Translation: Freestyle. The Racist Face of Art History

This article by Roger-Pol Droit was originally published in Le Monde on November 26, 2015 in French.

The Barbarian Invasions. A Genealogy of Art History, by Eric Michaud, Gallimard, « NRF Essais », 304 p., 23 €.

What is the relationship between the arrival of the barbarians in the Roman Empire and contemporary aesthetic theories? At first glance, none. If there were a connection, it would be vague, marginal, not vital. Wrong! In fact, there is a profound relationship of great consequence. For better or worse, art history, in its birth as in its development, has many lasting connections with “the spirit of peoples,” racial classifications and anti-Semitism. In a constitutive, not accidental, way. These affirmations can surprise, even shock. When we read the exceptional work of Eric Michaud, they reveal themselves as not just intelligible but enlightening.

Let’s go back. The classical version of the Roman downfall can be summarized as the dismantlement of a civilized world by successive waves of unsophisticated hoards, more or less wild, from the North and East. Slow corrosion, long decline. But this lack of organization wound up conquering its knowledge, art, the Pax Romana and prosperity. Rich and refined centuries were succeeded by dark times and famines. Order gave way to chaos. In all areas, a dreadful regression had struck Europe for a long time. In a nutshell, what the classics were describing.

In the 19th century, the axes of this story were reversed. The barbarians had brought new blood to a gasping society. Therefore, they did not destroy it, but on the contrary, regenerated it. Without them, the sterility of Classicism would not have been broken, Gothic inventiveness and its impassioned genius would not have emerged. This new life is conceived as a indissociable cultural and racial mutation: the ordered tepidity of the Latin races gave way to the vital strength of the Germanic races. This “astounding Romantic inversion, which was aesthetic, political, racial and religious, all at the same time,” according to Eric Michaud constitutes “the real matrix of art history as a discipline.” He demonstrates this persuasively with an unusual level of erudition in the course of an essay that leads from one surprise to another.

Insidious Presence 

With abundant detail and references, this director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences brings to light the inclusion of art history in the great myths of the 19th century, such as the clash of Aryans and Semites or the Indo-Germanic invasions as civilization bearers, respectively studied by Maurice Olender and Jean-Paul Demoule. Still, his most astonishing contribution is his demonstration of the persistence, up to today, of ethnicism in art, of its insidious and morbid presence even there where we do not see it. 

“Honor to savage values,” proclaimed always Jean Dubuffet in 1951, while Andre Breton in 1955 saw a vital resistance to the “Greco-Latin contagion” in the art of the Gauls. Since then, we have not stopped celebrating native arts (African, Inuit, Aborigine, etc.) as signs of an authentic spirit of peoples. In essence, art history is less concerned with forms, individual creators, artistic ruptures and schools than with ethnicities. Less politely: It was born racist and it remains that way. The best-intentioned progressives, defenders of first peoples, are therefore, unwittingly, in a shaky position. There's something to talk about.  

Translation: Alfredo Longo, Citizen Artist

This article by Margo D’Heygere was originally published in Le Vif on November 1, 2015 in French.

In Mons, in the workshop of his fashion designer wife, Alfredo Longo, painter and sculptor, receives us a few hours before the inauguration of his gigantic heart made of 30,000 cans at the turnabout of the Havre woods, one of the most beautiful entrances in the city.

“My father came to Belgium at the behest of the state in order to work in the mines. My mother joined him. I have three brothers and a sister, we were all born here,” says the artist of Italian origins. “I would say that I was perhaps the most DIY among the group.” While he was working in a factory, he enrolled in a night course where he was trained in technical drawing. “This allowed me to leave factory work after three years to work in a design office. Then, since I was drawing all the time, I decided to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts, again in continuing education,” continues the sculptor. Remy van den Abeele, Belgian surrealist painter and professor at the academy, noticed “a sort of talent” in him and let him skip to the third year. “I left there as the highest-ranking student,” recalls Alfredo Longo. “From that point, I began to exhibit my first paintings and drawings, and I got a few medals.” While he specializes in sculpture today, the first love of the artist was for painting. “Since I was a rather experimental painter, I only worked with a brush. I would lay down several layers that I scratched. There was a certain relief in my work. I thought of continuing with cardboard collage and then I wanted to go on to working with volume.” The fragility of cardboard gave him the idea of working with a more solid material.

Can you explain your concept of Transform’Art Kompress?

It’s the transformation of form through compression and implementation to create art. In the Recup Art movement, which has been around for 20 to 25 years and even more, certain artists took objects and mounted them together. The objects were not transformed. The difference in my work with cans is that I reclaim the cans and transform their form and mold them. Which is where Transform’Art Kompress comes from. There are several intermediary stages in this. I begin by reclaiming the cans, which are generally washed by the public. Then I sort them by color, and then they are compressed lengthwise to one centimeter. At this point they are workable. I started with small pieces and then I refined the strategy for bigger ones. That’s what they are inaugurating today, a large heart, five meters high, for which I had to construct an armature. This one must be the brand for what we want to represent, it should appear perfect in form. Then, I dress this skeleton with all the flattened cans, which will circle the armature and turn it into a single block. 

You say you are self-taught.

In sculpture, you do a lot of internships: you can learn pottery, claywork, ceramics, how to sculpt in bronze, etc. As far as sculpting with cans in concerned, you can look everywhere. There are no books, no Internet articles. There is artisanal work done with cans, toys, etc. but not sculpture. In order to get to a solid structure like a block of metal, but that remains visibly made of cans, I had to refine a certain technique. It was at the end of the second year that I began telling myself that the technique was becoming more habitual. I evolved from the small pieces, and it was only working from there that I began to think that I could go far in the public space.

How did you get the idea to use cans?

Cardboard is ephemeral, it’s not resistant enough. It also took up a lot of space in my painting studio, so I had to get away from it. Then, while driving in my car, I could see spots of color on the road, on window ledges, overflowing from trashcans. It was metallic cans. They are one of the products that we consume and then throw away the most in the world. Belgium has one of the highest rates of can consumption compared to its population size.

I was also intrigued by this idea of wrappers that come from all over the world. I began my first sculpture by mixing wood, bronze, iron debris and cans only to wind up working just with cans. What I like about this material is that I am dealing with a constant challenge. I have to stay vigilant. I injured myself three times and was hospitalized. I also love the can because it changes every year. There are can collections, new brands on the market, new drinks that lead to new graphic designs. There are artists who work hard on them so that the product attracts us. The luminosity of the cans is fabulous. For my material as a sculptor, I wanted something that I did not have to mold completely. If I want, I can leave the can as it is. In my small pieces, the colors are often as is. The logos are barely recognizable, and this makes for an enormous impact as far as brilliance is concerned. Even crushed, the can is beautiful.

Why don’t you work with plastic bottles?

I’ll get there. It’s true that the plastic bottle has been less developed as far as ornament and color are concerned, but there are still possibilities. There is also a lot of plastic pollution. Bottles are not always well-recycled; there are islands of bottles that float on the oceans. In order to be able to complete a work made entirely out of PMC (plastics, metals and cardboard), I will have to study another technique; it will perhaps be necessary to refine other tools, but I am tempted.

Were you able to get the number of cans you needed very quickly?

Yes, they were overflowing! I even had to remove the sign I had put up front on which I was asking people to bring me their cans. I put another one in its place, stating that I needed some time to manage the stock. People listened to me, so it was cool.

Do you think that it’s the environmental angle that made your project successful?

In all cases, citizen participation comes from two things. First, from the desire to get rid of one’s waste and to reduce the volume of one’s trash bags. When I asked people to give me their cans, many were interested, and some even called me to go pick them up at their houses. I did that many times, but then I quietly stopped because the network grew as a result of my exhibits and my messages in the media. I reclaimed 400 cans per week more or less, and I stored them at home. They were then reduced to the volume. The citizen takes pride in participating in something noble. Other than nature, art is what can remain that is beautiful on the planet. It’s important to have this culture of the environment and this artistic culture at the same time. This project connects environmentalism, participation and the beautiful. People are proud, they say “we are happy, there are two cans from us in there.” An artist can become popular very late. In this case, I think it happened very quickly. My language is universal. Despite the difficulties, there is a positive outcome after all these years. I told myself “You did this all by yourself, you were not discouraged, no one understood you, but now everyone understands you immediately.”

Is that what you call “citizen” art?

Yes, exactly. We often hear that the artist remains holed up in his studio, and art vendors deal with selling his work. I am a little against this. If I can make a living out of it, it’s awesome, but I have done it out of passion. I’ve had a lot of nourishing subject matters, which have allowed me a certain freedom in my creations. It would be utopian to say that an artist can make a living out of his art at 20 years old. This means he will be locked into galleries, contracts and must do precisely as he is told. I am of a certain mature age. I can do a little bit of what I want. Some say “if you don’t own a Cartier at 50, you have missed out.” I do not agree.

You have worked with several themes, such as hearts, human heads or superhero faces. Is there an underlying meaning behind these pieces?

The heart is a huge, universal symbol. I asked myself quite a few questions looking at the work of other sculptors: on abstraction, on aggressive or warrior-like depiction, etc. I decided that the simplest forms are sometimes the best, and that’s why I created a heart. I started with small pieces in the shape of a heart, which attracted the public. At the same time, I wanted to graft a project onto all of this. Not just love, friendship, but a project with an environmental sense, the planet. This heart is the heart of the planet. A gesture for the planet, a heart made entirely out of tin cans. Without this planet, we are nothing. It gives us everything, and we don’t pay much attention to it. The project spanned years, and I think that now it is getting to its bloom. Married couples have already photographed themselves next to the heart; a group of elderly people posed in front of it to signal their friendship. This heart is no longer mine. There are plenty of themes within it. This heart represents a lot more than a work of art.

The superheros — that’s collective memory. They are transpositions of what I see as the future of man. Super guardians. The heads are African faces. I would love to develop them into human bodies in order to conceive of a certain humanity on the edge of our waste. We have to deal with our waste. The symbol is the future of man.

Did you even second-guess yourself in this project?

Marc Darville, deputy mayor for heritage and public works in Mons, always believed in me and this project. He would come to see exhibits in my gallery, and one day, I proposed to him a larger piece for the turnabout of the Havre woods. He was confident in me and defended this project; he submitted it to the city and to the association. There were a prioris, doubts, obstacles, but he was always with me. For a moment, we thought of changing its location because it could have been risky as far as accidents were concerned. Thanks to the heart, the turnabout was lit up.  

Elio di Rupo, the magistrate, was minister during this entire period, but he oversaw the project and always knew to write at the right place at right time in order to overcome certain situations. It’s the first city to welcome a work of art made out of cans. It’s a world first. Each city should have a public testimony, citizens who have participated in a project saying “that over there is us.” It could snowball.

How long did it take you to complete this heart?

Not working everyday, it took me four years to complete two hearts. The other has been installed at Lac de l’Eau d’Heure, and the second at this turnabout of the city of Mons, on the outskirts of the Havre woods. There is nothing like showing the heart of the planet in such a pretty setting.

The French media have also written about you. Do you think you will take your projects abroad?

The difference between France and Belgium is that our country is walled off by this linguistic barrier. I cannot express myself in Dutch at all. In France, I have a lot of artistic works in galleries or artistic salons. There, I have received many compliments from other sculptors and galleries that take their works around the world. Thanks to this, I have been able to make myself known little by little outside of Belgium. Belgium is a difficult country: you must go there with great things. Belgium is a great artistic country, but it is not astonished right away by its artists. Therefore, it was necessary to go there with something strong. There, I think I scored some points. 

What is your next project?

I am perhaps speaking early. A large exhibit will be put on in the coming months in order to retrace the entire story of the large heart because I have many archival photos of the beginning, the construction of the armature, of the installation of the first cans. There is a can collector who just gave me his collection, and I would love to add this to the exhibit in order to show to the public the beauty of cans. This will be an exhibit on the history of the can and at the same time a transition toward art with my personal work.

At the moment, I am also in an exhibit dedicated to Andy Warhol in Cracovie, Poland. I sent them four pieces. Being beside Andy Warhol is not so bad. Over there, they consider me a contemporary pop art artist.

Translation: Evol, Facade Artist

This article by Hugo Vitrani was originally published on Mediapart in French in October 2015.

Evol is a master unlike any other: through trompe-l’œil effects, his prefabricated construction sites make appear anonymous and popular facades in the public space. Nothing that is inhabitable, nothing new: these facade habitations are painted through aerosol bombs and stencils. By dissimulating these clandestine mini-monuments in certain dead zones in our environment, the German artist pays homage to the invisibles, located in the periphery of the cities, and the urban policies on housing from the RDA (African Democratic Assembly) era to ours. 

01

Disillusion. “The trompe-l’œil does not represent, it reconstructs,” writes Claude Levi-Strauss in “Look, Listen, Read" (1993). He adds, “The trompe-l’œil seizes upon and shows what we had not seen — or what we had not seen well, or in passing — and that now, thanks to it, we will always see.” Through his interventions founded in the often dirty background in ruins, Evol reveals the social tension that plays out in our ghost cities with their back against the wall. 

02

Home sweet home. Evol works in the abandoned zones of our cities marked by the passage of time (strictly utilitarian urban real estate, industrial wastelands …). A decrepit subject that he uses as a backdrop. His tools palette is reductive: paint bombs and some basic stencils that he can organize as he wishes, a way of creating a precarious and prefabricated painting, just like the architecture he paints. 

03

Urban. Born in Heilbronn in 1972, Evol now works and lives in Berlin. Having studied at the Kupio Academy of Arts and Crafts in Finland and then having pursued design studies in Germany, Evol cut his teeth with grafitti with Pisa73, his collaboration with the CTink Collective. Rather than repeating the classical canon of the field, Evol prefers to discretely distort and disrupt public space. In the book “A/React” (Drago, 2007), we find the presages of his work up to the first Blocks painted on electrical cabins, which he imagines as “monuments to the invisibles.” 

04

Visual tool. It all began with unemployment, when the broke artist was clocking in at an employment center. The architecture of the place, a former Stasi building, caught his eye and struck his conscience. So, he took several photographs of the windows of this facade, which he has been deconstructing and remixing since in his paintings. For Evol, the windows are just “symbols.” Their HLM (affordable housing) bars thus function as Daniel Buren’s lines: they are “visual tools” that change our perspective of the public space. 

05

Thoughts. Nature and concrete, dwellings without inhabitants, macro and micro … Evol makes his paintings by confronting opposites. Sometimes, the windows are broken or walled up, like in this diptych, "Broken Window, Theory and Praxis," as an echo of the repressive Broken Windows theory.

06

Recycled. Evol does not limit himself to working outdoors and also works in a studio. His miniature city installations, his films and stencils on recycled cardboard are on exhibit at various institutions today. In 2011, he received the Slick prize given by Beaux-Arts Magazine in France. Although he has received recognition, Evol remains discreet, does not make much of his project and appears very rarely in the media. His very complex stencils on worn out cardboard have elevated him to the level of one of the best stencil creators in Europe.

07

In the news. Evol is exhibiting in Siberia at the “Touching Practices” Biennale at the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center until Nov. 30, 2015…

and in Berlin in the “Radikal Modern” exhibit at the Berlinische Gallery until Oct. 26, 2015.

More than anything, you can discover, by chance, vestiges of his paintings in the streets of the cities he has passed through, from Paris to Istanbul.

Translation: Japan: An Anti-migrant Drawing Causes Controversy

This article by Charlotte Oberti was originally published in France 24 on October 8, 2015 in French.

In Japan, a drawing by a conservative artist who accuses “fake migrants” of landing in Europe outraged part of the population at the beginning of October. Tokyo is famous for its intransigent policies toward asylum seekers. 

“I want to live safe and sound, eat refined dishes, wear pretty clothes and lead a luxurious life … at someone else’e expense. In order to accomplish this, I have an idea: I am going to become a refugee.” A drawing gave rise to a lively controversy on social networks in Japan. The sketch in question shows a young Syrian girl with a malicious smile on her lips, who plainly affirms her ambitions: to live comfortably as a refugee.

The overtly anti-migrant tone of this image is that of a conservative Japanese artist, Toshiko Hasumi. This drawing, which was posted on Facebook at the beginning of October, is inspired by a photo of a young Syrian refugee in Lebanon and has caused anger among anti-racist activists who started a petition on change.org, which has been signed by nearly 11,000 people, in order to appeal to the social network to withdraw this drawing. While Facebook concluded that this content does not contravene its rules, Toshiko Hasumi decided to remove her work, but without expressing any regret. 

“I don’t want European countries to fall victim to this situation or that people who work hard come under the influence of these fake migrants,” said the artist to BBC on Thursday, October 8, all the while admitting that she chose the image of a young girl with the aim of provoking. “I don’t deny the fact that there are refugees who live in misery. I am simply denouncing the ‘fake refugees’ who pass for victims in order to pursue their own interests.” 

“A country that closes its doors to refugees”

While this manga image caused a general outcry in the Japanese archipelago, it defines the firmly anti-migrant position displayed by this country that features the third largest GDP in the world.

As the NGO Amnesty International points out through data published in September 2015, Japan has not offered any shelter to the migrants fleeing Syria.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced last September 29 that $1.5 million would go toward helping refugees from Iraq and Syria and supporting the peace efforts in the Near East and Africa, but in parallel, he remains intractable toward the requests for asylum in his country. In 2014, only 11 people obtained refugee status in Japan out of 5,000 requests Tokyo received.

This is a position that the left has been denouncing more and more. In an editorial published Tuesday, October 6 in the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, Japan is described as a “country that closes its doors to refugees.” “We need to change this closed nature and plan to accept refugees from conflict zones in a pro-active manner,” it reads. “It’s not just up to Europe to resolve this humanitarian crisis.”

Translation: Bertrand de Miollis: A Painter’s Trip to the Opera

This article by Antoine Michelland was originally published in Point de Vue on September 14, 2015 in French.

From Lake Baikal at -30°C to the conflict in Afghanistan, this insatiable artist weaves together extreme situations and projects that are a little crazy. With his accomplice, Olivier Delvaux, he is the first painter in a century to risk a long-term immersion in the world of ballet at the Paris opera house. For an astonishing dance on canvas, the story by Point de Vue.

An atelier that almost touches the Parisian sky. Everywhere, tubes of paint, palettes layered with all the colors of creation. And paintings, canvasses and boards, small, large, medium, dozens of paintings, where the dancer from The Young Man and Death smokes a cigarette, where from the shadows of backstage, subjects and leading dancers observe the fluid steps of the ballet troupe under the lights.

Painting the Opera

Leaning on a stack of frames, Bertrand de Miollis searches for the ones that would be suitable for his initial sketches. "It all began in 2013 with the 300th anniversary of the Paris Opera," says this eternal youth with eyes the color of the ocean and a shock of hair tousled by the winds of adventure. "The event intrigued me and made me want to explore this Garnier palace in the middle of Paris, enormous and mysterious, to penetrate its codes and return them to a state that corresponds with how I perceived them. In short, to go on a nice trip." Bertrand wrote to Brigitte Lefèvre, then dance director for the Paris National Opera. She gave him carte blanche.

For more than a year, he would live inside the walls, infuse himself with the designs, rehearsals, shows, both on- and backstage. Bertrand shared this adventure with another painter, Olivier Desvaux. "We had already worked together following John Eliot Gardiner and his musicians. We complemented each other perfectly. Olivier is more interested in working with what goes on in the rehearsal studios, with natural lighting, while I am more interested in what goes on on-stage, the lighting design, choreography, vibrations, movement, and the emotion that it all releases.

The Voyage as Inspiration

The experience proved to be as fascinating as it was complex, a real lesson of work, discipline and humility, "virtues that the dancers, for whom art is an absolute demand, inspired in us. Sometimes I would put my easel three meters away from them in an effort to forget myself, most often in the dark, painting with a headlamp, looking for the right angle, the current that would lead me to the heart of the story, watching for the contrast between the beating bodies and a rather frozen set. It's necessary to be able to grasp the immediacy of a gesture, the vivacity of the rhythm, the ephemeral harmony of the moment. I would have never been able to take on the challenge if I did not already have 15 years of travel notebooks behind me."

It's true. There is nothing ordinary about Bertrand de Miollis's journey. He descends from a councilor in the parliament of Provence; in his family tree, we also find a general who fought in the American Revolution, as well as the bishop Bienvenu de Miollis, who inspired Hugo to write the character of Mr. Myriel in Les Misérables. On his mother's side, there are many artists. However, Bertrand initially went to business school and then took up marketing at L'Oréal, "before being struck by a furious appetite for travel and paintbrushes at the age of 30."

His direction? Art school and other places on Earth, his sketchbook in hand. From Saigon to Saint-Malo on a junk, around Africa or in Iraq with the journalist Arnaud de La Grange, at the four corners of the planet with Sylvain Tesson and the photographer Thomas Goisque ... never stopping developing his artistic vision in the service of luxury brands nor coming up with evermore more personal projects and challenges. Among the most unusual of these is his journey into the intimate depths of the Paris Opera.

The Third Stage Project

Bernard turns his gaze equally on all the ballets, whether classical or contemporary, of Swan Lake, The Story of Manon, The Lady at Camélias, Park, The Song of the Earth or Darkness is Hiding Black Horses. "The pitfall of the classical repertoire is ending up with a bad Degas. You need to bring something personal and current to a subject that has already been broached by a master. I focused on the luminous trace, the long pose, human breathing in a world of contrasts. The long period of time was suitable to this work and allowed me to enter into the rather closed circle of the dancers, to tame them little by little."

The new dance director, Benjamin Millepied, also showed interest in Bertrand's process, which echoes his third stage project for virtual design on the web. "I used a digital palette to capture movements in flight and touches of color. This process of digital painting, instinctual and available on-screen, could feed this third stage."

Meanwhile, Bertrand de Miollis is displaying his oil paintings at the Taylor Foundation until September 26, 2015. It's an opportunity to see dance escape the walls of the opera, to contemplate the canvasses full of stars, to discover the magic of an attitude, an atmosphere, a choreography, like the ghostly procession of the gardeners who carry Aurélie Dupont who has fainted in Park. Let the emotion overtake you.

Dance In All Its States, an exhibit of the painters Bertrand de Miollis and Olivier Desvaux, Taylor Foundation, 1, rue La Bruyère, 75009 Paris, Tel.: 01 48 74 85 24. 2 pm to 8 pm, Tuesday through Saturday, through September 26, 2015. 

Translation: When Sarah Levy, An American Artist, Recasts Donald Trump's Portrait in Her Blood

This article by Sylvie Braibant was originally published in TV5 Monde on September 21, 2015 in French.

An American activist, artist, journalist, feminist and lesbian responds through a "performance" to a sexist remark by Republican primary candidate Donald Trump: a portrait of the billionaire in her own menstrual blood. The buzz and debate.

For some, she is crazy, a "bitch" or even "a sick whore." For others, she is cool, courageous, heroic. On September 12, 2015, by posting on her Facebook page a red, vibrant and sepia portrait of Donald Trump — the controversial candidate for the US Republican primaries preceding the 2016 presidential race — Sarah Levy probably knew that she would provoke a chain of reactions. In the legend accompanying the image of her painting, the artist mentioned the title and attributes of the work: "Whatever - menses on mat board."

This is not the first time that painters, men or women, use their blood or even other human fluids as primary material. The aftertaste of provocation permits their work to gain another meaning. Sometimes pompous artists statements accompany these undertakings. Sometimes the attempts are talented.  But for Sarah Levy, any artistic pretext in this work, ultimately resembling its model, was above all a political gesture. Tit for tat, the anger of a young painter from Portland (in the American Northwest), journalist, feminist, "artivist," after an offense too many from the billionaire who even strikes fear in the hearts of his own party. And a nice media stunt in the social media with the hashtag #BloodyTrump and even a Twitter account @bloody_trump ...

"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever," said Donald Trump on Friday, August 7, 2015 about Megyn Kelly, star journalist of the very conservative Fox News, who had co-presented the first televised primary debates on standby. The remark provoked a wave of indignation even within the Republican camp.

This portrait came to her all at once, like something obvious, as she was returning from an art course, or so she explained in a long text published on September 16, 2015, following the reactions of enthusiastic approval or hateful rejection that this work inspired. Normally using charcoal to draw, she collected her blood in a menstrual cup and went to work.

*"It seemed obvious. It came to me for the first time during the last day of my period. I had to paint Donald Trump's head with my menstrual blood in response to his comments against Megyn Kelly of Fox News during a televised debate because he could see blood coming out of her eyes, coming out of her from everywhere possible.

It seemed scandalous to me that someone aspiring to become president of the US — not just a minor regional governor or billionaire like many others, but president — could have said that and continue to be in the race. Thinking that he could speak in such a way about one of the most basic functions of women’s reproduction system, not in order to point to political issues but to insult Megyn Kelly's intelligence and that of all other women, was an insult and needed to be called to order.

Think about this: if the Fox presenter had been a man, would Trump have said, 'Oh maybe this man needs a colonoscopy?' Certainly not.

Women reacted by tweeting about their periods with the hashtag #periodsarenotaninsult, which was a good start. But for me, it was possible to multiply the strength of the counterattack with even a little more humor. I think that we can use art, especially if it's funny, to start to deflate Donald Trump's arrogance and give back some confidence to all those who are terrified at the idea of seeing a racist idiot like him lead their country.

This could seem minor, but I think that this shame brought upon menstrual blood is part of that general bodily shame that we want the girls and women in our societies to carry. Fighting against this shame is a small step in giving back confidence to the women who have the courage to fight for equality.

… Numerous reactions to my portrait of Trump that have circulated on the internet come from people who have been outraged, disgusted by this piece, and therefore, they think I am disgusting too. But what’s really disgusting are Donald Trump’s racist comments against Mexicans or other immigrants and the sexism he flaunts. What is really outrageous are the thousands of refugees from Central America, among them many women and children, who hope to find a better life in the US and whom we put in detention centers. 

There are many outrageous things in this world, but my little work of art is at the bottom of the list.”

Consistent all the way to the end, Sarah Levy has announced that the money from the sale of her work on Ebay will go to an organization that takes care of refugees and other migrants.

And here is “how to paint Donald Trump in five easy steps,” proposed with a humor that the author, an internet user, would like.

*Translator's note: This is an approximate translation. To read her actual words follow the link earlier in the article.

Translation: Artificial Intelligence: When the Machine Imitates the Artist

This article by Morgane Tual was originally published in Le Monde on September 8, 2015 in French.

Some paint like the great masters, others improvise on jazz … Endowed with a kind of imagination, some artificial intelligence programs manage to compete with the human mind.

An algorithm capable of generating works like Picasso’s and Van Gogh’s: it’s what a team of German researchers has recently come up with. They detail their invention in an article published at the end of August 2015. By analyzing the canvases of these prestigious artists, the machine is capable of “learning” their style through deep learning and tracing it on any photo with impressive results in less than an hour.

Are machines in a position to compete with people in the area of creativity? Conscience and emotions, creativity is part of the attributes often put forth in order to distinguish humans from machines. Would a program be able to come up with moving paintings, to imagine thrilling stories, or to rival Mozart’s composition genius? Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are working on it.

A Recurring Question

But what are we talking about? The notion of creativity is the subject of debate in the research community. Are we talking about artistic ability? Imagination? Invention? Or even the capability to problem-solve? It’s a recurring question in the AI field, where even the notion of intelligence causes debate. “When Alan Turing wrote his foundational article on artificial intelligence, he was confronted with this problem of definition,” explains Mark Riedl, AI researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology. “Instead, he decided to invent a test, which basically says that if the behavior of a machine is impossible to distinguish from that of a human being, then the machine is considered to be intelligent.”

Mark Riedl used the same procedure for creativity, designing the Lovelace 2.0 test in 2014. In this experiment, the judges ask a program to create a work (a painting, poem, architecture …) that has a theme, which has not been defined in advance. No machine has succeeded in passing it for the time being. But Mark Riedl thinks that it’s possible. For him, machines are already capable of creativity, to a certain extent:

“Many people think of the great artists when they use the word creativity. But each human is creative to a certain extent, and this creativity manifests itself daily, dozens or hundreds of times per day. We show our creativity when we play Pictionary, when we use a paper clip to fix a pair of glasses, or when we find another way to get home if the road is blocked. Computers already possess this kind of creativity.” 

Combining Already Recorded Elements

But beyond this, a certain number of programs are already able to show their creativity in the artistic field, appealing to a kind of imagination. “All imagination is understood as the recombination of pre-existing elements of memory,” explains Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, researcher at the Paris-VI computer science laboratory, in his book “Ideas Received on Artificial Intelligence.” He cites the example of the unicorn, “produced par excellence by our imagination,” which combines two real beings known to man: the horse and the narwhal. The artistic creativity of machines will generally work in this way, by combining already recorded elements to create new ones. With interesting results.”

Emily Howell composes classical music 

David Cope, professor of music and computer science at the University of California, has worked over these last few decades on a machine capable of composing classical music. Its first program, called EMI, “gets its inspiration” from the great composers to create its own music. Basically, David Cope “feeds” EMI several musical pieces by Vivaldi, for example, which it will analyze with the aim of identifying patterns and rules. From these diagrams, it is able to put together its own compositions in a style that approximates that of the composer.

David Cope decided to go further, inventing another program called Emily Howell. It works in the same way, but it feeds off of EMI’s output to come up with its own music, which gives it a more “personal” style, approximating contemporary music. Emily Howell put out its first album in 2010.

Shimon improvises on jazz

On a similar principle, Shimon, designed by Guy Hoffman, is able to improvise on jazz live, starting from a statistical model based on the improvisations of the pianist Thelonious Monk. In this video, the robot adapts in real time to the music it discovers, played by its designer.

Scheherazade writes stories

Nourishing itself on the works of others in order to notice recurrences: this is also what Scheherazade, a program able to write short stories of one or two paragraphs, does. Its designer, Mark Riedl — the inventor of the Lovelace 2.0 test — feeds it writing on bank robberies, for example, if he wants it to come up with a story on this topic. “It does not use any preprogrammed knowledge, it learns everything it needs to know to create its story.” He assures that the writing it produces “is difficult to distinguish from human writing.”

Watson invents kitchen recipes

This technique also allows Watson, the star artificial intelligence program of IBM, the concoct kitchen recipes after having analyzed thousands of them. Chefs have implemented the recipes invented by the machine. They are more or less strange, like a cocktail of cider and pancetta, or the beef burrito enlivened by chocolate and soy beans. The best have been collected into a book, “Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson.” “This resembles a very strange fusion restaurant,” says in an article a CNN journalist who had the chance to taste this cuisine. An app is even available to allow internet users to “create unique dishes with Watson.” After a weeklong test period, a rather convinced blogger nevertheless clarified that it was necessary to make some adjustments, “Ask yourselves if you really want to add mashed potatoes to lasagna.”

“A Unique Point of View” on Humanity

Artificial intelligence is thus already capable of certain kinds of creativity, but it nevertheless has its limits. “While humans can be creative in different fields, most algorithms concentrate on one thing,” emphasizes Mark Riedl. “A poetry generator cannot draw for example.” But above all, machines perhaps lack attributes of human beings that are potentially essential to match their creativity. For Michael Cook, an associate researcher a the University of London who has created a program capable of inventing video games, machines do not feel emotion, which represents a limit to their creative capacity:

“This kind of thing is really important for creativity — it’s in this way that we feel connected to others, that we are touched by artists. We often understand the work of artists by comparing it to our own lives. Experiencing war, love, having a history with a city, a country … AI has trouble having this kind of impact because we share fewer things with it than with other human beings.”

Still, he emphasizes, this fundamental difference could also present an advantage, “AI can offer us a unique point of view: a view of humanity from the outside. We have not really begun to exploit it, but I believe that one day we will.”

Strange and Unpredictable Results

Ultimately, artificial intelligence could also permit human beings to learn more about their own creativity … This year, a research team from Google has invented a program, Deep Dream, which creates impressive, phantasmagoric, dream-like images that sometimes recall the paintings of the Dutch painter Jerome Bosch. However, this program has not been designed to be creative; Deep Dream is part of a research project on machine learning. 

Created by a Google team, it is “fed” millions of images in order to learn to detect forms. Then, by giving it a new image, the engineers ask it, “Whatever you see, we want more of it!” “If a cloud looks a little bit like a bird, the program will make it look even more like a bird,” they explain on a blog. And this provides strange and unpredictable results that, more than two months later, continue to fascinate internet users. 

The experiment, with impressive results, has given rise to new lines of questioning for researchers. For them, Deep Dream “could become a tool for artists — a new way to remix visual concepts — or maybe even shed a little bit of light on the roots of the creative process in general.”

Translation: The Art of Drift

This article by Catherine Lalonde was originally published on Le Devoir on August 10, 2015 in French.

Patrick Beaulieu let himself float from the Missisquoi to New York following the water’s flow.

In his projects, he has already followed the American winds (Ventury, 2010), the migration of monarch butterflies (Monarch Vector, 2007), and chance, Vegas-style, leaving it all up to the roulette (Vegas, 2012). For the artist Patrick Beaulieu, the loss of control, abandon, the effacement of will before hazard and the forces of nature are like daily bread and the yeast of creation.  

In 2014, the visual artist, who devotes himself to these “performative trajectories,” dove into another improbable tour with “Meander” in his Yakaty Yak — his hand-made, cedar kayak — leaving from the source of the Missisquoi River for New York. For 30 days, he followed the flow of the water in this mythical maritime route, paddling as little as possible. A conversation with a man who literally practices the art of drift.

Let’s say he practices road art with this very American, continental fibre, which gives rise to road movies or road novels for others. Scaled back Odysseys, played out over one month rather than Ulysses-style; Patrick Beaulieu likes “the probation,” the “poetic motive and the principle,” which he respects to the letter, the meetings, and the “desire to then give back the experience, sharing it with a body of works.”  

[He also likes] crossing borders, the leitmotif of his journeys. “Crossing borders with such dubious, impalpable motives, it’s an adventure in itself,” says the traveling artist all smiles. “Border officials cannot put you into the tourist or traveller box — work papers required — nor the visitor box. You are a poet, and they don’t know what to do with you. These are hours of interrogation: every time, I speak to border agents about research, exploration. I want to really tell them what I am going to do, even when faced with their coldness. It’s not a good experience to go through. But I am neither illegal nor dangerous, just incomprehensible to them.”

During “Meander,” crossing checkpoints was more fluid, with the border agents associating the kayaker with an athletic aesthetic.

From Silver Lake to the Big Apple

This time, Patrick Beaulieu wanted to depart from the source of the Missisquoi River — mythical from the very first drops of water — and to the water’s slow rhythm jaunt from Silver Lake all the way to the Big Apple.

[He chose] the Missisquoi because it’s of its intimate landscapes — where he lives — but also “because for First Nations, it has been a navigation vector for a long time, allowing them to get to Maine through Lake Memphrémagog, portage to portage. And because it’s an alternative current, which runs very slow and allows for getting to one of the biggest metropolises of the continent, starting from the backyard here at home … It criss-crosses the meanders of Vermont, arriving to Lake Champlain, through which you can get to the Hudson River and the Atlantic to New York.”

A Story about Water

“The extreme slowness of being adrift is really a shock at first,” recalls Patrick Beaulieu. “But after a few days, you realize that you have access to subtleties that would normally escape you. On a kayak, you are at eye level with the water: you have access to small reflections, quick changes, the noise of surfing on the surface.” Through a fixed camera, the artist filmed a series of short videos, his points of confluence, the key moments of his contemplation, letting the current frame his images.

During his downward journey, forces that amplified over time emerged. “It’s very difficult to navigate on Lake Champlain with a small boat. The winds change every second, seven-foot waves can suddenly appear when you were just [drifting] on a mirror. This bodily fight against the forces … it’s something else. Then the tides came from Albany, and I had to adapt myself to them.”

He departed in July 2014 with his iPhone as the only form of technology, interfering the least with a natural pathway, sleeping on his hammock or motels that were not too far from the banks, accepting the forced contemplation, collecting videos, looking for meetings, stopping in marinas — natural access points — and visiting with the wealthy, who were very wealthy but not so free that he would not rub shoulders with them otherwise, Beaulieu arrived 30 days later, in tears, exhausted, under Manhattan Bridge, alone in the backwash of urban noise and the feeling of accomplishment. 

Waves of Emotions

“I experienced three states of water that were very different from one another: first as a solitary person in nature, somewhere wild, with calm, silence, slowness, humidity; then, during the second chapter of the journey, in the landlocked sea that is Lake Champlain, it was the arrival of uncontrollable forces, an extreme, but terrifying beauty — like the storm that is coming. Then, on the Hudson, during the last chapter, it was the influence of the large city that was appearing, rubbing shoulders with pollutants, nuclear power plants, hydro-electric plants, also tides … I even crossed an abandoned factory …”

He also experienced swaying, unstoppable after 8 to 10 hours spent before drifting, regardless of firm ground under his feet. “You continue to feel the wave that pulls you back from behind, and you catch your balance. After two or three beers, it’s really a trip …”   

“Meander,” the exhibit, will be presented at Pacific Sky in Oregon next fall, and at the Art Mur Gallery in Montreal in winter of 2016. Images and videos will be on display, but we will also hear, says the artist, audio tracks of extracts of the advice he received during his journey. “I remember a bluesman, who came to see me at last call, who told me, ‘Remember: keep your head above the muddy water.’ Or all of those ‘Water under the bridge’-s … I collect them.”

An year later, Patrick Beaulieu remains touched by the experience — full. “What I learned are the preciousness of slowness and the state of abandon, very difficult states to attain in our professional lives and through the choices we make. Making contact with them, it reminds us of the regenerating force. It recalls the importance of a fine degree of attention that we forget.”

Translation: A French Artist Pays Homage to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Donating a Painting

This article by Xinhua News Agency was originally published on CCTV on September 2, 2015 in French.

For the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, a French artist, Christian Poirot, has created a moving painting to commemorate the Nanjing massacre, and he will give it away at Memorial Hall in Nanjing, China in December.

Titled “Delivrance” (“Release”), the painting has impressive dimensions: 2.35 meters tall and 7.46 meters wide, it’s the largest painting that Poirot has ever created.

It shows numerous violent scenes that took place during the massacre in 1937, confronting the viewer with the bloody trials the victims endured. Over more than six weeks, from December 13, 1937 to January 1938, the Nanjing massacre, perpetrated by the invading Japanese, caused the deaths of more than 300,000 Chinese civilians.

Poirot explained to Xinhua the reasons why he created this painting: “So that the whole world could see the work painted through the eyes of a European, the horror inflicted on innocents sacrificed in the name of a Japanese Fascist ideology!”

Two years ago, when the painter was living in China and working on landscape paintings, he was touched by a TV show. Stunned, he saw Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visit the Yakusuni shrine to pay homage to those who died while serving the Japanese Empire.

“He visited the samurai, yes, but also war criminals. When I saw that, I exploded,” exclaimed Poirot. 

A little while later, Chinese friends invited him to visit Nanjing’s Memorial Hall where he was profoundly moved by the homage that was payed to the victims of the massacre. When he returned home, he began to read books written by Chinese historians in order to get to know this tragedy and its ins and outs. Soon after, he felt the need to act.

“I said, for these people who welcome me with kindness, I am going to make a painting.”

In January 2015, he went to work. Each morning, he woke up and read about the Nanjing massacre in order to stay connected to the reality of what had happened before going to his studio to paint.

Working mainly with a palette knife, Poirot painted his characters in a non-realistic but deeply expressive style. The shapes of the characters are fragmented, revealing images within images and multiple layers in each scene.

When he finally unveiled his painting, Poirot told Xinhua that this had been a period when he had worked each day with the same pain that the characters in his painting had experienced, so giving this painting away as a gift is also a form of release for him. “It’s necessary to look deep inside the self in order to do a painting,” he explained. 

For the French painter, other representations of the massacre, especially among his Chinese counterparts, are too reserved, often showing the dead, but in a sober and distant manner. So, he chose a different point of view and decided to show the Nanjing victims as they were being killed, rather than representing them as already dead.

“I am a French artist who has studied through discursive knowledge, which is acquired through study and reasoning. Since we are dealing with a massacre scene, my characters take on several feelings, such as pain, fear, anguish, horror and terror,” he continued. 

The painting he has created is full of somber, turbulent and fragmented images depicting dozens of massacre scenes. On the canvas, the audience sees Japanese soldiers killing civilians for sport and entertainment, while orphaned children look on fearfully having lost their families. 

“Through my painting, I believe that one can see some scenes, one can see the pain, all those feelings of fear, hate, anguish,” explained Poirot.

However, the artist also discovered his own limits, realizing that he could not represent some of the more violent acts recorded in the annals of history of the massacre. Instead, he painted doves departing from the bodies of the victims as a symbol of peace and life.

“It’s like they say, you can take my body, but not my soul!” he declared.

He explained that he had initially wanted to paint doves forming a map of China in the sky, but the format of the painting made this impossible, and he hopes that the audience will be able to imagine what he was unable to include in his canvas. 

“First of all, a painting is always the joy of the eyes it draws, and then the joy of the mind that is captivated, and then there is the joy in the heart that retains the work,” declared the artist.

The decisions to create the painting was obvious for Poirot. Even if it can easily gross 300,000 euros or more, the painting represents a gesture of friendship toward China.

“The gift is simply because I learned to get to know the Chinese people, who touched me with their kindness,” he affirmed. Moved by the characters who had welcomed him during his travels across China, he decided that such a gesture was the strongest way to show his appreciation.

The French painter has not always had a relationship with China. It was only in 2009 when a friend invited him to visit China that Poirot got to know the hospitality of Chinese culture. Since then, he has returned at least nine times, and his paintings, often joyful, are representations of China’s urban landscape. Indeed, the macabre images of “Release” diverge from his usual work, which is luminous, colorful and suggestive of happiness.

According to the painter, “Release” will become part of the collection of the Nanjing Memorial Hall, and he hopes that one day, this painting will be exhibited permanently so that visitors can see his rendition of the massacre. Poirot is currently working on new paintings, including a collaborative project with a Chinese painter.

Formerly a chemist, Poirot began painting at 26 when a work accident left him disabled. Having first studied at the regional level, and then the national level in Paris, the Alsace native quickly developed both his passion and technique. In his career, Poirot has had a lot of success, having won prizes in France and the UK, as well as having held exhibitions in galleries in various countries. Two of his paintings are in the collection of former French President Jacques Chirac, who bought them during an exhibit in Paris.

Translation: In India, A Young Artist Shakes Up Unilever

 

This article by Laurence DEFRANOUX was originally published on La Liberation on August 9, 2015 in French.

With a clip, Sofia Ashraf has propelled the cause of the employees of the thermometer factory, who want to expose their mercury poisoning.
 
Kodaikanal is a tourist resort perched at 2,000 meters in the south of India, known since 1845 for its magnificent views, clean air, waterfalls, forest, lake. It's also the place chosen in 1983 by a subsidiary of Pond's cosmetics as the new location for its thermometer factory, which had been located in New York state up to that point. For 18 years, metal was imported in large part from the United States, with thermometers going the opposite way to an American distributor who commercialized them in the US and Europe.

On the other hand, the Americans did not saddle themselves with hundreds of tons of toxic waste relegated to local partners outside of any official recycling cycle. They also did not inform the worker population of the dangers from exposure to mercury, which causes serious lesions in the brain, the spinal chord, the kidneys and the liver. There were no safety measures taken. Peter Suderarajan, a former employee, tells his story on film: "There was no way to wash ourselves. We had mercury in our eyelashes, eyebrows, under our nails. The mercury was everywhere where we were living, sleeping, in our water and our food."

"Dear stockholders, your company has poisoned us"

In 2001, with the help of the NGO Greenpeace, residents exposed 7.4 tonnes of broken glass and waterlogged dirt with toxic metal buried only 3 km from the factory, which in the meantime became the property of Hindustan Unilever, after Pond's was bought by the Anglo-Dutch multinational in 1997. But the times changed. The fabrication of thermometers is no longer part of the "hard nucleus" of the activities of the third largest consumer products manufacturer in the world, and most importantly, mercury is no longer popular. An international treaty aiming to reduce its use is underway, and mercury thermometers are already prohibited in several European countries. Unilever closed the Kodaikanal factory and in 2003, 289 tonnes of waste were sent by boat to be treated in the US under the order of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Office. It's the first operation of this scale in the world of returning toxic waste to the sender.

Since then, the inhabitants of Kodaikanal are fighting the general indifference toward making the multinational finally clean the site, where 1,045 people have worked, and to compensate the victims and their families. On June 30, former employees brandished signs at the general assembly of the stockholders of Hindustan Unilever (67% subsidiary of Unilever) in Bombay: "Dear stockholders, we have enriched you, your company has poisoned us." They estimate that the factory has caused the death of 45 former workers and 18 children. Their efforts were wasted: Unilever insists on negating the existence of profession-related illnesses that touch the workers when the pathologies tied to mercury exposure are well-known and very identifiable (1). The company has multiplied its negating declarations in front of Indian courts, it continues to accumulate counter-evidence in its favor and deliberately underestimates environmental pollution. The Indian Department of Atomic Energy has revealed up to 2,640 times the normal rate of pollution in the lichens of the fragile Pambar Shola forest, contaminated by mercury vapors ejected through ventilation.

Nicki Minaj's "Wow"

But the current state of affairs quickly changed in 10 days, with the dissemination on YouTube of the clip "Kodaikanal Won't" by Sofia Ashraf. A former graphic designer and campaign designer in an international advertising agency (which counts Unilever among its clients by the way) the young woman is from Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. A cinema and performing arts creator, she was contacted by three local NGOs to write a text for their campaigns. After having gathered information and visiting the site, Sofia Ashraf, who does not consider herself a singer and had never committed herself to an environmental cause, took on that of the mercury victims, and with former employees of the factory recorded a clip with the music of Nicki Minaj's hit "Anaconda."

Barely online on YouTube, on July 30, the clip did really well, beyond what had been hoped, in India and abroad. Viewed 2 million times, it launched the petition on the Jhatkaa citizen platform. Addressed to Unilever's CEO, Paul Polman, and asking for "the cleaning of the pollution at Kodaikanal and the compensation of the employees," the petition has reached 60,000 signatures. Sofia Ashraf, on the phone with Liberation, speaks of "an unexpected success. We had never expected such coverage." She says that her advertising experience was a trump card for the humanitarian campaign, even if "in advertising, one does not learn to work with the reality of things." At the other side of the world, the American rapper greets with an admiring "wow" the culture-jamming piece.

Rocked on social networks, the European multinational forked out a press release on August 4, affirming without batting an eye, "The safety of our employees is our number one priority. We have closed the factory and launched an investigation on this matter since its emerged in 2001." It then follows with a list of expert reports proving against all evidence that "none of the former employees suffer from an illness due to the nature of their work," and that "there are no negative effects on the environment." They have even accused the NGOs of "having delayed their efforts by opposing the cleaning work launched in 2009."

It's a delay that Sofia Ashraf explains in the following way: "Hindustan Unilever initially agreed to clean the soil until the amount of mercury fell to 10 mg/kg, which is the Dutch standard. Knowing that Kodaikanal has a fragile ecosystem, the NGOs asked that the British standard of 1 mg/kg be applied. The company responded that it would ultimately only clean up to 25 mg/kg. The Worker's Association of Kodaikanal and the Pollution Control Office of Tamil Nadu did not accept."

Rachita Taneja is behind the petition on the citizen platform Jhatkaa. She explains, "We were happy to see Paul Polman break the silence on our campaign, but disappointed to see him blame the Indian government. Hindustan Unilever has tried to impose cleaning standards that would not be legal in the United Kingdom, where Unilever has its headquarters. It's an obvious double standard."

Nevertheless, the case could advance in a spectacular manner. Meetings are planned for the entire week between the workers' representatives and the multinational. For Sofia Ashraf, "the success will not be complete until the inhabitants have received their reparations."

(1) Mercury poisoning is characterized by lesions in the nervous centers, which cause shaking, speaking difficulties, physical problems, stomach aches, vomiting ...                 

Chronicle: Street Art, Between Instrumentalization and Conformity

 

Translation by Bora Mici. Original article, originally published in French on Oct. 1, 2014, here.

It's difficult to miss street art. In the same way as space invaders, which deploy their network in the great global metropolises, the "art of the street" puts itself on display, exhibits itself, insinuates itself into the smallest urban interstices and crevices in order to put itself on the stage, irresistibly passing from the shadows into the light.

- A chronicle by Heloise Balhade, urbanist.

Urbanism and Land Planning | The World

It seems like a distant time when graffiti artists and taggers - whom some readily taxed as vandals - worked clandestinely. Street art has made a name for itself, and even better, today, it is more and more sought after, whether by major brands, art galleries, and even public collectives. Beyond the debate on what is beautiful, it interrogates the place and role of the artist in the public space and in the process of [creating] the city fabric.

The Polemical Invasion of a New Popular Street Art

All the French and international metropolises that see themselves as dynamic - from Marseilles to Berlin, going through Johannesburg, Sao Paulo, Valparaiso, Nantes, Jerusalem, and many others - adorn themselves with the colorful works of the new messengers of our modern times. The renown acquired by certain street artists flatters national egos. France is not missing out with its JR, Space Invader, Miss Tic, or even C215, among the most well-known.

A debate has been raging for several years in the street art world - largely relayed by the media. The paradigm is the intensive presence of certain artists on social networks, all the way to blogs, films (Bansky,) apps (JR), or even branding ("Obey" by Shepard Fairey). While tags and graffiti are compared to vandalism, the new paintings and stencils are considered works of art - something that does not fail to unleash passions around the market value of these works, counter to the essence of their process, which is free, public and reversible.

Social Utility?

The debate is elsewhere. Whether "activists" or "artists," the city is their environment for action, the street their expression buffer, society their source of inspiration. Whatever their message, they interrogate public space as a meeting place, rise up against its privatization, against the ubiquitous presence of advertising, lay claim to liberty of expression, distract from representations, common places, and reveal forgotten spaces. These urban explorers reveal the city as a palimpsest, an allegory, but above all, as a place for dialogue, relationships, as a system of meaning and value.

During a conference on the "Rewriting of the Political World through Contemporary Public Art (1), Christian Ruby, PhD and teacher,  analyzes: "Contemporary public art has largely conquered today's street, all the while trying to destabilize the streets that are very neatly connected to the rationalization and occupation of space ... In sum, this is not without often participating in the denunciation of the moral order established by certain urbanistic or aesthetic practices."

The actual context allotted to skepticism, disengagement - all the way to the disenchantment - of city residents, and more generally the citizens, constitutes the compost of "street artists." Their activity fully subscribes to the democratic re-appropriation of the city (2). Such practices actively participate in the emergence of a process of the fabrication of the city that is alternative, open, iterative and collaborative. In addition, the values of sharing, being free, dialogue between generations and social classes, but also of the reversibility that drives them, stimulate citizen participation.

The Institutionalization of Street Art: Ultimate Treason or Stroke of Genius?

The case of fallow and neglected urban land is edifying in this respect. The atypical places - utopian? - are historically taken over by street artists who find terrains for experimentation there at the scale of their own ambitions. A good number of them have become high places of urban culture, popular and, more and more, "bobos," victims of their own success. Let's briefly make mention of La Belle de Mai in Marseille, the Isle of Nantes or even the Niel barracks in Bordeaux.

Thus, the institutionalization of street art would be nothing more than the recognition of the social and urban utility of such a practice, of its symbolic and mobilizing form? The liberation of neglected urban spaces by street artists enters into a process of the re-symbolization and re-integration of these places in the collective urban imagination - sometimes, at the scale of an entire city, like Baltimore (3).

It's to this process that subscribes the strategy of the development of galleries for street art, with the negotiation of wall sections directly with collectives and social landlords, without financial return. Going even further, the "In Situ" project in the Fort d'Aubervilliers was imagined by an organization, Art en Ville [Art in the City], which negotiated with AFTRP, the fort's manager, the state, and its collectives. It was able to offer this unused enclave so that a project should transform it into an eco-neighborhood for street artists and then for the public during the time of its transition. In Ivry-sur-Seine, "French capital of street art," this process gave rise to the creation of an HQAC label - Haute Qualite Artistique et Culturelle [High Artistic and Cultural Quality] - working for the integration of an "artistic strategy for a restructuring program"(4).

Territorial Marketing, Independence and Externalities

So, in the current context of the race for the image of the brand and the attractiveness of metropolises, the presence of works of street art is forcibly driven to be a marker for dynamism and "creativity"(5). Hence, the attempt of elected officials to turn it into a pillar of cultural territorial marketing is irresistible.

Problem: What is the spontaneity in these interventions? Worse yet, what about the independence of these artists? According to Mehdi Ben Cheik, director of the street art gallery Itinerrance in the 18th arrondisement of Paris, the artists remain independent since they work for free and have no economic aims beyond a certain level of visibility for their work. In the same sense, the artist Invader declares, "Why should we have institutions against us if they are proposing to us the realization of a beautiful piece? I call that my legal 1 percent"(6).

However, it is still more and more difficult to ignore the externalities generated by the works today. If they are positive in the change of perspective they imply, they could however be accompanied by the creation of annuity situations, capable of generating a real estate tension that escapes them. It's there that public policy needs to intervene.

While some "star artists" export themselves, street art remains eminently contextual. If certain people regret the "wisdom" of certain works, the counter examples that testify to their liberty of expression are not lacking. The erasure of the commissioned fresco by the Italian artist Blu at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2008, an acerbic painting, against war, is emblematic.

Whether we love it or hate it, street art thus would not know how to remain indifferent, in such a way fulfilling its polemical role.

(1) Conference held at the Academie de Lille in March 2007
(2) A process, both institutionalized with the new divisions of public space into projects and urbanism documents, but also by more alternative and activist practices, such as the green guerilla
(3) See the article by Stephanie Baffico: "Baltimore, creative city? The Cultural Impulsion for an Urban Renaissance," Revue Urbanites, January 2014
(4) Extracted from the website of the Atelier Trans305
(5) In the sense of the "creative class," theorized by Richard Florida
(6) L'Express, "Street Art: A Movement that is Becoming More Institutionalized," Julie Bordier, Feb. 15, 2013