Street art is in essence ephemeral, but the careers of some of its French representatives are not, as demonstrated by the worldwide success of JR or Invader. At a time when this urban art is finally considered as a major artistic expression, let's take a look at 6 emblematic French figures.
Mural painting, collage, stencil, mosaic, sticker, trompe-l'oeil... this artistic movement born at the end of the 20th century in the United States has progressively abolished the dogmas and canons of art practice set up for centuries by mixing genres and techniques and, this is surely its greatest transgression, by using the city as a museum open to all.
Very eclectic and constantly reinvented, it is now recognized worldwide as a real art form thanks to (among others) artists like Banksy, but did you know that one of the pioneers of this discipline is French? Long before the mysterious Englishman, Ernest Pignon Ernest has indeed invested the urban environment since the 70's by dressing up places of passage with interpellating silhouettes (always in black and white). JR's work is part of this continuity, but other artists can be considered as Ernest’s direct heirs.
A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.
JR
In the DNA of this long illegal art, the environment and the context of creation of a work are predominant, as illustrated by the work of JR: his giant installations, portraits of strangers in black and white or spectacular trompe l'oeil pasted on famous buildings, indeed aim at renewing the public's view of a place and, as a common thread to all his work, at transmitting humanistic values to the greatest number. From New York to Hong Kong, from Amsterdam to Berlin, he is today one of the most famous French artists - all artistic disciplines included - in the world.
Jef Aérosol
Among the precursors, we also find this artist whose most famous work is certainly the large fresco located next to the Pompidou Center and representing, on 350m2, a man doing "hush".
Originally from Nantes, Jef Aérosol also works all over the world, painting portraits of celebrities (Frida Kahlo, Jean-Michel Basquiat...) and especially singers, with music feeding his creative approach. In contrast to the stars, he also often pays homage to the "forgotten", his stencils representing children and homeless people being today very well-known and quoted on the art market.
Invader
Like Banksy, the precise identity of the famous Invader remains a mystery. A discretion that allows him, since 1996 and always at night, to invade the walls of Paris and elsewhere with his mosaics based on colored pixels, a direct reference to the Japanese video game Space Invaders.
Escaped from arcade terminals, his little characters revisit pop culture by displaying themselves, always in height, in the corners of buildings around the world.
Miss Tic
We stay with the pioneers of French street art with this legend of the Parisian scene. Since the 80's, her stencils featuring free women, often seductive and sometimes provocative, have been dressing the streets of the capital with feminist messages. Graphically, Miss Tic's silhouettes are quickly identifiable with their black and white treatment and, in a very specific typography, expressions that are always appealing. If her work has long been denigrated as "minor", it now has the honors of retrospectives at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London or at the French Embassy in Singapore.
Combo ck
Combo Culture Kidnapper has since its inception, in the 2010s, a committed approach with his installations often criticizing politics and religion. Former art director in advertising, this son of a Lebanese Christian father and a Moroccan Muslim mother advocates peace between peoples and his works aim to raise awareness: for example, in 2013 he pasted Google pages censored by the Party in the streets of Hong Kong and, in 2017, he parodied the campaign posters of the French presidential election candidates.
These were then (re)dressed with comic book or cartoon characters (the grumpy Smurf, Pinocchio...) and slogans with biting humor such as, for example in rebound to the Fillon affair, "Jiminy Cricket has never been my parliamentary assistant".
MR. CHAT
Less political but just as appealing in the urban environment, Thoma Vuille's big yellow-orange tomcat can be seen just about everywhere and always in unlikely and inaccessible places.
A Franco-Swiss artist whose first works appeared in Orleans in 1997, he likes to bring a bit of color to our often grey cities by diffusing, with acrylic paint, this enigmatic character whose big smile is inspired by the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland.
Fun, militant, aesthetic, multidisciplinary...: street art and its creative translations never cease to animate our daily life, for the greatest pleasure of art lovers and, more globally, of citizens all over the world.
And speaking of putting a little creativity into everyday life, it's now possible with a street art painting on your living room walls. To do so, visit art-cadre.fr, a boutique specialized in wall decorations.
Valérie from Comme des Français
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Crédit photo : Ferdinand Feys, Jeanne Menjoulet, Galerie Perrotin, Jean-Pierre Dalbéra.
