I was going to post this under photography, but its remit is actually potentially wider and perhaps it can become a thread of interesting links that might otherwise be missed, or overlooked by many SFers
One of my favorite places in Paris. And one of the last places I took my mother to (not counting UK) and somewhere have a photo of her in same place as Rabindranath Tagore with the blossom. You can buy prints of some of their photos, which are on nice paper.
Haven’t been since re-opened after their restoration.
(And I am now going to have to spend the rest of the night looking for that photo!)
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Here’s another debate - Is grafitti art?
I feel it can be but not every fool with a spray can is an artist. Some who are
Thanks, for making me think a bit!
First thoughts…
The articles starts off by by being over-ambitious and the definitions could probably be better considered - for instance I feel uncomfortable about formally commissioned public sculpture falling within the subject.
I’d prefer a definition of street art that retains its characteristic edginess - something along the lines of ‘unauthorised visual interventions in public space’, rather than trying to do it by categories of medium/technique.
Some time back we went to a new nearby museum of street art, MAUSA. It was a guided tour just for us and two friends and was fascinating. The guide, hugely knowledgeable, really made us understand the “art”in street art and look at graffiti in a new way.
Sadly the whole thing then foundered in debt and disputes.
https://street-heart.com/PM-D39230-01%20Mausa%20Sellieres.htm
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I’m very ambivalent about it in formal situations, because once it’s ‘authorised’ it becomes incorporated in a much broader canon of art and most of it doesn’t hold one’s interest. Nearby Decazeville has a street art festival every year and the work is invariably technically accomplished but iconographically derivative and superficial.
By contrast since the mid-Seventies, I’ve had a soft spot for those little, informal French spray paint and stencil urban interventions.
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MAUSA was great, a huge sprawling complex of semi-derelict buildings with people doing their own thing all over the place.
Glad you enjoyed it and I’m sure a lot of others did too, but in a French fine art context. I’ve got a lot of reservations. But did do a Google image search to check out MAUSA.
Forty years ago, I was interested in, and made work influenced by Figuration Libre of the time and invented BD type narratives, but I subsequently moved on. By contrast a lot of French figurative painters haven’t developed further and are still stuck in the Eighties, just as the previous generation are still stuck in Fifties pastiches of Art Brut and Ab Ex.
As you might have guessed, I’m not a big fan of most current French painting.
Reminds me a bit of Belfast in the 80’s
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I agree. I expect the article was written more for an introductory audience and seeks to pigeon hole artworks for easier consumption.
I enjoy witty street art that says something. I would much prefer to see, even less accomplished images rather than all those silly taggers who leave only their stylised names over surfaces.
“Say something, people!” (And maybe a bit more than ‘Macron la pute’.)
The buildings were a metalworks factory making fireplates and stoves, and this work reflects that. So not that far off!
Keep forgetting about this thread that I started - old man , fading memory…
But enjoyed reading the following this evening. Long ago had an idea for artworks along the same lines, probably the one with most potential was the lost sculpture that Henri Gaudier-Brzeska made in a WWI trench from a German rifle butt a couple of days’ before his death. Given his previous work and the shape of a rifle butt, it must have been a head.
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