Blek la Rat Began painting stencils of rats on the street walls of Paris in 1981. He believed that the rat was "the only free animal in the city, and spreads the plague, everywhere just like street art."
He started out his interest in graffiti and street art when he visited New York City in 1971, and was inspired by RichardHamilton, who painted large-scale human figures in the 1980s. Blek la Rats inspiration came from wall painting in America, by American artists. Blek la Rats art has a huge influence on American culture simply because his ideas came from American artists and inspired him to carry American cultures to Paris.
Blek influenced French culture by creating a new type of interesting street art, using something repulsive such as rats and the plague to catch the attention of the French community. He inspired other such street artists throughout the walls of Paris.
The Major theme Blek focuses on is as I said freedom, he demonstrates this through his rats who have unparalleled freedom in the sprawl of Paris.
The Name Blek le Rat comes from his brake out stencils, of rats, which he used as a medium to spread like the plague across Paris.
She is a French artist which work allot with photographs,prints and drawing.
She attended école des arts décoratifs in Paris but not for a long time..
Annette had to leave the school because she spent to much time in museums and movie theatre instead of school.
Picture: My favorite artwork from Annette.
Picture: Mes voeux
Messager sink the images of deceased friends and family, and linkes memories of them on an artwork. She describing herself as “collector, every-task-doer, artist, woman in love, tale-teller,”
Annette Messager remembers,that she felt lonely when she set out to become an artist in her 20s. There were allot of men artists but not allot of woman's ,so it was not really easy to get there,where she now is.
She wanted to become an artist who interpreted life , love, beauty, pain, yearning, power - through the eyes of a woman and she achieved,what she wanted.
Her work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Adel Absemmed was born in 1917 at Constantine, Algeria. He moved to Paris, France in 1994 because of times of distress in his home of Algeria. He attended École des Beaux-Arts for 13 years in Lyon, France. He does many different types of art; not just painting, photography, sculpting, etc.
He has had many solo exhibits in gallerys around the world but his 2 main galleries are in Tel Aviv, Isreal, and New York City. His artwork is very contraversal , focusing on issues like; cruelty to animals, corrupt people, and corrupt society in the modern world.
He is actually a big reason why the Humanitarian Art Ordinance was founded. It says that "artwork should be deemed illegal when the artist has caused, created or contributed to the crime of animal abuse for the purpose of his or her creation of the media or exhibit."-wikipeda
His exhibit "Usine" had animals trapped in a pen, attacking each other, and ripping each other to pieces. His other exhibit "Dont Trust Me" shows horses and other animals being killed before they are going to be eaten. These 2 exhibits were highly frowned upon by most poeple for the brutality they depicted.
Born in 1943, Annette Messager grew up quite familiar to art since her father was an amateur painter. However, when in the 1960s she began to further her love for art and pursue a career as an artist, she felt extremely alone due to a lack of female artist to serve as role models at the time.
At one point Messager had a boyfriend, who was also an artist, that told her "Your work looks like a man did it." oddly enough, she took this as a compliment. However, when she began to really consider what this comment meant, she realized how silly this was. Annette Messager then reached a pentacle point in her artistic growth where she began to embrace her femininity. This new perspective not only set her work apart, but also allowed her to open the artistic doors as a pioneer for feminist artists.
What are some major themes that your subject addresses?
Annette Messager began to bodly address topics pertaining to female life through her art work such as: yearning, beauty, pain, and power. As one of France's top contemporary artists, she is best known for her ingenious work in installations, where objects are strategically and intricately arranged. The objects Messager uses in order to create her masterpieces are typical, everyday items. She chose to use these common objects in order to send out the message that women must branch out and become unconstricted to the roles assigned to them by the world.
How is your subject responding to another cultural movement?
Over her career, Messager addressed current social issues through her art, which became very controversial. Despite the criticism, Annette Messager continued to stand up for what she believed in. At one point, the french media began to badger women about their duty to procreate. In order to dramatically illustrate the way the media firmly insisted that women are responsible to procreate, Messager cut out pictures of babies in the newspaper and scratched out their eyes with pen. Yes this is extreme, but Messager uses extremes in order to grab people's attention to the issues she wished to make known.
The video above guides the viewer through an exhibit of a collection of Messager's masterpieces. Each work rallys on behalf of women separating themselves from the bondages of this world. My favorite is at 20 seconds where there is a zoomed in shot of a woman's convicting eyes above a marked and tattered footprint. Another convicting work is seen at 1:25 where the word protection is spelt out using stuffed animals. This is Messager yet again rallying against the command for women to bring children into the world, even when they are unprepared to foster a life.
"Le rhinocéros" "The Large Carriage"
Born in 1963, Xavier Veilhan is a modern artist in Paris that works as a photagrapher, sculpter, film producer, and a painter.He started his studies at the National School of Decorative Arts in paris then went to Berlin to study at HoschschulederKünste.in 1989, he finished his studying at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Fine Arts.
Vielhan's main studio remains in Paris. He has shows all around the world including several shows in the United States. His work is very unique and popular because he utilises cutting edge technology in his art. He is acclaimed by having a wide range of media that make him very successful in the Unites States.
Blek le Rat started his street art in 1981 all across the city of paris with stencils of rats. These rats were "the only free animal in the city" per Blek, who was influenced greatly by the graffiti of New York City. Blek has also has greatly influenced the guerilla art movement and todays graffiti. His major theme is solitary individuals in opposition to major groups. Blek's artwork can be found all over Europe and some major cities in North America.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a married couple. They created environmental art. Christo was born in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. His talent was realized at a very young age. He studied art at the Sofia Academy from 1953-1956. After that he went to Prague until 1957, where he left for the west by bribing a railway official to stow him and some other people in train. Soon after this, Christo settled in Vienna and enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Only after one semester there, he traveled to Geneva and moved to Paris in 1958. Because of this flight, Christo became a stateless person.
Jeanne-Claude was born in Casablanca, Morocco. She had natural abilities in art and she dyed her hair red and smoked cigarettes. She only became an artist because of her love for Christo. Jeanne-Claude died on November 18, 2009 from complications form a brain aneurysm. As she wished, her body was donated to science.
Jeanne-Claude (Left) and Christo (Right) at The Gates in New York City
The couple met in October 1958 when Christo was hired to paint a portrait of Jeanne-Claude's mother. Christo was attracted to Jeanne-Claude's half sister, Joyce, and Jeanne-Claude was engaged to Philippe Planchon. A little before Jeanne-Claude's wedding she found out that she was pregnant with Christo's child. Jeanne-Claude married Philippe, but divorced him right after their honeymoon. On May 11, 1960, the couple had Cyril. Jeanne-Claude's parents weren't happy with this, so they drew apart from her. The couple had their first collaboration in 1961 at the port of Cologne. In 1962, they had their first monumental project, Rideau de Fer (Iron Curtain). The couple did a statement against the Berlin Wall by blocking off Rue Visconti, a small street near the River Seine. They blocked this street with oil barrels. Jeanne-Claude stalled the police by convincing them to allow the piece to stand for a few hours. This project made the couple known in Paris. In February 1964, the couple went to New York City. After a short trip to Europe, they stayed in the United States.
The Gates
Wrapped Trees
The Umbrellas
What about your subject is particularly "French"?
Christo and Jeanne-Claude weren't from France, but Christo did live in Paris for a brief period of time. His life in Paris included financial troubles and bad social skills. He had difficulty learning French. He earned money by painting portraits. This art is "French" because it is unique and Americans don't use the environment as their art. The couple added a sense of new style to the world of art. They didn't just use paint and brushes, they went all out and put random objects in the environment.
What significance, if any, does your subject have to the American culture?
Christo and Jeanne-Claude have brought their art into the United States. The art could inspire Americans to go outside and try and find beauty in the most random places, or what Christo and Jeanne-Claude did, which was put objects or cloth in random places. There isn't really a full significance to the American culture with them, but they brought many pieces of their art over to the United States for us to enjoy.
For my first post on French Contemporary art, I thought I'd share one of my favorite female artistes, Niki de Saint Phalle.
Niki with husband, sculpter Jean Tinguely
Niki de Saint Phalle's haute class, but financially broken family was driven out of Paris during the Great Depression. After reinstalling in New York in 1933, her mother, your typically glamorous parisienne, enrolled Niki in the prestigious Brearly School where she was promptly dismissed for painting red fig leaves on the school's statuary. From then on Niki was was sacheted from prep school to prep school until she learned to hone her beauty and chipped out shoulders into a modeling career. At the age of 16, her prim n' trim mademoiselle face appearedon the cover of Life Magazine and three years later on the cover of French Vogue.
At 18, Niki eloped with childhood friend, Harry Matthews, shot-gunning herself into a life that she quickly grew to hate. In 1953, she suffered a tremendous nervous breakdown, moved to Spain and started to ferociously paint away her troubles.
After dabbling briefly in oil painting and collage art, she famously turned to a new medium--the rifle. She cocked her gun, aimed and fired at giant paint-loaded canvases.
Shooting Picture, 1961
The point of the "shooting paintings" was to bomb, to FIRE!, to BLOW UP!! this house-cat life she had led by default. It was a big, loud NO! to her hypocritical, sexist society.
Her next art phase had a lot to do with auto-destruction and the rabid consumption of pointless, plastic materials. That means a lot of dismembered Barbie dolls, shredded stuffed animals, and cheap "female" products strangely manipulated and cemented onto canvases.
As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, Niki's name got bigger, and so did her art. Um... like a LOT bigger. In 1979, she acquired a stretch of land in Garavicchio, Tuscany and began the 19-year Tarot Garden project that she worked on into her seventies. The bright, fiber-glass Tarot women came to personify her entire career. A visual feast for critics, kids, and even the non-art-inclined, visitors can climb up the heads, slide down the tongues, walk between the legs, and look out the eyes of these creatures even today.
How has your subject influenced French culture?
Niki de Saint-Phalle was part of the 1970's feminist movement in France. Along with other famous french feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, her work challenged the conventional roles that women held in society at that time. It was not very "feminine" for a woman to pick up a rifle back then. Women were looked down upon for being boisterous and unconventional, when society expected them to look pretty, wear high heels, and act proper. Niki's work made French women, and women around the world, realize that if they have something to say, they are allowed to scream it, and if they have something to show the world, they can used big, loud colors.
How has your subject influenced a particular cultural movement?
Niki de Saint Phalle is part of the New Realism movement, or Nouveau Realisme in french. New Realism was a form of abstract art popular in the 1960s. Members of this movement believed in taking elements from real life an incorporating them into their art. Basically, this means recycling material from the world around them and using it to make something that challenges the way the average person looks at it. The whole idea was to use art as a way to criticize reality. Niki's shooting paintings and Tarot women are an example of this.
Here are a few Niki de Saint Phalle links for more information about Niki.
