Category Archives: Paris

Paris: Banksy Festive Rats

July 16, 2018 butterfly

To conclude Banksy invasion of Paris, the elusive artist celebrated also the festive spirit of the French capital with a series of stencilled rats.

Popping champagne bottles while happy rats are flying high on top of cork bottles.

Location as always: Montmartre first, and then in the Marais district with a Bar called ‘Chez Marianne’, of course.

To complicate things further, Banksy returned several times on the same locations, updating the stencils in colours and shape as you can see on the little animations, giving them a lively feel, as they were getting stolen, repainted or covered under plexi .

In the overcrowded area of the contemporary art centre ‘Centre Pompidou’, the elusive artist returned to paint a bigger mischief rat holding a cutter.

Lastly the City of Love is celebrated with a little rat couple dressed in 19th century outfits, lovingly gazing at the Eiffel Tower in the background from under a bridge.

Such a romantic! Happy Summer !

Paris

Paris: ‘Illustres- C215 autour du Pantheon’

July 11, 2018 butterfly

Portraits of illustrious men and women painted by the French street artist Christian Guémy, better known as C215, adorn the French National Monument Pantheon and surrounding streets in the fifth arrondissement of Paris until 10 October.

This year, the Centre des Monuments Nationaux is presenting “Sur les murs, histoires (s) de graffiti” on nine monuments of its network (see our previous coverage here). On this occasion, the artist C215 was invited to make portraits of men and women honored at the Pantheon, and thematic visits are also set up in the monument, to discover the many historical graffiti present in the heights of the monument, spaces usually inaccessible to the public.

Christian Guémy pays tribute to the figures of the resistance, like Brecht, Zola or de Gaulle, whose names are associated with streets, squares and institutions. In all, 28 portraits of historical personalities, some of which are buried inside the Pantheon, are painted on the walls of the 5th district.

The tour titled “Illustres! C215 autour du Pantheon ” begins in the crypt of the monument, which hosts an exhibition of the artistic approach and the techniques used by the artist to create these colourful portraits: stencils, blades. A series of photographies illustrate the artist’s creative process, while a movie presents an interview of the artist.

Within display cabinets, C215 is creating a dialogue between the illustrious portraits and symbolic objects. Thus, literary works, handwritten letters, and professional objects of Marie Curie, Germaine Tillion, Andre Malraux, Victor Hugo or Antoine de Saint-Exupery are exhibited and highlight the area for which these illustrious people are honoured.

Punctual visits to the upper parts of the Pantheon allow the public to discover some of the historical graffiti.

At the same time, C215 painted 28 portraits in the streets of the 5th arrondissement surrounding the Pantheon and invite the viewer to discover the lives of these extraordinary personalities.
For example a huge portrait of Marie Curie adorn the walls of the Institut Marie Carie.

A full map of the C215 Illustres tour is available here

Illustres ! C215 Autour du Pantheon
Until 10 October
Place du Panthéon
75005 Paris

CMN ‘Sur les Murs, Histoire(s) de Graffiti’

https://graffiti.monuments-nationaux.fr/

Paris, Street, streets

Paris: Banksy Bataclan Tribute

July 6, 2018 butterfly 2 Comments

Continuing his Paris invasion, Banksy chose a poignant subject and spot on location.
A new stencil appeared on the exit door of the Bataclan theatre in the 11th district of Paris.

Extremely strong symbolic as it is this exact exit door where victims of terrorist attacks tried to escaped during mass shooting on 13 November 2015, leaving 89 dead and over 300 injured.

Painted on the black background of the exit door, a white stencil features a woman with a lace veil, which gives a mystical and protective aura like a Madonna.

Her face is inspired by a marble sculpture by Italian artist Giovanni Battista Lombardi from 1869.
She is dressed in a uniform , reminiscent of the rescuers that did everything to save the victims that night.

veiled woman by giovanni battista lombardi

©Francois Lafite

The mourning woman is holding some files in one hand, maybe the victims reports and a delicate lace handkerchief on the other.

Using just a monochrome stencil, Banksy creates a strong moving memorial to the victims of terrorism in Paris, as well as a big up to the rescuer teams.

For further updates on Banksy in Paris check here

Paris, Shows

Paris: Artists and Robots at the Grand Palais

July 2, 2018 butterfly

The Grand Palais (RMN) in Paris is currently showing an impressive exhibition ‘Artists and Robots’ dedicated to AI: artificial imagination, a common term to design robotic art, generative art and algorithmic art.

The exhibition invites audiences to experience works created by artists with the aid of ever more intelligent robots. Around thirty works offer visitors a glimpse into an immersive and interactive virtual world, a tangible experience of augmented reality, of space and time overturned.

Artificial intelligence is now transforming human existence and also affecting the very nature of the artist’s artwork , from its production, exhibition, to its distribution, conservation and reception.

Immersive works, paintings, sculptures, mobiles, cinema, design, and music: all the creations presented in this exhibition arise from artists working with robotic programs invented and provided for the purpose of art.

With the use of increasingly powerful software, artists gain a greater autonomy and an infinite capacity to work with shapes and interactivity. The software programs employed are not only intelligent, but also generate new shapes and figures that allow to see and give pause for thought.

The exhibition is structured in three folds.
The first section present ‘The creative machine’. Robots are always on the move and their movements are sometimes so ‘physical’ and amusing that it is could be easy to give them an animal or human dimension, or even a ‘psychology’.
Featuring works by Jean Tinguely, Nam June Paik, Nicolas Schöffer, Leonel Moura, Patrick Tresset, So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi, J. Lee Thompson, Arcangelo Sassolino.

The second section is about ‘Programmed artwork’, where the robot is becoming invisible. Computing and algorithmic programmes infuse the artwork and technical expertise is set aside as we, the spectators, marvel at the majesty of infinite shapes that change according to the movements of our bodies.

Featuring works by Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Iannis Xenakis, Demian Conrad, Raquel Kogan, Ryoji Ikeda, Pascal Dombis, Elias Crespin, Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, Edmond Couchot and Michel Bret, Miguel Chevalier, Joan Fontcuberta, Michael Hansmeyer and Peter Kogler.

And lastly the space is dedicated to ‘The robot frees itself’.
Deep Learning is making robots even more intelligent and active, to the point where they seem not only to rival humans, but to augment them, fuse with them, taunt them and possibly even duplicate them.

Featuring works by Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Catherine Ikam and Louis Fléri, Stelarc, Nicolas Darrot, Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni, Koji Fukada, Oscar Sharp, Daft Punk, Pascal Haudressy, Memo Akten, ORLAN, Takashi Murakami.

The contemporary works presented in this exhibition give us a good idea of the questions artists are asking, which mirror our own: What is an artist? What is an artwork? What can a robot achieve that an artist cannot? If it has artificial intelligence, does a robot have imagination? Who decides: the artist, the engineer, the spectator, all of us? Can we talk about a collective artwork?

View the full set of pics here

Artists & Robots
Le Grand Palais
Until 8 July 2018

Paris, streets

Paris: Banksy joins the celebrations of Mai 68 riots

June 30, 2018 butterfly

While Paris has been celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the May 68 Riots with multiple exhibitions, elusive artist Banksy has hit the streets of the French capital with a series of new artworks.

May 68 in France – Ten million workers on strike, young people in the streets, public services at a standstill, a paralysed economy: the state faced a major social crisis which threatened to shake its very foundations. The entire country was affected, including all sectors of activity.

Facing the entrance of La Sorbonne University, Banksy put up a dark stencil of a man hiding a saw behind his back while an amputated dog is salivating looking up at a bone. Could be a play on words ‘Saw Bone’ which sounds similar to ‘Sorbonne’, but also is a very cynical symbol of our society, raising questions of sacrifice and perceived rewards from the powers in place.

Placement and context are always very important. This is where the major student demonstrations took place. Interestingly, less than 10 meters away from this ‘Saw & Bone’ stencil, Invader placed a pixelated commemoration plaque on the Place de La Sorbonne earlier this May.

Click on the pics to enlarge

Banksy painted additional little rats characters, with the tag 1968 and the 8 falling apart and being transformed into the bow of the famous Minnie mouse, nod to Disneyland, symbolising with his stencils that the 1968 uprising has lost its luster and morphed into capitalism.

Next to the Centre Pompidou, which hosts Le Musee d’art Moderne, the largest museum of modern art in Europe, Banksy painted a mischief rat, which was later transformed into a bigger one holding a cutter. He posted the caption on his Instagram: ‘Fifty years since the uprising in Paris 1968. The birthplace of modern stencil art.’

The entire city is celebrating the 50th Anniversary, from the streets to institutions. For further historical context about the 1968 riots, the Hotel de Ville is presenting historical pictures by photograph Gilles Caron who documented the student revolts while the Archives Nationales are showing the events of May-June 1968 as seen by the authorities of the time. Earlier in May we also shared the intervention of Spanish artist ESCIF on the external walls ‘Open Borders’ of the modern art institution Palais de Tokyo ( see full coverage here).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Stay tuned as we continue our coverage of Banksy invasion of the French capital…