What struck me the most about our graffiti tour was how graffiti stood at the intersection of many different elements of our culture. Gentrification, hip-hop, and contemporary art all seem to converge in this one medium. Artists are both constrained by the legality of their work, and yet are free to use the world as their canvas rather than be limited by specific exhibition spaces. There is also a sense in which graffiti is democratic, as anyone can buy a can of paint or a magic marker and doodle. However, not everyone can produce art. Pierre (Meuh) talked a lot about the difference between graffiti and street art. He made the argument that street art essentially grew out of graffiti, but has taken on a life of its own in that it tends to consist of huge, intricate, commissioned works.

The last mural we saw on our graffiti tour was indeed such a work. It is an extremely complex, detailed painting of sorts made with stencils and spray cans, painted onto the side of a building in a scrap metal yard. On the left edge of the piece, houses done in varying shades of light blue rise into the distance, almost vertically. The left side of the mural is dominated by a huge boat with a navy blue hull and red and yellow detailing. There is a pile of scrap metal on the boat, with brilliantly painted smoke pouring out of the building on top of the boat. The boat is framed by a yellow highrise building, which forms one half of the frame of a bridge in the middle of a mural (there is also a train running across the top left). The bridge in the center is in front of a very industrial looking city in the background, with a few floating cars traveling below the bridge in between the two yellow highrise buildings. The right side of the mural is dominated by what looks like a house attached to the front engine of a truck, also floating. It is floating above a Paris-esque city, with gray buildings offset with yellow windows and red details spreading off into the sunset/sunrise. There is a floating island in the sky on the top right of the frame, after which an industrial looking column wraps around the right side to the other wall of the building.

The whole artwork had a kind of steampunk aesthetic, blending retro steam power and cars from the mid-20th century with a very futuristic city. This juxtaposition seems to mirror the juxtaposition of the artwork itself with its surroundings; this beautiful painting is next to a seemingly run-down scrapyard, just as the futuristic city runs on steam power. In both cases, the more modern/aesthetically forward-looking parts feed on the dilapidated scraps of an older world. The artist is trying to communicate to the viewer that the beauty one sees in the modern city (the artwork itself) would be impossible without the ugly industry that keeps it going (the scrapyard before which the art is painted).

There are also numerous indications that the art represents Paris. The boat on the left with the pile of scraps on it mirrors the function of the scrapyard, and the boat has an “Aubervilliers” tag on the front, indicating that it is either from or named after this neighborhood. The city on the bottom right, with its multi-story buildings and lofts looks a whole lot like Paris – there is a dome which looks a lot like the Pantheon or the Sorbonne. This deepens the work’s connection with its surroundings. It is clearly meant as an interpretation of a futuristic Paris. We are meant to interpret it as what Paris could become in the future, or as what it could have looked like in an alternative reality.

While it may seem like a negative interpretation of such a futuristic Paris, I would argue that the artist intends us to view it with a certain degree of awe or contentedness. The colors are incredibly vibrant for this kind of work, ranging from the intricate yellow-to-blue of the sky on the right to the reds of the flying house or the car in the middle. The work is jam-packed with motion – the smoke pouring out of the boat, the flying cars, the metro on the top. There is also not a single human visible. This notion of motion derives from the industry itself, not the humans who inhabit this world. The work does not contain any sign of human suffering that usually comes along with an industrial world. One could also interpret this as an eerie commentary on industry itself – that it does not need human beings to function, and that we could be replaced by our own creations. However, the sheer scale and beauty of the art itself force the viewer to do nothing but marvel at it. It is simply impossible to come across this painting without your jaw hitting the floor.

The biggest reason that this mural is so awe-inspiring is because of the surrounding. It sticks out like a sore thumb, in the best of ways. It draws its very artistic power from the contrast it draws with the surrounding. Rather than ignore this contrast and set itself above the neighborhood, the mural dives right into it, exploring how this contrast between beautiful and run-down can be manipulated to create something beautiful. It comments not just on the neighborhood, but on Paris itself. This is especially powerful considering that the art can never move – it is painted onto the side of a building. The mural interacts with its exhibition space more than any other art we saw as a class, and it brilliantly demonstrates how an artist can manipulate the viewer’s sense of setting. One of my favorite things about our class was how some of the artists made the art interactive, allowing the viewer to almost personalize their interaction with it. This mural took that a step further.