First Lady of the Street Art... First Miss... Miss.Tic.

After a long break of not writing (life, busy life...), I decided that the next post can't be about whatsoever... So here it is: the biggest, I suppose, female character amongst all the street artists. As I said once that Jef Aerosol is a father of the Street Art (here), a mother, in this case, would be undoubtedly his peer: madame Miss.Tic (her official webpage here). 

Miss.Tic isn't mysterious (only her real name remains unknown), as I thought once trying to figure out the roots of her pseudonym. There's her full biography all around the internet: lot of interviews, photos and videos (for example:YouTube's video, where Miss.Tic talks about her book). No wonder: born in 1956 in Montmartre, Paris, she's officially present on the artistic scene since 1985, when she signed her first personal exhibition. I won't write here about her private life. I would only simply mention that Miss.Tic's art was much influenced by the fact that as a young girl, she lost almost all her family. You can read about on Wikipedia French, where's a quite big article dedicated for her, or in English, though still very briefly.  

Back to her pseudonym (which is interesting story): Miss.Tic. After reading and watching interviews with her, I have an impression that she's somehow very positive and very funny personality, who likes to laugh a lot. Therefore, it didn't surprise me that her pseudonym comes from the character of the Scrooge McDuck universe cartoon (Disney). Magica de Spell, this was the name of the character, was the very powerful sorceress/witch with the characteristic black shoulder-length hair (exactly like a Miss.Tic in real. Btw. maybe it was one of the reason why she has chosen so). In French, the name of Disney's character was translated: Miss.Tick. Another reason to choose her pseudonym was the fact, that during the years of Miss.Tic's beginnings, quite a lot of painters have chosen theirs pseudonyms after the cartoons characters, to underline the break with the abstract and metaphysical intellectualism from the past decades (after Wikipedia). It was so called "big beta" movement. 

Now a little bit about her work: simple stencils, fine idea and a pinch (or even two) of poetry. Everything that's needed to make a discreet but thought-provoking at once, street art. The main iconography are women. In one of the interview Miss.Tic explains that her inspirations have their roots in observation of the woman's status in the society. The images of the women that appear in the newspapers and adds; the women that are sexy, glamour, healthy and young. Miss.Tic says: "It's nothing but an image that I'm trying to reverse and give it some new meaning, trying to do something new with it on my own way. I'm an observer, not a socio-political critic at any case!". 

Picture below: Le corps au régime ment. - "The body (bodies) on diet lies". At the same time we can understand: "The body (bodies) of (for?) the army (regiment)".   

Miss.Tic is a poet also, which is not hard to figure out whilst reading all these maxims and sentences, which have either a double meaning, or are a word-play. Very often in a phonetic aspect as well.  For example, if we would read very fast the maxim "A la vie a l'amor" (picture below) - "For the life and love", we would understand at the same time: "For the life and death" ("amor" is written in Spanish in this case, to achieve her intention of phonetic word-play).

The maxims that Miss.Tic comes up with are sometimes so brilliant, that the stencils become a nice supplement for it rather than inverse. Of course, it's not the case all the time. The seductive woman has a power. For her words to sound clearer...   

The men and couples start to appear more and more often in her works, too.

Even though Miss.Tic isn't a socio-political critic, like she's said, she likes to give her "opinion", when it's about some important political events. Then she signs her stencils vel "Miss.Tick Présidente", for us to know that the art was done for some "political" reason. Below the maxim says" On est ni de droite, ni de gauche. On est dans la merde" - "We're not from right, we're not from left. We're in the shit"....(so familiar!)

The animals are the subject in her work, too. Sometimes with maxims, sometimes not. In the beginning usually the cats, now the puppies as well.

"On n'est pas des chiens" -  We are not dogs. I think that Miss.Tic, like a real cat, chose her way to walk long ago and will never change her mond. At least we hope so and waiting for more!

IT'S TIME to DANCE! project by SOBR

In the end everything is about the music - that was the first idea for the title of this post, as I was going to prepare the post about two different artists connected by the main link: music. Finally, I ended up by dividing them into two independent posts, because the second artist will be interviewed by me soon, but for that, still,  we need more time. 

Back to the artist from today: he's pseudonym is SOBR, or Sobre. Although he is French, his area of creation is pretty wide: Berlin (mostly), French cities like Marseille and Paris, Lisbon, Bucharest, Rome etc... On his website, we can find no information about him, but photos of his works, projects and the place given to it.

Nevertheless... After digging up the internet, I found out, that I wasn't the only one complaining about the lack of information about SOBR. Mogli Oak was also, just finally he did an interview with this artist, so now we can know more. I will quote this interview here, as I find it short yet comprehensive.

SOBR is actually involved in two projects. One called Tekno Painting (Facebook page here) and second one: IT'S TIME to DANCE (FB's page here). The latter is the leading one for the moment and there's plenty of paste-up showing girls while dancing. Why? What was the idea?

In his interview with SOBR Mogli Oak says that: "[...] he likes to party and his work is a reflection of this. He especially likes raves and free parties and he says these “counter-cultural” non controlled parties are what touches him the in our society. He says that “on the dance floor there’s a complete freedom and a real connection between people” and this is what led him to spread the joy of partying to the streets with his It’s Time to Dance Project."

On his FB's page, in the "About" section, there's a phrase: "Du mur d'enceintes aux murs de la cité", which we can translate: "From the speakers' walls on the walls of the city". It explains everything about the idea of his "dancing" street art and importance of the music during the process of its creation.

Very often there's additional element behind these dancing silhouettes. Either yellow tape saying "IT'S TIME TO DANCE" or a rectangle picture, made out of lines and shapes, reminding me a bit a labyrinth, tribal pattern or, finally, the (nowadays omnipresent ) QR Code. SOBR says that it is inspired by the repetitive aspect of the techno music. Like a try of its visual transcryption. 

Quote from the interview: "The pictures he pastes up as part of this project are of people he has photographed at techno raves and parties around Europe. His criteria for subjects is, for one, that they have to show a real love of dancing, but who must also show “grace” whilst doing so. Then it simply comes down to the technical matter of lighting and to whether it is possible to create a stencil from the photograph".

The colours are rather minimalistic, two, maximum three each time, with quite big dose of grey. I guess when the photos are being taken by night in the clubs, during dancing and accompanied by the dim light, we don't see much more than this. 

Obviously, in the end, it's expression of the body that became a main tool of the ubiquitous (in this very moment) music...

Below: a dancing girl with the company of Fred le Chevalier's colleagues.
Let's leave them dancing then...

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!

Konny's statements

First two photos were taken in February this year. It looked like somebody adopted a theme of Kate Moss face as a main theme of his/her work. Recently in Paris, we can discover a whole lot of those. Konny Steding, that's the name of German artist behind these street art works. This summer she went out into the streets around Centre Pompidou, which is her favorite place in Paris since very long.

We can't really find too much information neither on her website, nor on her Facebook page. Any personal story is given, besides of CV and some short movie, with the statement saying: "It took a few years to see that not talking was better than talking too much" - Marcel Duchamp. 

This explains the philosophy of Konny's art. She decided to show her work, very expressive portraits (usually) instead of creating the story around herself, that sometimes might be faster than the art. As a active painter and street artist, she's been present on the artist scene since '94 already and most of the time cooperates with the art gallery named: Moretti & Moretti (website).

"God save the art-institutions"

"God save the art-institutions" sounds pretty funny in this situation, as she has pasted-up a lot of her work on the walls around the city. Maybe this way she claims that there's no point to exhibit your work in the galleries only, but at the same time the "art institution" still remains as the only true "home" for it?

"God save the art-institutions"

All the portraits, besides of being expressive in itself, have the expressive titles, too. Such as, for example: "Fight back", "We all love you", "O.M.G", "No need to panic" etc.

"You are freaking me out"

"ONEK", it's just a signature of another artist that was done in purpose, or by mistake, because the art work belongs to Konny.

Street Art's "Ladies"

Woman and interpretation of her body, studying her face, results in various types of street art works. Stencil art, poster art and other form of expression present in worse or better way the female characters. Sadness or strength are the most often emphasized characteristics of the woman's personality. After we can observe more flirting or vulgar sides. Finally, very rarely the ladies appear in a simple, nice or, let's say, elegant way. But for that is street art made: to satirize, emphasize, exclaim something rather than just portray.

The first three pictures are portraits. More or less advanced studies showing the face focused on something or looking straight into our's eyes. I would say, the works of rather three different artists and all of them are unknown for the moment.

Unknown artist

Unknown artist

Unknown artist

Next three pictures below belong to the Street Artist called Paddy. I couldn't find his website, if one exists... Those are NOT my favorite ones. While the second is kind of acceptable (Karma's a bitch), so the others (by me personally) not really. Especially when there's no proportion neither of the body nor the face and something that should appeal, looks vulgar or just horrid.

Paddy artist

Paddy artist

Paddy artist

Stencil art piece presented below became already very famous in Paris. Young brunette with an expressive gesture of the hand and strong looking-like face. There's already a large number of people trying to discover the artist's name. As far nobody unveiled. "Vendez moi du reve!" means "Sell me dream!". I suppose that this tagline belongs to some other artist.

Vendez moi du reve! - Sell me dream - unknown artist

This stencil art could be much more nicer, simple without this tagline, which says "butt head". Unless it was someone else, who has painted it later. Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that it's not funny. Or maybe I'm missing a sense of humor?

Tete de cul - butt head - unknown artist

Finally, an artist presenting the women in a very elegant way. And not the unknown women, but the most beautiful and famous actresses of the past century. FKDL, Franc Duval, has created a big series, called Midi-Minuit, in which we can admire among others: Vivien Leigh (photo below), Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot. On the photo below, on both sides of silhouette, there's a collage made of most famous movie stills, where those actresses were starring. Just love it!

FKDL - Midi-Minuit (Afternoon-Midnight)

FKDL - Midi-Minuit (Afternoon-Midnight)

And for the end - funny as always - Madame Mustache with her poster saying: "So, my baby, wouldn't you like to come and see what's under lady's skirt?". Madame M. makes me smile and jokes in a classy way. For that I like it a lot. Enjoy!

Madame Mustache