Wall of dreams of Montreuil

There's a great post on that wonderful site I follow, La Panse de l'Ours, http://www.lapanse.com/

which is about a truly beautiful enterprise--the Montreuil Wall of Dreams. For those of you who can't read the original French on La Panse, the inhabitants of Montreuil(an area of Paris)were asked by their municipality--What do you dream about? The results--whether poem, photo, a few words, a slogan, whatever--were put in a ''Dream Box''. Then local artists, like Nemo, Mirk, Loco, AnitaLjung and others, were asked to transpose those dreams and wishes into a glorious fresco. The fresco has utterly transformed an ugly concrete wall at the exit of the A3 freeway and the entry into the Branly-Boissiere neighbourhood of Montreuil, into a Mur a Reves, or ''Wall of Dreams'', a thing of beauty, imagination and joy. La Panse has some wonderful pictures of the whole thing. Go and look!

Fantastic! Bravo to everyone concerned! If only municipalities everywhere were as imaginative!

Focus on Nemo

The great Nemo(see my earlier post, A bit of history, 4) is in my opinion the Paris street artist par excellence, and certainly my own favourite! His beautiful artworks owe something to Surrealism and children's books, dreams and 'polars' or crime novels(yes, really!) But they're very much also his own, distinctive, charming, melancholy, funny, tender and just plain fantastic!

The combination of L'Homme Noir, in his uncompromisingly adult ''film noir'' or 'polar' silhouette, and the beautiful coloured things that suddenly flow out of his gun or spray-can, or flutter around his head, or chase him, in a lovely childlike series of touching, playful, lively scenes, is brilliant and stimulates the imagination with the lightest of touches. L'Homme Noir's adventures on the streets of Paris, alone with his umbrella and his suitcase, or with a menagerie of little creatures, or floating serenely in his paper boat, or ski-ing in a sudden snowstorm, or lying in a hammock, or whatever strikes his fancy, are gentle, poetic tales which can be seen through the eyes and the mind but also the heart and soul. A great lover of the 20th arrondissement, especially around Belleville, he has enriched the lives of countless locals as well as visitors who come to his area specifically to see his work. He does not sell in galleries very much(if at all, in fact), preferring that his art should be for all. A modest and retiring man, he's not interested in publicity or marketing and his ''street-name'', Nemo, which means, in Latin, 'nobody', is testament to his enigmatic integrity.

In his work, as well as those mentioned above, and those he's cited himself, such as the work of the great American comic book artist Winsor Mc Cay, I also see influences such as the gentle, childlike buffoon Monsieur Hulot, creation of Jacques Tati; the joy and melancholy of Lamorisse's The Red Balloon; the 'polar'; children's books..Everyone sees different things, and that's the genius of Nemo, whose simplicity and depth appeal to both children and adults.

There's a great book out about Nemo, simply called Nemo, by the French writer Daniel Pennac. Even if your French it's a bit rusty(which is a pity, as Pennac's text is lovely), it's well worth getting for the beautiful pictures. There's also a very useful list at the back of (wall) addresses where you can see the works when you're in Paris. You can view and order the book here: http://www.amazon.fr/Nemo-Daniel-Pennac/dp/2842302699/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249968151&sr=8-1

So what is it about Belleville and Menilmontant?

The 20th arrondissement of Paris, especially around Belleville and Menilmontant, is what you might call the spiritual heart of Paris street art. It's here that it really took off and here that a lot of artists came from and in fact several of them, including the great Nemo, still live and paint there. They love the area. What is it about Belleville/Menilmontant that seems to inspire so many popular artists and that arouses so much affection?

Well, Belleville and surrounds have always had a pretty amazing reputation as far as real grassroots style art is concerned, in all sorts of artistic disciplines, not only visual art. Belleville's the heart of what people call 'Paris popu' , short for Paris populaire, or working-class Paris, if you like. It was where poor people went after they were pushed out of the Seine-bank areas by Baron Haussmann's radical changes to Paris architecture in the nineteenth century. It soon became known as a lively area with lots of sly-grog bars and was also quite radical, being at the centre of the Commune insurrection in Paris in the late 1870's. Independent and feisty, it has always had a huge sense of community, despite its shabby and run-down look and it's in that environment that great art has been created.

Belleville was the birthplace of France's greatest singer/songwriter, Edith Piaf. Piaf, which was her stage name, means 'sparrow' in Parisian slang--she took it because sparrows live on the street and she was a street kid herself, who ran wild in childhood. (She was also known as La Mome, which means, 'The Kid'). Her songs of heartbreak, tough philosophy and loving portraits of Paris and its characters, sung in her distinctively Parisian-accented smoky voice, are huge classics and are still loved very much today all over the world, decades after her death. For many people, she is the voice of Paris.

Belleville was also the setting for the beautiful 1950's film Le Ballon Rouge, or The Red Balloon, directed by Albert Lamorisse, which was filmed entirely on location there. A picture book of the same name with stills from the film was also produced. Those of us who know and love Nemo's Black Silhouette's red balloon are sure it comes from there!

Another fabulous work of art set in Belleville is the 1950's children's classic, Le Cheval Sans Tete(published in English as A Hundred Million Francs)which tells of the amazing adventures of some poor but very resourceful Paris kids after they discover a toy horse filled with money at a dump. It's still in print 50 years down the track.

A recent weird and wonderful French animated film, The Triplets of Belleville, (2003)is set there too, while nearby Menilmontant features in a famous song by another great French singer/songwriter of the past, Charles Trenet, who paid tribute to its tough working-class spirit in Les Gars de Menilmontant, which in turn inspired an exuberant street painting by Jerome Mesnager!

Today Belleville and Menilmontant continue to inspire fantastic popular art, with wonderful works by Nemo and Mesnager and Mosko et associes and others enjoyed by locals and visitors alike. It's also an interesting and lively area with people from everywhere, some great cheap places to eat, a fabulous park with some of the best views over Paris and if you're in Paris, you've just got to check it out!

A few newer artists to watch out for

As well as the classic, and still-going-strong greats like Nemo and Mesnager and Mosko et associes and Blek le Rat and Miss Tic and so on, there's some interesting newer pochoir Paris street artists to watch out for. Here's a couple of good ones:

Artiste Ouvrier, (real name Pierre-Benoit Dumont--bottom pictures) is one of my favourites of the newer ones, his lush images and narrative richness are just great. He uses a technique known as 'pochoir chinois' (Chinese stencil) which is actually just like a stencil negative, if 'ordinary' stencil is the 'positive'. As well as the beautiful street art, Artiste Ouvrier has created a unique Tarot that you can order from him. His website is at http://www.artiste-ouvrier.com/

Another new favourite is Bonom, a young artist who like Mosko et associes, loves to features animals-huge animals!--including dinosaurs, on the Paris walls he enlivens. He's also jungled things up in Brussels, which is another place where you can see some great street art.