Street Legal Art (for a few days)
11.17.2012
Kaaren Kitchell & Richard Beban in Le M.U.R., Paris Life, advertising, art, graffiti, street art


Mural by Bustart

What a fine week it was for street art in Paris. The equivalent of, if not Woodstock, at least 1967's Monterey Pop Festival.

Last week, Paris Play joined the organizations Alternative Paris and My Life on My Bike to provide wall-to-wall coverage of the four-day long urban art exhibition featuring the work of fifty street artists from all over the world, organized by Le M.U.R. de L'Art. The documentary crew of six (including Richard, and our nephew, Jonathan Edwards) shot photographs and conducted thirty-five videotaped artist interviews in ninety-six hours, with the eventual goal of producing a documentary about this effervescent scene.

 

 

Le M.U.R. de L'Art was founded in 2007, and serves as a legal, aboveground, as it were, gallery for street artists. To make a long story short (you can read the long version here), street artists began hijacking billboards here in Paris in the early 2000s, replacing advertising with street art. Finally, one billboard company simply gave up the fight for one piece of turf, and donated its ground-level billboard on rue Oberkampf to the community. Hence, Le M.U.R., which presents a different artists' work made on that billboard every two weeks, to celebrate both street art and its ephemeral nature. If you miss that fortnight's work, it's gone.

But here's where relationships get strange. Le M.U.R. gives each artist €500 to create his or her piece, a stipend provided by the City of Paris. And this four-day exhibition was supported by the City, in a city arts center in the Marais. So, while much of the art we are so fond of photographing and showing you here on Paris Play is illegal, and artists can be fined and jailed for putting it up, detente exists, though some artists do not want their photographs published. Nonetheless, it was great fun putting faces to many of the names whose work we've admired for the last few years.

 

Kashink with her sculpture, "Cash Cow"  

Each of the fifty artists who exhibited last week in this benefit for Le M.U.R. had previously been featured on a billboard. Some, like Jérome Mesnager, Mosko and Associates, Speedy Graphito, and Gérard Zlotykamien are the equivalent of O.G.s (original gangstas) on the street, and have already been the subject of books, museum catalogs, and have their work in contemporary art museums and galleries, selling for thousands of euros apiece. Others, many of them women, have been in the game for a lot less time, but their work is of a high enough quality that it rivals that found in the formal galleries in the Marais and St. Germain des Pres, and is often more interesting. 

And since the work, by artists from as far away as Chile, Argentina, Canada, Italy, Spain and Scandinavia, speaks for itself, we'll be quiet and let you enjoy. If you like a name, Google it for more examples; just about everybody has a Website or Facebook page. And Le M.U.R is a non-profit, which welcomes your support.

 

Jérome Mesnager

 

 

 

Mosko et Associes

Gérard Laux of Mosko et Associes, surrounded by the staff of Graffiti Art magazine

 

 

 

 

Speedy Graphito

 

 

 

 

Bustart

 

 

 

Shaka

 

 

 

Kashink

 

 

 

 

Kouka

 

 

 

 

 

Thom Thom

Thom Thom (Thomas Schmitt) is co-founder of Le M.U.R.

 

 

 

 

Ella & Pitr

 

 

 

 

YZ

 

 

 

 

FKDL

 

 

 

 

Mural by FKDL (left) and Stoul (right)

Stoul

 

 

Sixo

 

 

 

 

 

Le Cyklop

 

 

 

 

 

Chanoir

Teaching his son how to mix paint

 


 

 

 

Jana and JS

 

 

 

 

 

Nicogermain

 

 

 

 

 

Paella

 

 

 

 

 

Surfil

Surfil with Alternative Paris' Demian Smith

 

 

 

 

Macay

 

 

 

 

 

H101 and Zosen

 

 

 

 

 

Gilbert

 

 

Rue Meurt d'Art

 

 

 

Kenor

Kenor teaching a fan

 

 

 

No Rules Corp

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alber

 

 

 

Michael Beerens

 

 

 

 

If you've scrolled this far, thank you. And here's your surprise: links to the four two-minute or so videos the team produced each day of the event, as teasers for the eventual documentary. Video one, two, three, and four. Enjoy. 

 

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