Mid-month theme - subways. Urban art again!

In some of my recent posts I have talked about “urban art”, “street art”, “graffiti”) ... (see post 1, post 2). I referred to a special event taking place past weekend including visits to artist studios, organised by the “Lézarts de Bièvre” and that each year an “urban artist” is in particular honour. This year they are actually two, working together, “JanaundJS” (see their site here). I met them last Saturday at the bar “Chez Fernando”, Rue Arbalète, which I revisited – with pleasure! I really got the confirmation that this bar is a central meeting point for the “street art” artists in Paris!

Jana and JS (the young couple top left on the collage) had some of their works for sales, including the above metro picture, which (I bought and which) gave me the link to the mid-month theme - subways.

The night before I walked by the bar late evening, when the shutters were closed, and I could take a picture of the total outdoors decoration, obviously shared by “Artiste-Ouvrier”, but also by “JanaundJS” and several other famous “urban artists”.

I cannot avoid showing you some additional samples of what you find around Rue Arbalète and the crossing more famous Rue Mouffetard. Under the label “graffiti” you can find even more examples, also by other artists.

The subway theme is shared by bloggers from New York, Stockholm, London, Budapest and Sydney. You can find today’s and related posts by using the following links:

New York City Daily Blog – Stockholm by pixels – Fresh Eyes on London – Budapest by Andrea Gerak – Sydney Eye – Peter’s Paris.

(You can also find some other related older posts on my previous blog via this link: PHO.)

Urban Art, Rue Arbalète

On a walk back the other day, together with Virginia, in the direction of the flat she has rented (together with daughter and grandkids) for a few weeks, we stopped for something to drink at a bar called “Chez Fernando” on rue Arbalète, a small street crossing the more famous Rue Mouffetard (see previous post). We discovered on a very short distance an astonishing concentration of “urban art” or graffiti.

For those who are acquainted with this type of art, you find, making perhaps 200 m of walk, illustrations by most of the at least in France famous “urban artists” like Nemo, MissTic, Jeff Aerosol, Mesnager, FKDK, Speedy Graphito... and some anonymous ones. The signature "Lezarts de la Bièvre" which you can see quite often is the signature of an association of urban artists.

I was impressed by the decoration of the front of the bar “Chez Fernando”. The young people consuming in front of it kindly left their chairs to let me take some photos. Actually it would have be even more interesting to take photos here when the bar is closed as all the shutters are also decorated. Obviously the name of the artist is “Artiste-Ouvrier” and the bar seems to be a meeting place for graffiti fans.

The bar is run by Portuguese which perhaps is a reason to the image of Amalia Rodrigues (by Jeff Aerosol; the other photo here is his self-portrait) on one of the walls.

These graffiti are “authorised” and many of them have been there for years. More and more, some of the graffiti artists are becoming officially accepted, have great commercial success and, as illustrated in a post by Adam (Invisible Paris) a couple of days ago, some of them have now been hired by the City of Paris also to do interior decorations in official buildings.

I have already made a number of posts on graffiti which you may find here if you are interested.

Time to wish you a nice weekend!

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