When I began our course on contemporary art in Paris, I thought that I would find the most meaningful pieces in galleries or in museums. While I have found many important pieces in these spaces, the art that stood out most to me was actually totally free to view and accessible to anybody who would walk by La Villette, a park off the Corentin Cariou metro stop. During our street art tour in the north of Paris, our guide showed us many interesting graffiti pieces, as well as explained to us the numerous rules and cultural mores of street art. 

One thing Pierre, our guide, said especially stuck out to me: it is a grave transgression to cover up another artist’s graffiti, especially if the artist has passed away. Moreover, if you are going to paint over someone else’s work, you’d better make sure your piece is of the highest technical quality. All of these rules point to the fact that such a “lawless” practice is actually governed and self-policed quite tightly by its own community members. 

Along the same lines, many people today think that graffiti is meaningless or unproductive. One reason for this could be that oftentimes, graffiti is undertaken by young people or otherwise unestablished artists. Another reason is that it is often done on public buildings that were not designed to showcase public art. Yet another reason could be that graffiti has been criminalized for decades. Before our tour, I might have bought into all of these beliefs. By the end, however, I gained a new appreciation for street art, the time artists spend to create it, and the risks that they take for the name of artistic freedom. 

One piece I especially liked was by Kazy Usclef, a painter, drawer, and independent curator. His style tends to vary from piece to piece, but for this one, created in 2019, he sticks to solid colors and firmly established shapes and lines. Viewed from afar, it is easy to see silhouettes of the human form. When you walk closer, however, the gradients become more apparent, and the shapes that once seemed so explicitly defined seem to blend together. I thought it was interesting that Usclef focuses a lot on the human form, but in such a way that the features are distorted. One can see a nose that is slightly too pointy, or fingers that are slightly too elongated, or a foot whose toes are just a little too blocky to seem realistic. Usclef also sticks to a streamlined color palette, utilizing white, black, gray, and gold pretty exclusively. 

I think I was drawn to this piece because it reminds me of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, which is perhaps the most potent and well-known antiwar piece in the world. Upon first glance, I noticed that Usclef’s color usage is very similar to the piece. Though Picasso’s piece is an oil painting on canvas, and this is spray paint on a wall, Usclef manages to also pay homage to Picasso’s sharp, angular style and the foreboding feeling that Guernica manages to establish. 

Upon further researching Guernica, the historical parallels between the pieces struck me more deeply. Picasso created Guernica after the Nazis bombed the Basque town of the same name in 1937. The attack was especially devastating because the town’s inhabitants were all congregated in the center of the town for market day. Nobody was able to leave or take shelter because the roads had been blocked by debris and the bridges had been destroyed. Standing under an open sky next to the Canal de Saint-Denis, I thought about the accessible nature of Usclef’s piece and the fact that there was really no hiding or running away from the piece. It is imposing, taking up an entire wall, confronting the viewer and forcing you to recognize its presence. It is far from the upper class parts of Paris, and is visible even across the canal. Rather than placing the piece in a museum or gallery, one can only view it in open air. 

Besides its resemblance to Guernica, I enjoyed this piece because it challenged me to find meaning in its seemingly disparate elements. On the right side, it seems that a hand has gouged claw marks into the wall. In the middle, a hand seems to reach towards the sun, or exalt it. All the way on the left, what seems to be a severed leg leads the eye towards a spindly hand holding an orb—perhaps a meditation for a hopeful future. Overall, though, I thought that this piece was sad and evoked similar antiwar feelings to the Picasso painting it hearkens back to. 

In light of the fact that we did the street art tour right after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the pacifist sentiments of the piece really sank in for me. It was as though Usclef thought that the city of Paris or its inhabitants were getting too complacent, and he wanted to remind them that peace is never guaranteed. Though the mural was created three years ago, I found the message to be eerily relevant. Amongst the brightly colored art and the industrial feel of the neighborhood, the disjointed body parts made me uneasy. Besides studying the human form, the piece also includes small motifs such as chains and a dagger, which only made my feelings of wariness grow. 

I really like this piece because despite the fact that its meaning eluded me at first, I immediately felt trepidation and discomfort radiating from it. Even though these aren’t pleasant feelings, I was awed by the fact that it made me feel something so quickly. Moreover, I thought it was really impressive that nobody dared to cover it up over the three years that it had been there. Given that Pierre told us that certain pieces will be covered by other artists in 48 hours, other artists must have thought that this piece is truly remarkable as well.