art in english

The fifteenth of january, we have seen a exhibition about Pop Art. The exhibition presented us a collection of Whitney Museum of American Art Collection of New York City founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942), a american sculptor, art patron and collector. It showed us around sixty paitings, sculptures or prints from the beginning of the sixties to the end of the seventies. There were works of some prominent and Pop Art’s renowed artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and the serigraph Andy Warhol, amongst others.

But, what is Pop Art ?

At the beginning of the 1960s, a generation of artists appears in the United States in reaction to the abstract expressionism which was very appreciated at this time. The Pop Artist denounced the consumer society developed in this decade by representation of everyday objects and the signs of popular culture, in others words, « the American way of life ». This art movement was also characterised by the colours which they used : bright, pure, intense, and contrasting colours associed to the way to work : they represented events or people humorously or ironically to spread the power of the image such as the iconic women Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, sometimes in order to celebrate or sometimes to criticise it.

WORK OF STREET ART BY NICK WALKER

This work of art was made by Nick Walker, a famous street artist born in 1969 in Bristol in England, in this work of art we can see his famous gentleman which is his trademark that we can see in many of his work. This gentleman appears on many of Walker’s work of art and became an icon of street art, most of the time the gentleman isn’t show and there is just his word “Vandal” and something that he lost in the hurry like a hat, or umbrella. This work is made with red spray cans and stencils because Nick Walker was considered as the master of stencil and a member of the stencil graffiti movement create by Robert Del Naja. Although Nick Walker is an English he made exhibition and work of art in different places like in Paris where he made different work of art but unfortunately the most of his work has been remove because on the contrary of England, there is no legal wall in Paris so it shows how ephemeral street art can be. His work of art shows a gentleman which is the symbol of England and virtue, who are painting on a wall the word “Vandal”. Nick Walker says in an interview that he chooses a gentleman because nobody except a gentleman to do an illegal work. To me the fact that this man is spray painting the word “Vandal” is really sarcastic and ironic because some people consider street art as vandalism so the fact that someone who is vandalizing a wall is writing the word “Vandal” in red, in order to caught the attention of the viewer, is funny and this is why I like this work of street art.

Thelma GABRIEL

San Miguel Okuda is a Spanish street artist who belongs to the movement of pop surrealism, he graduated from fine arts in Madrid which is his current place of living. He has traveled all over the world (India, Russia, France, Portugal, etc) to show his street art which is really unusual I guess, and his commitment.

As I said before, he went to France, precisely in Paris, to produce some works of art such as a reinterpretation of the Joconde in the 13^th district. This work of art has been painted on a wall of 50m height and 15m width which was empty at first. It is a really colorful and flashy work of art with geometric shapes which are quite recurrent in Okuda’s art. Unlike the genuine Mona Lisa, we can see the entire body of the woman, she is “wrapped” in different patterns, one of them has stars on it which makes me think of the American flag. She represents a multicultural woman because of all the colors that have been used. Moreover, Okuda and his staff have used about 450 spray cans. At the top of the painting, there is a gradation of blue, green and yellow which is stunning, the sky is sprinkled of stars. She has a bird on her right shoulder that could symbolized freedom. Okuda decided to make her wearing a Louis Vuitton bag because Paris is the capital of fashion, in my opinion, it can also represents the money/capitalist society that we are living in. A the bottom of the painting, there is like a hole or maybe a puddle of colors, it seems to me that she is falling into it.

In my opinion, this is a beautiful work of art, really creative, elaborated and modern, Okuda decided to show his own point of view of the Joconde, he wants to transmit his positive outlook on life. This painting contrasts with the dull colors of the environment and the other buildings, I think that it can brighten people’s horizons and it makes our environment more lively.

JR is a French street artist who travels the world to take people’s portrait. Then he makes very big stickers of those faces and hangs it on the buildings. The point is to bear witness, to mark the spot of a life, to spread a message but mostly to pay a tribute to the unknown persons. It’s also makes the buildings more beautiful and our environment more lively. Actually, he draws attention to places that we don’t necessarily see like the favela in Rio. Moreover, I think we see the building in a another way and it makes us think about the message which JR wants to convey.

Finally, unlike the most of the others street artists, he doesn’t make vandalism because we ask him to do his work most of the time.

That was for the street artist, now I will talk about a work of Art in particular. I have chosen the monumental photo of Kikito, a mexican child, which JR have installed on the wall which separate Mexico and the California, in Tecate more precisely, in the U.S. He installed this photo on a ground of a modest family which also accepted that the youngest of the family serve as a model for the black and white photo.

Seen from the American side, the child seems to be inside a crib, getting ready to escape toward something that’s caught his attention. JR has chosen a one-year-child because even the children notice this wall and wanted to cross it like Kikito despite the fact that he doesn’t have a political vision, or any point of view. So, he obviously denounces this wall and the Trump’s decision.