From street to gallery, the Pochoir artist arrives

PARIS It was an unlikely juxtaposition: A green, graffitied face of the Mona Lisa staring out from the eminently respectable cover of a Sotheby's auction catalogue.

Yet even stranger were the auction results of the Contemporary Art sale at Sotheby's London Olympia last month. As stalwarts of the contemporary art's scene ? Damien Hirst, the Chapman brothers, Cindy Sherman ?

nestled around their estimates, it was the works of "Banksy," a shadowy British graffiti artist, that set the sale alight. The artist's "Mona Lisa," spray-painted with stencil on canvas, set the auction's top sale at £57,600, or $109,600, closely followed by six Warholesque silkscreen prints of Kate Moss, which sold for more than five times their estimate.

Banksy has "underlined his credentials as a heavyweight in the art world," wrote Matthew Beard in The Independent. Graffiti blogs agreed that Banksy had been given the "green light" by the art establishment.

A few days previously, Banksy made another London appearance, this time paying homage. "Every time I think I've painted something slightly original," Banksy is quoted as saying on an invitation to the Leonard Street Gallery's retrospective of a cult Parisian street artist, "I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well. Only 20 years earlier." While stencil art is relatively new to Britain, where, like in the United States, hip-hop graffiti has predominated, in France the stencil, or pochoir, has long been part of the urban landscape.

With links to Art Nouveau stencil tradition, stenciled advertisements, 1960s political stencils and even cave paintings, the roots tying France to the pochoir are deep.

It was in Paris, in the early 1980s, that stencil graffiti was first used artistically, when Blek, newly graduated from l'École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts, tried to find a street art that would suit his city. "I tried graffiti," said Blek in a phone interview. "It was a disaster. I realized that it would not work here as it had in New York." Using a cardboard stencil, he and a friend began creating pochoirs of rats across Paris.

Others soon followed, and works by what Tristan Manco, author of "Stencil Graffiti" and "Street Logos," (Thames and Hudson), calls the "First Generation" pochoiristes ? Blek, Jérôme Mesnager, Speedy Graffito, Jef Aerosol, Mosko et Associés, Miss.Tic, Nemo ? now provide the touchstone for any serious analysis of street art.

Yet, after rising to prominence in the late 1980s at the height of the punk graffiti boom ? and just as artists like Shepard Fairey and Logan Hicks began introducing stencil art to the United States ? the pochoiristes began to suffer as "tagging" and "scratching" moved to France and officials began to crack down.

"Tagging and graffiti vandalism stopped it being possible to work in the streets" said Jef Aerosol, who began stenciling music, screen and literary icons, including Patti Smith, Charlie Chaplin, Syd Barrett and Paul Auster, in 1982, "I stopped working in the streets between 1995 and 2000." After being arrested in 1998, Miss.Tic, who had started stenciling her distinctive female silhouettes and witty urban poetry in 1985, began seeking permission before spraying a building. "I was condemned as a delinquent," she said.

Yet a new generation of stencil artists has begun to draw attention (Angelina Jolie reportedly spent more than £200,000 at a recent Banksy exhibit in Los Angeles). In Paris the pace is starting to pick up too.

The night before Sotheby's auction, HighCo, a French marketing firm, displayed the works of Jef Aerosol with Jérôme Mesnager's minimal anatomical figures at the grand opening of its new Paris premises.

Receiving an official rubber stamp, Miss.Tic recently exhibited at the (12-27 Oct) town hall of the 13th Arrondissement, in concurrence with a second show at the Leila Mordoch gallery in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, which runs until Nov. 18, and the publication of a new book, "Parisienne," on her work. Mesnager, who paints freehand, but collaborates with pochoiristes, recently exhibited in the Ménilmontant area, and a new book entitled "Nemo," on Nemo, a founding stencilist, was published by Hoebeke this week.

Meanwhile in London, Blek le Rat's Leonard Street Gallery show, which runs until Monday, sold out on the first night, surprising the artist himself: "It's incredible, people are going crazy at the moment," he said.

Certainly, in a era that has raised being famous to a fine art ?

with artists like Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst often known more for their brattish behavior than artistic merit ? the simplicity and anonymity of pochoir art are providing a popular alternative.

Rebuffing an art scene that is increasingly perceived as pretentious and elitist, the pochoir's appeal lies, for many, in its accessibility.

"The pochoir has a figurative simplicity that touches people," said Anne Vignial, whose Paris gallery represents urban artists. "Those who like it have no set age, social or professional category." This widespread appeal is further enhanced by the "street" aspect of the work. "A Coke is a Coke," Warhol once commented, "and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking" ? an egalitarian sentiment relished by the pochoiristes. "It requires a lot of determination to go into a gallery," said Miss.Tic, "when I work in the streets I am addressing everyone." Meanwhile, the accessibility of street art is by no means putting a pall on the enthusiasm for the art establishment. In New York, MoMa recently acquired three works by Swoon, whose paper cutouts echo the pochoir aesthetic. In October, Paris's Grand Palais held "Street at the Grand Palais" a celebration of urban culture, which included a graffitied wall.

In London, preparations are under way at Sotheby's for Banksy's appearance at the Contemporary Art Sale on Feb. 7. "Stencils and spray-paint are becoming very desirable as a medium," said Elli Varnavides, the specialist in charge of the auction, in a telephone interview. "We're extremely excited about the next sale." International Herald Tribune

c.2005 I.H.T /iht.com