Concrete-brick jungle

Animals, after people, are one of the most gripping subject for the street artist. No wonder as what else could bring more life to the grey street than a wild animal? Serious, with a wink, grotesque, funny, scary or very sophisticated- Parisian jungle lives its own life in hundreds of ways.

Below, first two pictures present the art works of the artist called Bonom. Creating mostly in Paris and Brussels, Bonom likes to make us felling uneasy with his sprayed works, that occupy the highest parts of the buildings, like if they were "floating close to the sky". A nice article about Bonom you can find here. 

Below: boar on the spit. Scary, bit gory piece of art arranged around the technical ladder fixed on the wall. He uses very often this element of the building as an integral part of his graffiti. Very, very impressive...

Boar on the spit by Bonom

Rummaging in the web I found few short movies showing the way he works. How he climbs the high buildings to create his most remarkable graffiti and looks for some adrenaline at the same time... 

Gare au Gorrile - Street artist Bonom painting a gorilla in the center of Brussels

Belgian reportage about Bonom 

Bonom about being more than a street artist and criminalisation of the street art

Fish by Bonom

Monkeys by artists: Kouka and Ponz. 

Kouka

Ponz

Stencilled green jaguar, artist unknown.

City of Paris is full of little stencilled animals everywhere. Usually black sprayed, little fellows roam free, without an owner.

There's a group of animals that makes us smile and/or actually smile to us, too.

Smiling panda by Sheez

Dancing, a little bit satanic-like goat...Is it for fun or is there some message behind?

Little red fox carelessly sprayed in the 3rd district of Paris.

If we talk about the animals, we couldn't not mention about Codex Urbanus. The number of his bestiary is growing really fast. My previous post about him to be found here. 

Fig 76 - Saurus Cervus by Codex Urbanus

Fig 204 - Eliphas Axolotl by Codex Urbanus

Some animals are bored to be constantly exposed, so they simply descend the walls and go somewhere else, leaving the traces behind them. 

Seal by Burins

"Kraken - Je t'aime", "Kraken - I love you", artist unknown, is to be found near the Republique in Paris. If someone is interested to find out more about this legendary giant squid, or is in love with it as well, can read more about it on Wikipedia. 

Kraken, je t'aime - Kraken I love you

The last presented group of animals is treated in a very artistic way with a kind of wildness preserved, which is hard to see at first glimpse, but we feel it very well. There are the beautiful compositions taking the final form of the animals, as well as the animals that are more or less "anthropomorphised". Picture below, forming a tiger's head, probably is made by an artist called Dourone, but I'm not entirely sure.

Another tiger made by Fred le Chevalier, a Parisian favorite as a street artist. Actually, Fred's tiger is transformed to represent a daemon. More about him and his numerous characters created with the pinch of onirism to be found in my previous post about Fred le Chevalier.

And here the brick jungle ends.

Expressions of the city - faces of Paris

Probably it doesn't exist, the more interesting subject for artist than a human face (except entire human body of course). Why? Well, what could be more expressive? Moreover, the street artists want to catch our attention much more than the other artists do, and nothing is more intriguing and eye-catching than a wall, that we're just passing. Especially, when it has its own proper eyes and observing us at the very moment...

Let's start with the most famous street-face of Paris. Just next to the Pompidou Center and occupying an entire wall, there's an art piece made by the "father" of street art - Jef Aerosol. As we can read in Wikipedia: Aérosol (French stencil graffiti artist born in 1957 in Nantes) is represented by several galleries in France and abroad. He made the cover and gave its name to the first book ever published about street stencils: "Vite Fait, Bien Fait". His trademark is the little red arrow, which appears on each and every work of him. Nobody really knows to what it refers. To reveal by everybody by his own. 

Jef Aerosol

This "lovely" face of Jack Nicholson ( The Shining movie, 1980)  was taken as a subject for the work of the young artist Zona Yarost. The artist's comment for this stencil is: "La salle de bain est libre?" ("The bathroom is free?"). As far I noticed that Zona likes to "pick up" the topic that are somewhat connected with war, violence, macabre etc...

Zona Yarost

Next photo shows two different works from two different artists. First one, unknown, is playing with the words: "STREET TARTE" (which refers to "STREET ART"). Whilst it's neither most subtle nor most complicated play on words, another artist, Petrus von Tricht, allows himself to comment it with his own paste-up, saying: " un homme banal" ("an ordinary man"). Petrus von Tricht likes to use the walls as a sort of common dialog between the artists, but there will be another post about him. 

Unknows artist and Petrus von Tricht

LomoZano has worked on a lot of faces already, but this little series presented below, illustrates Parisian women together with different fashion (particular for different times), general moods of it,  etc... More or less elaborated works, thus I think it would be better to produce less and focus more on the quality of it.

Parisienne pleine d'amour (Parisian woman full of love)

Lomo Zano

Parisienne oui! J'aime les anness 30 (Parisienne, yes! I like the 30s)

Parisienne melancolique (Melancholic parisienne)

Lomo Zano

Parisienne gourmande (Gourmand/greedy parisienne)

Parisienne reveuse (Dreamy parisienne)

Lomo Zano

Clown face. Artist unknown, though it didn't appear in one place but in a few already. Maybe the artist will unveil his name soon.

Unknown artist

This unbelievable expressive face was done by an unknown (as far) artist, but at least I managed to find who's face is it. It belongs to the French comedian, actor and political activist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala (wikipedia). If somebody is interested, here you can buy the tickets for his next "show".

Unknown artist

I left my two favourites for the very end. Fred le Chevalier and Madame. Fred's character, the little boy with a bird in his hand, says this time: "J'habite un maison en mai" - "I live in a house in Mai". Fred being poetic, like always.

Fred le Chevalier

Madame's collage presented below, I found completely by chance, behind some trash, tree and cardboard...We can see little vignette-like saying "Les secrets culinaires de Madame" (Madame's culinary secrets), which announces (probably) the whole series of those "culinary" paste-ups.

Madame Mustache

The rest says: "La cuisine c'est bien meilleur quand c'est relevé". It's a bit hard to translate this French phrase literally, but more less it goes: "Cooking/cuisine is much better, when it's sublime/lofty". 

Madame Mustache

Miam miam!

Murals

It's hard to find in Paris one big wall, which could be entirely covered with street art murals and/or which one could cover with those, before having the problems with police... For that the "le M.U.R." was invented. MUR, translating from French, means WALL, but in fact it's a shortcut of: Association le Modulable, Urbain, Reactif. This way there are two nice concepts in one, because back to the meaning of shortcut (mur = wall), everything here is about one big wall, located between the streets Oberkampf and St Maur in Paris.

M.U.R. (founded in 2003 by artist Jean Faucheur and many others) is giving the street artists, urban artists ect., regular opportunity of pasting up/painting/performing their own works on this surface of 3m x 8m. It was intention to create a link between the district and art. Street art.

Le M.U.R. - Tania Mouraud

This time, the day I was taking the photos, there was presented the work of Parisian artist Tania Mouraud. More about her and her work we can read on website/wikipedia/twitter. 

Le M.U.R. - Tania Mouraud

Then I was strolling a bit more around, and I found this family of wolves and one man, who screams: "Aime ton voisin", which means "Like your neighbor" (you should like your neighbor). I guess somebody made fun of it soon after and added those funny bodies to each and every head, so it's not scary anymore. There's kind of artist's sign, but still I don't know the name.

Just across the street a two-walls-mural was made by different artists. The variation of different creatures and styles makes it hard to focus on any of it, but for sure there's a long story, both literally and figuratively, behind it. Anyway, in general, I find it nice to look at. 

Next mural was made by French artist Lucile Saurel. A combination of people, animal, movement, instruments etc. presents quite interesting picture. As she explains on her website: birds, people, flowers, they all form a landscape - elusive and always in motion.

And for the end, one of my favourite: Fred le Chevalier. This mural was made especially for this little semi-public garden in 18th district in Paris. As we can see, the main characters hold the flower pots, so it wasn't random (the garden is about the flowers). There are also the characters with suns. Maybe it represents the seasons (but they are only three...)? And the big demons are transformed this time into kind of trees, to close this "garden composition".

Only this little boy, standing aside seems to be mysterious. Maybe he is a Little Prince waiting for his rose to bloom?

Fred le Chevalier & Madame Mustache

Fred le Chevalier and Madame Mustache. Two of my favorite Street Artists, two artists that work very often together; finally, two artists that are recently one of the most productive, creative and visible on the streets (at least in Paris). However it doesn't mean at all that their work is similar or so... I just guess they like to appear side by side on the walls (as they may be a good friends, too). That's why I decided to present their work at the same time also here. P.S. The very first post about them you can find here. 

Madame Mustache

Madame Mustache usually does her art works as large and rectangular posters, that contain almost always sometimes funny, sometimes (so!) true and sometimes more philosophical maxims or tags. The story how she started her street art work in general, I will tell another time.

Madame Mustache

On the poster above the phrase means: "The memories are like the old mustard. If it's not spicy anymore, it's outdated (literally it means, if it doesn't tweak/sping your tongue anymore, it's outdated).

The characters, such as presented below, which are cut out along the contour are much less present (I would even say - very rarely) in her work contrary to posters, as presented above. A small exception is a cat, which appears very often.

Madame Mustache

Fred le Chevalier is not a favorite of mine, only. Apparently, even the police who tries to catch all of the street artists (as they "pollute" the streets) whilst they're working (adhering to the walls), has such a sentimental weakness for him, that it ends up with letting him free.

Fred le Chevalier-The love is never dirty

He has a very rich set of characters, often fantastic (like kings, queens, demons etc.). It is what makes me perceive it as a dreams. Dreams of his own, maybe society's dreams, street's dreams or our own as well.  

The characters are always cut out along the contour and with tag lines in the bottom. On the picture above it's written: "L'amour n'est jamais sale", which means: "The love is never dirty". On the picture below: "Le nuit, c'est pour les rois" - "The night is for the kings".

Fred le Chevalier-The night is for the kings

Although I have a great desire to analyze and briefly describe each and every picture, I won't do it this time. I leave it for you...

It has started with Montmartre...

Stairs near Place du Calvaire

While walking around Montmartre and one of it's most beautiful stairs, I just found out, completely by chance, streetart pieces made by, among others: Madame Mustache, Fred le Chevalier or Joe Rage. This kind of streetart, that belongs to street poster art, is one of the least permanent from all of them. Unfortunately, because I need to admit, it's one of my favourite (next to  stencil graffiti).

Fred le Chevalier and Joe Rage's stencil graffiti logo
"Ou voyageais tu cette nuit? - Where are you going to travel this night?"

Madame Mustache
"J'ai toujours reve d'etre un thon - I've always dreamed to be a tuna"

Fred le Chevalier