerard comes from. In the book about them called Savanes Urbaines(Editions Alternatives)it says that the artists met in the Moskowa in the 80's--Gerard had already started painting on walls there and Michel was going around Paris taking photos of street art. Gerard challenged him to leave the camera and create himself--which he did. The artists have had a long and fruitful collaboration since then and their distinctive art, featuring animals from the savannah and the jungle, full of colour and movement and fun, appears on walls all over the place, delighting people of all ages, transporting them into a powerful and imaginative animal world.

Jerome Mesnager also began in the 80's. He was the founder of a movement called Zig-Zag, which zigzagged all over Paris creating street art and graffiti of all sorts. His well-known signature figure is the 'Bonhomme Blanc' or 'Corps Blanc' .That means literally 'White Fellow' or 'White Body' but that doesn't quite have the same connotation as in French--some people call the figure, in English, White Ghost and that has more of the mysteriously tantalising yet homely spirit of the French original, I think. He's haunted Paris now for 25 years but has also had adventures in places as far-flung as New York, Colombia, Cuba, China and more.
Unlike Nemo and Mosko et associes and Miss Tic and Blek le Rat and in fact most of the other street artists, Mesnager does not use stencils, but creates his pictures by freehand, very rapid painting(in some cases, he's said, in 26 seconds!) That sensation of freedom and swift movement is very apparent in his work.

A bit of history 4--Blek le Rat and Nemo

It was in the 1980's that the work of the artists I'm especially interested in began. In Anglo-Saxon countries like Britain and the USA and Australia, graffiti of the American-inspired urban 'hip-hop' style and tagging became popular but in France it was rather different. One of the very first of the pochoir artists, Blek le Rat, said he tried out that style in Paris but it didn't work, it somehow didn't suit the place. So instead he turned for inspiration to the work of people like Ernest Pignon-Ernest, and decided to use stencils(pochoirs in French)for his street art. At first he began with a group of friends stencilling little rats all over the place(hence the name) but then graduated to much more ambitious stuff.
About this time too there began to appear on the walls of the 20th arrondissement in Paris(an area that has always sported the work of my favourites)modest little stencils based on 'Little Nemo' and signed 'Nemo.' This was the humble beginning of one of the most beloved of Paris street artists, Nemo. In the book about him written by the French novelist Daniel Pennac, it says that Nemo started creating his stencils inspired by the fact he was re-reading a childhood favourite--Little Nemo--to his own young son, who was starting school and was a little overwhelmed by it all(and who doesn't remember that feeling!) To make him feel better, his dad created these modest little street artworks all along the road to school so he could feel a comforting sense of familiarity and imaginative freedom too. Who wouldn't want a dad like that!

But as his son got older and school less traumatic, Nemo stopped doing his Little Nemo stencils. Pennac writes that after a silence of a few years, suddenly Nemo started appearing again on the walls of the 20th arrondissement and beyond--the now-famous black silhouette, reminiscent of detective-fiction and film noir, delightfully and incongruously pursuing dreamlike adventures all over the place. They have a kind of fairytale quality, a unique combination of wistful, dreamy sadness and tenderness and joyful humour, that really capture people's imagination--children and adults. They also celebrate the poor but community-rich areas where Nemo has always lived and which he loves. I'll write more on what I see in his art--probably my favourite of all-- in a later post.

A bit of history 3

The modern history of French street art starts in the 1970's, with the work of artists like Ernest Pignon-Ernest(three bottom pictures), Gerald Zlotykamien(first picture) and Jean le Gac(second picture).

Ernest Pignon-Ernest's wonderful murals in places like Soweto and Naples and later Paris are now considered classics of the genre and greatly influenced the upcoming pochoir artists like Blek le Rat, Nemo, Jerome Mesnager and Mosko. His revolutionary wish to bring art to the people, clever allusions to great artists like Cavaraggio and sense of narrative and character are all still very much a feature of the best street art in Paris. His work is found on walls, on phone booths and these days very much in the studio too(he's still painting) He's also got a site(in French) at http://www.pignon-ernest.com

Jean le Gac is also an artist whose classical gift of style and narrative is strongly inspirational. There are examples of his art in Paris streets(like the one pictured, of a detective). Gerald Zlotykamien's work was very influenced by graffiti, and in turn he influenced the work of modern artists like Speedy Graffito.

A bit of history, 2

In the 18th and 19th centuries, silhouette portraits(top right) became popular, and this particular style was also to influence modern street art. Then with the big success of two famous French art movements: Art Nouveau, from 1890-1914, and Art Deco, from the 1920's and 1930's, stencilling took off again in a big way. The beautiful flowing, plant-vine like lines of Art Nouveau (middle pictures) and the crisp, elegant lines of Art Deco(bottom picture) were a very happy match with stencils. Modern Paris street artists are still influenced by both.

As well, a huge influence was the comic strip, which really started to come into its own in the 20th century. One of the most influential of the early comic-book artists was the American Winsor McCay, whose 'Little Nemo' series (published around 1903--top left picture)inspired an explosion of comic-book talent--in Belgium, for instance, the publication of Little Nemo in French was directly responsible for the flourishing of what they call there the 'Ninth Art', as famous a Belgian product as chocolates or beer! Tintin and co owe their existence to such an inspiration. But it also greatly influenced, even many, many years down the track, a whole generation of street artists--and in Paris, especially Nemo, of course.

A bit of history 1

Walls have always been a place where artists have expressed themselves. And pochoir, or stencil art, has a long and honourable history all over the world.

In France, you could say it all began thousands and thousands of years ago, with the cave painters of places like Lascaux and Niaux, stencilling their beautiful images on the walls of caves(top, detail from a Niaux cave; bottom, detail from a Lascaux cave).

Much later, the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used stencils to create wall paintings or frescoes. Graffiti also appeared, not much of it has artistic merit but it's very interesting historically. The best-known examples of such ancient graffiti in the world are at Pompeii.

Frescoes were very popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance but gradually stencilling fell out of favour for the creation of wall art. However it was still being used extensively to create designs for wallpaper, playing cards, etc.

A short introduction

Forget London or New York, Paris is the centre of the best, most unusual, authentic and creative street art. And the one with the longest history too(which I'll talk about in a later post). There's all kinds, from the politically and socially engaged, to the surrealist and dreamy, from the romantic and passionate, to the childlike and humorous, from the mysterious to the poetic.

Not all of it will be to everyone's taste, but the best is as good if not better than the art you see in galleries. And it feels really alive. Paris street art is about giving people space to think and feel and dream, and to surprise them away from ''la grisaille'' or the greyness of run-down urban environments, into embarking on a beautiful journey of the imagination.

For with their bold stencil lines, deft mix of colour and monochrome, and the whimsical, touching poetry of the little scenes they depict, Paris street artworks turn the grey walls of shabby streets into a potent screen for the imagination, silently showing stories of childlike simplicity yet great mystery.