Express Yourself

Remember that photo challenge from way back featuring the head of Karl Marx? It represented the tip of the iceberg in terms of the hottest street art trend in Paris: stenciled texts and images on the pavement and on walls.

Often it's about spreading ambiguous slogans, like these two found on the Rue du Faubourg du Temple just after the May 1st festivities. If you have any idea what they mean, let me know.


There's no ambiguity in the following stencil portraits. On the left, a psychadelically framed Salvador Dali is captioned as saying, "The word 'graffiti' must remain a shitty word, an insult to the spiritually constipated." In the center - well, did they really need to identify Beethoven? I mean, come on! And on the right, Konny Steding is a street artist who seems to specialize in stencil.


Finally, stencil art can get political, re-purposeful, and philosophical. Gaza was a hot topic long before Israeli commandos zip-lined onto Turkish boats in June. This color wheel covers a sewer grate, and the tag on the right reads, "Sometimes I tell myself that in creating man, God overestimated his abilities, just a little."


This is all well and good, but I'm still convinced that the best street art is that which aspires to sincere expression, rather than "art." We stumbled across this exemplar in our very own courtyard.

Street stencil artists, rejoice. The future is in good hands.

Finding Némo

To celebrate the end of our time here, we'd like to ask a favor of our readers: take a minute to read back through your favorite posts, and send your "top 3" list to panda.a.paris [at] gmail.com. We'll be collecting your submissions throughout the week, and next week (our last in Paris!) we'll post the results. Thanks in advance, and happy browsing!

Lest you think Zoo Project is the only easily recognizable street artist in town, check out Némo.

He's a stencil artist whose trademark character is a silhouetted man in a trench coat and hat. The man often appears near a red umbrella and balloon, with other stenciled shapes and objects thrown in depending on the narrative of the piece.

There's an entire Flickr group devoted to Némo. Luckily we found out after having already taken our own pictures of his work, including this next one, which is one of our favorites from this entire trip.

Luckily for us, Némo seems particularly fond of decorating the many bare walls and deserted buildings of Belleville and Ménilmontant. He's been known to team up with Jérôme Mesnager to produce black-spy-vs.-white-spy type murals.

One of these days, maybe we'll catch Némo in the act just like we caught "Harry" of Zoo Project. Considering the scale of some of Némo's pieces, he must spend quite a bit of time stenciling and painting, so our odds might be good . . .

New Zoo Project

Black and white is his palette (mostly). Social critique is his MO. Eastern Paris is his gallery. And we are among Zoo Project's many fans.

Mr. Ram is missing half his right arm.

"Gare aux Gorilles" is a Georges Brassens song.

What are those eyes looking at?

"We learn more in one all-nighter than in an entire year of sleep."

That guy ... that guy . . . that guy . . . that guy . . .

. . . is different.

This one is directly across the street from the similarly repetitive work just above. "Harry" (as the artist seems to call himself) has chosen temporary, modular buildings next to a construction site as media for these two pieces.

Did Zoo Project just invent the concept of "white face?"

This is one of Zoo Project's older works (going by the amount of graffiti that covers it) with one of its most straightforward meanings. Now the wolf knows what it feels like to have a "little pig" blow his house down.

At first glance, this one seems unfinished. But then you notice that its bottom edge falls neatly above the street sign. What would Maurice Chevalier have thought?

Pink Flamingo Pizza

We've been noticing a fair amount of fowl-centric street art recently.


It doesn't look like any of these birds are by the same artist - or like any of them are even supposed to be the same species. Guess it's just a coincidence.

And now for something completely different. After eight months of going without pizza (not including home-made, which isn't the same), we finally made good on our landlord's recommendation to try out a pizza place close by called the Pink Flamingo.

With an inventive menu, a hipster-friendly design sensibility (in a hipster-friendly neighborhood), lots of seating and an awesome mascot, the Pink Flamingo has it made. We got the "Che," a cheese pizza topped with slow-cooked pork (marinated in garlic, lime, "new" onions, and coriander) and fried plantains. It was a little pricey and a lot small for two people to share, but it sure hit the spot.

The Pink Flamingo currently has one outpost in the Marais and one in Berlin along with the original place in the 10th arrondissement, where we went. They're planning on expanding soon, opening up other franchises around the city, but there's a reason you should hit up the original location: it's right around the corner from the Canal St. Martin.

You can actually get your pizza delivered to you (by bike!) at your picnic-spot along the canal, free of charge. We didn't take advantage of this sweet deal on the evening we joined thousands of others enjoying the delightfully warm temperatures and increasingly late sunset, but we certainly will next time. We'll also make sure to bring a full bottle of wine.

In case you're wondering about other pizza places, we also recently visited Positano, in the 6th arrondissement (another landlord recommendation), which was also good, also a little pricey, but not as creative as Pink Flamingo. We've heard good things about Maria Louisa (just around the corner from Pink Flamingo - taste test, anyone?) and Al Taglio, just off Rue Oberkampf. If you've been around the Parisian pizza block, let us know about your favorite place!

Galerie Fréhel

The Louvre has two rooms of monumental, large-format French paintings from the early 19th century. But those rooms can't compare with the only monumental, large-format, outdoor street art gallery in Paris. Which happens to be right across the street from where we live.

I'm calling it "Galerie Fréhel" after the square that provides the vantage point - and the wall space - for the art. Place Fréhel is also home to Culture Rapide, which gets in on the street art action with its security shutter. You have to wake up pretty early in the morning to see this, since Culture Rapide is open around 18 hours a day.

The main event - Galerie Fréhel in all its glory - is best appreciated from the north side of the Rue de Belleville.

Sorry for the terrible picture, but you get the idea, and what's important is that we haven't seen anything like this anywhere else in Paris. The crazy thing is, it keeps getting better. Originally there were four artworks, all in the right half of the picture above: 1) the "Il faut se méfier des mots" trompe-l'oeil by Ben[jamin Vautier]; 2)  the horizontal bands that form a quadrilateral if you're standing in exactly the right spot, which I am in this picture, by Jean-Luc Albert; 3) the architectural cone in the corner, by Marie Bourget; 4) the "detective" mural by Jean Le Gac. Now there are five artworks, thanks to the newest one on the left, which was painted two days ago (Sunday, March 21) by ZOO project, an anonymous artist whose work we've admired elsewhere. Here's a close-up of the new piece:

I managed to catch the artist in action, and in the picture above you see him taking down his ladder. The wall on which he painted may eventually be covered by whatever building is going up on that lot (construction has been slow and it's unclear what they're planning) but in the meantime we get to enjoy this provocative art. The caption is taken from a song by Renaud: "I yelled for months, I shouted from all the rooftops, Society, you won't have me."

We saw this second ZOO project work from Rue Oberkampf way back in the fall. It's since been painted over, but the artwork and message ("be statistically correct, have 1.5 children") stuck with us, so it was easy to make the connection between the two works. If you're into the artist's style, there's a Flickr group dedicated to the artist, and great shots on individual blogs.

Even if the new ZOO project work gets covered up, Place (or should I say Galerie) Fréhel will still be the Louvre of contemporary street art, at least in Paris. And who knows - maybe some day, we'll think of the Louvre as the Galerie Fréhel of pre-20th-century art.

Rue Dénoyez

It's only two blocks long, but Rue Dénoyez packs a punch that will leave you gasping buzzwords like "authentic," "gritty," "hipster," "diverse," and "cool."

It's a place where you can watch true artists at work while never leaving your seat at the Aux Folies café on the corner.

Walls and curbs, storefronts and gutters, nothing escapes the knowing eye of the graffiti culture that rules this place.


Some day we'll have to find out what these stores sell. Some day we'll have to try adding to their decorations with our leftover silver spray paint from a failed arts and crafts project in the fall.

We're not the only ones to notice the colorful, photogenic richness of the street, as a quick search on Flickr reveals. The best part about living so close to Rue Dénoyez is that there's always a new "exhibit" to check out - and it's always free.

Mercredi Mashup

We take lots of photos. Beaucoup, as they say. At last count, our Flickr photostream contained over 6,000 items. Many of these photos appear on this blog. Some go the way of the dinosaur. Still others get set aside, hoping for recognition, holding their breath every time we browse for a blog-worthy photo. This post is dedicated to all the misfit photos out there . . . get ready for a whirlwind tour of photos that have nothing to do with one another, other than the fact that they are random, and we took them.

This Scooby Doo character and van was parked outside the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). Many, many otherwise sane looking adults were waiting to have their picture taken with Scooby. I really don't get this. What's the attraction? Maybe it's a generational thing...

We had a coffee and used the toilet in this bar/restaurant with Katie and Darryl. A rugby game (England? Italy? who? what?) was playing on the telly. The Gaudì-inspired decor was super cool and super trashed. Too bad.

This dog was hanging out around the Jardin de Luxembourg. Thank goodness for that convenient opening.

Street art in Belleville. Awesome.

The latest performance art installation at the Louvre.

Maggie and Louis attempt to create art. Fail.

 

We saw this dog on the street, at night, and had to do a double-take. Doesn't he/she look just like Panda??