Ap-Art – Blek Le Rat (FRA)

Blek Le Rat (FRA)

Xavier Prou aka Blek Le Rat was born on the 15 November 1952 in Paris, France. He was born into a wealthy family, was privately educated and lived a privileged life in Boulogne Billanourt, a western suburb of Paris.

At the age of 21, he went to New York for the first time with a fellow art student from the Beaux-Arts in Paris and was profoundly impacted by what he saw; a city overrun with graffiti, which opened a door in his mind, to the myriad possibilities awaiting him on his return to Paris.

“In the summer of 1972 I was invited to Manhattan by an American friend of mine Larry, who I met at the Beaux Arts in Paris. We saw graffiti in the subway and some pieces painted on the walls in Greenwich village, and I remember asking Larry why people were leaving these signatures, and what it meant for him. Larry told me that he did not know why people were doing this. He thought that these people were crazy. I remember coming across an article in the New York Times by Norman Mailer about this movement in New York and Taki 183. The article gave me the answers to my questions. It took me 10 years to start to make graffiti in Paris. 1981 was the year when I started”.

On New Year’s Eve in 1981, with his visual assault on Paris already in full swing, Blek painted an infestation of rats all around the Centre Georges Pompidou, a Modern & Contemporary Art Museum. It was around this time, that Blek decided to take on an appropriate pseudonym for his burgeoning artistic activities.

“When I was a kid in the 50’s we had a comic book called ‘Blek le Roc’. Blek was an American trapper fighting against the British army. I was a big fan of the book during my youth. The comic still exists but is not famous as it was in the 50’s. I took the name of Blek in reference to the comic book and I changed ‘le roc’ to ‘le rat’ because I was painting rats everywhere. Within the word rat, there lies art. I like this anagram, it’s the shadow of a rat, not the actual beast, and these are placed to look as if they are taking over the city. For me, this idea is an obsession. It’s about uprising, a signal of rebellion. It’s our revolution.”

With his new pseudonym in place, and a tsunami or rats appearing all over Paris, it was time to develop his artistic identity.

“I was still thinking about the NYC subway drawings & something was developing in my thoughts…. I’d visited Italy when I was young and I’d seen traces of fascist stencils there. Despite the theme, I thought they were really beautiful. On a conceptual level, the work of English artist David Hockney affected me greatly. In 1972 or 1973 I saw one of his exhibitions and I was totally fascinated by his colourful crayon drawings. In the movie a ‘Bigger Splash’ I saw him paint a life-sized character on the walls of an apartment in London. I thought it was magnificent. Richard Hambleton as well. In 1983 he painted characters 2 meters tall in Paris: beautiful shadows. At this point, I had been making little rats and I decided to experiment with stencils at a larger scale. The first stencil I made in the street: I knew it was something important”.

Blek’s street pieces quickly developed from small rats into life-sized portrayals of Andy Warhol, Tom Waits, Jesus Christ, Princess Diana, David with an AK47 to mention a few, and a series of self portraits titled ‘The man who walks through walls’. This progression to full size figures, had an immediate visceral impact on the urban environment in which they were placed, and his pioneering use of stencils, not only offered him the opportunity to endlessly reproduce an image, but also elevated graffiti for the very first time to an art form, as the work could be delivered with an artistic precision never before seen on the street.

“I’ve worked with stencils from the very beginning and am the first person to have used them for a work of art. There are no accidents with stencils. Images created this way are clean and beautiful. You prepare it in your studio and then you can reproduce it indefinitely. Stencilling is a technique well suited to the streets because it’s fast. You don’t have to deal with the worry of the police catching you. At the beginning of the 80’s, the police wouldn’t say anything at all. They asked me only if I was doing something political. I’d say “it’s art”, and that was it. Even today when I paint with permission, I’m always a little bit nervous. I’m not interested in aggravating people.”

Often laden with political sentiment, his work has over the years, adopted a dark humour. In 1984, as tensions preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall infiltrated Paris, Blek began preparing an artistic response to the paranoia.

“That summer, everyone was so worried about Russian soldiers invading that there was a constant look out for tanks. As the streets lay empty at night, I attacked the city with stencils of Russian soldiers, a message to the people when they returned: the Soviets have already arrived! I relieved their paranoia through humour.”

Now 40 years on from those first stencilled rats in the 14th Arrondissement in Paris, Blek enjoys a patriarchal status amongst his fellow artists and is recognised as the ‘Godfather of Stencil Art’ for his pioneering technique and the trail he blazed when most of his peers were still at school or a mere glint in their parents’ eyes.

“When I began, I was very aware that it was a new form of art, and a different type of expression. We didn’t know how it was going to develop, but we did realise that we were developing something truly innovative. Street art is ephemeral and yet the mark it leaves behind is important. There’s nothing left from the 80s. For example, all of Keith Haring’s graffiti has disappeared and they are no longer tangible. At the beginning I didn’t create works on canvas and I didn’t even take pictures of my stencils. I never imagined that what I do would someday be considered a work of art. It’s sad because an entire part of my life has been lost and it’s nice to have a memory of where we’ve been. Yes, I’ve kept some of the stencils. The only way to work is on a medium like canvas, or pieces of wood. I started to photograph my works when I noticed the consistency of what I was doing. For 20 years I’ve left works in the houses of collectors and there they are maintained.”

Even though Blek le Rat continues to express a preference for working in the streets over galleries, he is now represented by multiple galleries throughout the world and his work has influenced a raft of stencil artists, most famously Banksy, who said of Blek in his book Wall and Piece:

“Every time I think I’ve painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek le Rat has done it as well, only 20 years earlier.” Banksy 2005

When asked how he felt about Banksy in the 2012 documentary Graffiti Wars, Blek said:

“When I see Banksy making a soldier or when I see Banksy making a Madonna with a child or when I see Banksy making rats, of course I see immediately where he takes the idea. Of course I do feel a little bit angry, when you’re an artist you use your own techniques. It’s difficult to find a technique and style in art, so when you have a style and you see someone else is taking it and reproducing it, you don’t like that. I’m not sure about his integrity. Maybe he has to show his face now and say “I’m Banksy” and show what kind of guy he is.”

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The first recorded renderings of Blek Le Rat’s Jesus Christ appeared on the streets of Paris in 1986 (Image c/o Blek Le Rat’s website), appearing some 18 years before Banksy’s first rendering of Jesus Christ in 2004, at his London exhibition ‘Santa’s Ghetto’ and his screen print release of the same year.

Both artist’s pieces were noteworthy for their unusual depiction of Jesus without a cross, an artistic direction taken to great effect. The image soon became one of Blek’s most prolifically used stencils, appearing throughout France in the late 1980’s and led to a limited edition print run some 20 years later in 2008.

Although his more political works have rarely left behind the playful satire for which he has become famous, there are some works which are more heavily laden with political sentiment than others. Early examples of this genre include his full size stencil of a patrolling soldier with STOP daubed across his body in red paint, which in 2003 was placed at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin and throughout France, and his 2007 depiction of George Bush as the Anti-Christ, after the latter’s well documented ‘War on Terror’.

His depiction of the 41st US President is not believed to have appeared anywhere on the streets, merely existing in the form of three unique life sized renderings on canvas. Neither has it at any stage, been released as a limited edition print, making it one of the most exclusive and sought after images ever to be released from the artist’s studio.