Day 48: Paris Street Art (Part 1)

I enjoyed the street art walking tour I did in London so much that when I got to Paris I checked to see if it had anything similar, since it is also one of the big street art capitals. It did - but what I didn't know is that it's basically brand new. I did the tour today, and apparently it's only the 4th one to run so far. What was even stranger is that when the guide for it showed up he recognized me, and swore that he'd met me before. I couldn't see how he'd know me as I've only been in Paris a few days, but after chatting a bit, we eventually figured it out. The guide (Demian) used to do the London tours, and while he'd moved to Paris already when I did my tour in London, he was back in the city visiting and is friends with the guide I had for it (who was replacing him), and I guess came along to check out what was new in the London art scene, so we actually met 6 weeks ago on that London tour. Small world.

There is definately a different vibe for street art in Paris. A lot of the art seems to be more decorative, and the culture isn't as developed as in London, which is both good and bad. Paris has a lot of "free areas" where people can legally paint, and which tend to have a very high turnover as people are constantly painting over earlier paintings. There seems to be more of an appreciation by the average person in the city for street art that looks nice and some arists like Invader are almost universally liked (and there isn't the market London has that leads to all his pieces there getting stolen and sold). We were shown one wall, known simply as Le Mur where different street artists are invited to paint a mural. The artist(s) spend Sunday afternoon painting it while people gather around and watch, and then at the end they all drink some champagne and have a good time. The painting then lasts for 2 weeks until the next artist comes and paints a new piece over top. The entire collection is online at http://lemur.asso.fr/ if anybody is interested.

Now for some of the art:

This is a piece by Nick Walker from Bristol. A lot of his stencils use a figure in a bowler hat known as The Vandal. Here the Vandal is releasing mini-vandals with spray cans.

Another stencil piece. Not sure who it's by, but everybody loves Jawas!

Lots going on on this wall. The big one with the eyes popping out is by a reclusive artist known as ZOO Project. The guy lying in the hammock (as well as the umbrella, rabbit and bird) are by a highly respected first generation Parisian artists known as Nemo. There are also a bunch of random other bits, and I didn't even capture everything on the wall as there were some tiled mosaics higher up. Speaking of tiled mosaics...

I had to get at least one Invader piece in, it being his home turf.

In general, the art was less dense than in London, which meant more walking to get from place to place. Luckily it was a gorgeous day, and walking through the back alleys of London you didn't run into parks with random people slow dancing around a violinist.

(continued in Part 2)