T.A.G.: Ghettofabulousness at Grand Palais

Before moving to Paris last July I spent two and a half years guiding tourists from all four corners of the earth up and down the seven hills of Rome. I gave homilies about the history of Western civilization under shady umbrella pines atop the Palatine Hill, spun yarns about the brutal and bloody history of the games in the magnificent shadow of Vespasian's Coliseum, marked the milestones of the Appian Way while recounting Saint Peter's fateful domine quo vadis encounter with Christ, pontificated at the foot of the altar where the twenty-thrice-stabbed body of the great Gauis Julius Ceasar was creamated among hordes of Romans in the ancient Forum, soliliquized the story of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel while the glory of it shone down from above, and encouraged my superstitious minions to splish splash their extra euros away in the famed Trevi Fountain for una tornata to the Eternal City one day. And after rolling history, to paraphrase the grand old T.S. Eliot, into a ball during an onsight bird's eye view into 2,500 years of it, what do you think was the most oft question I got from my holidaying peanut gallery?

How and when did Christianity supplant Roman paganism?

Nope.

How did the Romans succeed in amassing a fifty million person empire in less than three centuries?

Nope.

Did Nero really play the fiddle while Rome burned?

Nope. (And for the record mythbusters, the fiddle didn't rear its ugly head for another 1500 years after the great fire in Rome of 64 A.D. "What is the lyre" will get you another crack at Jeopardy).

Were the Pope and Caesar friends?

Sadly I heard this innane query so regularly that I began to question the history taught by Western civilization.

Did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel laying on his back?

Surely the runner up to the most oft asked question, but no cigar. (And if you're interested in dispelling this impossible myth check out the section to the right entitled "The Most Infamous and Uncreative Lie in Art History.")

So, with the blood of kings, emperors, soldiers and martyrs under their dusty, Croc'd feet, what was my clients' Sixty-Four-Thousand-Dollar question?

WHAT'S UP WITH ALL THE GRAFFITI IN ROME?

Yes ladies and gents, Rome is drenched in graffiti and one can't fault the squeaky clean graffiti-is-a-pox-on-humanity minded tourist's curiosity or shock that everything from ancient Roman edifices to the fortress-like brick walls surrounding Vatican city have been scrawled, scratched, spat and sprayed upon to such a degree that it's easy to confuse your Roman holiday with a trip back in time to the late 70's Bronx. I myself grew up on the graffiti-riddled Venice Beach Boardwalk running amok with taggers and graffiti artists at a time when the manhunt for the LAPD's most wanted tagger, Chaka, was a regular nightly news headline and even I was amazed at the profundity of motley markings when I first arrived. But with my ghettochild roots, my amazement was steeped in something quite different from that of the average bear. I was struck by the Roman grafitiosi's emulating my rough, tough and dirty American youth street culture. My disturbed clients, on the other hand, wanted to know how in the Pope's name such a thing is permissable in the showplace of Rafael and Michelangelo's Renaissance.

Imagine the dropping jaws as I retorted that these stars of the quattrocento were guilty of graffiti too. Allow me to explain.

Graffiti - plural from the singular Italian graffito - is derived from the Greek word graphein, "to write," and refers to markings, drawings, scribblings, or scratchings - generally illicit or obscene ones - made onto a surface such as a wall, pavement, post, etc. Markings like this have existed since ancient times and can be found all over ancient Roman territory, my personal favorites being the instructional graffiti, shall we call it, at Pompeii's brothel and the directionally challenged penises scratched into the walls of the Coliseum that point the path to where randy game patrons could pass a slaughter-free intermission in the comforting arms of a prostitute. Since it wasn't in my best interest to share these examples on my family friendly tours I would lead clients to images of gladiators graffiti'd in marble that were displayed inside the Coliseum and explain how graffiti was the result of a number of things going on in ancient and in modern Rome alike. L'ennui was often a culprit. If you were waiting hours at the Coliseum under the miserable hot Roman sun for a new splattering batch of blood and guts you'd probably resort to a bit of doodling in the stones too (or check out those happy hookers - take your pick). Likewise, if you're spending eons on the 40 or 64 bus trying to get across town you might be given over to the same urges. Politics, maybe a disagreement over or a point of view behind them, was a notorious motivating factor behind putting your name or ideas in stone. If imprisonment, mutilation or death is the result of freeing one's voice then surely an anonymous scrawl, big or small, is the better choice - in the times of Augustus and Berlusconi alike. Another reason - and one we're all guilty of - is for the twofold sake of nostalgia and recognition. We've all carved our "I ♥ So&SO" initials on a prominent piece of bark somewhere in this world. Why? Because there's a special kind of irony in overcoming our anonymity with our anonymity. Sure, we want to remember our connection when we return but we also want others to recognize it when we're away - even if they have no clue who we are. Others see that we still exist in this place even if we're not here and they're left wondering who we are, why we came, and how we left. This is precisely why Michelangelo, Raphael and Pinturrichio hit up the walls of the emperor Nero's Domus Aurea when they visited during excavations in the 1500's.

M + R + P

Westside Renaissance Crew Wuz Here

BIATCH!

If Rome's greatest Renaissance artists recognized and appreciated the social relevance of graffiti to the point of perpetrating it on ancient stone then surely - blaspheme! - we can get on board too. From the most offensive fat black Sharpie marrings on our commuter trains to the funkadelic art pieces that infiltrate Coca Cola and IBM ad campaigns, graffiti is part of our collective human legacy and for some more than others doing it is coded in the DNA. What you can't say for fear of persecution, for lack of oratorial eloquence, for fear that spoken words vanish into thin air, for fear that no one is listening or that you lack the individual power to be heard, or simply just because you spray it better than you say it you can bomb like Hiroshima all over the goddamn walls.

And Hiroshima'd rainbowliciously all over the walls at Grand Palais is T.A.G. (Tag and Graffiti), the most courageous and comprehensive cornucopia of dropped bombs ever put on public display. Mingling Aerosol Art with the world of High Art is nothing new (take a look back at the early 80's PBS documentary Style Wars that features a few young artists bragging about how much their pieces fetch), but what sets T.A.G. apart from previous graffiti expos is the monumental number of artists involved and amount of pieces they produced. Over 150 artists of both renown and underground fame were commissioned by architect and gallery owner Alain Dominique Gallizia to drop an astounding 300 tags and graffiti pieces. Known as the Gallizia Collection, le Monsieur's vision as a down and die-hard devotee of street art was to gather a near impossible to conceive forty years worth of international bombers at his studio just outside of Paris to complete two original 180 x 60 canvasses . The first piece showcases the artist's tag, or street name, and the second is an interpretation of "Love." The result - intellectual art critics/theorist/freaks who discard street art as junk or any of my former graffiti-is-a-pox-on-humanity minded clients may take offense here - is the most exceptional room full of multiple talent I've seen since Picasso and the Masters showed at Grand Palais earlier this year.

Naysayers may dare to detract the credibility of a graffiti exhibition at this posh Parisian palace but with a show that commences with a nod to arguably the most famous east coaster to push the envelope of graffiti-as-art next to Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, such a task is more trouble than it's worth. An image of Basquiat's Hollywood Africans and a shout out to his friends and fellow graffitiosos Toxic and Rammellzee (both of whom have pieces on display) is just the kick start such a daring show deserves (although the original Basquiat would have been preferred). Lighting the stroll down vandalism lane next is a massive pink, gray and black lettered hanging with the infamous runny scrawl of TAKI 183, the 1970's NYC train wrecking terror who put east coast graffiti on the national map. The full text of the 1971 New York Times article "Taki 183 Spawns Pen Pals" is blown up for all to read. The nostalgia continues with a video screen that features short interviews with the likes of Gallizia and NYC spray can pioneers Seen and Quick who discuss the formation of the collection and encourage visitors to respect the "stylistic evolution" of graffiti aesthetics. There is also compelling introductory text written by a legend in his own right, Henry Chalfont, author of Subway Art and director of the aforementioned Style Wars. Chalfont explains street art's NYC subway genesis and pays tribute to how these faceless "wild style" pioneers attained "Ghetto Celebrity Status" by arming themselves with little more than a can of paint and an alter-ego to war with the inner-city trains to create "a visual metaphor in which the energy of the soul finds expression in the circumstances of the given life."

And now... let the ghettofabulousness begin.

I was astounded as I entered and did my dizzy blond best to take in the prodigious spectrum of colors, bold and undulating shapes and mesmerizing wild style calligraphics of blocks, bubbles, swirls and strokes that ran along the length of the long, singular gallery's walls. I admit I was a tad hungover, but nursing one or not I don't know what could have prepared me for the stunning visual assault of colors, images and light that enveloped my senses. The collection is showing in the south gallery of the Grand Palais, a stripped down, unfinished space under construction with high ceilings, gritty exposed brick walls and endless oodles of cascading natural light that deliciously illuminate every last inch of the canvases. These elements along with speakers interjecting the subtle and intermittent street sounds of shaking cans and spraying paint came together for what was one of the most complimentary uses of gallery space I've encountered at a temporary exhibition. The graffiti canvases were arranged on the walls chronologically (on the left wall from 1969 - 1988 and on the right from 1989 - 2009) with each artists' two pieces placed side by side in a top-to-bottom row of four artists. A simple yet ingenious arrangement, like much of the graffiti itself.

It's impossible to give proper props to all on display but I will say this: with the exception of a handful of pieces that were clearly struggling overall the collection was incroyable. It was evident that some pieces were born of sheer fun, that some were exceptionally dark and that some were more masterful, captivating or creative than others (the distinction and the talent between old and new school artists was visible). But make no mistake - for as erratic and torrid as some of the pieces may appear there was an abundance of wizardry and wisdom written on the walls. For a standout many it was clear what "Love" meant - the trains, the cans and NYC. Numerous pieces by artists like Ces, Duro and Faust featured brilliant depictions of the Big Apple skyline, its trains bombed and careening off the tracks, personified spray cans and pictures or odes of love to it. My personal favorite ponderance on Love was Duster's artfully executed cautionary tale with Love as yellow brick road to the city flanked by a sign proclaiming it a "road to nowhere." For others Love was a headphoned baby in the womb, a bleeding heart, a portrait of a lover, an open eye, an abstract smattering of colors or a politic of peace like Freedom's tribute to Ghandi and MLK. Some artists like New York's Rammellzee took graffiti well beyond the can to create a metaphoric mixed media piece while others like Other (no shit, that's his name) skipped calligraphy entirely for image. The amount of international artists in the collection was also astounding. Next to the U.S., France had a prominent amount of it's artists on display as well as Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Tawaiin, Austria, Iran, Belgium, Holland and even Iceland whose Fridricks has got to be giving Bjork a run for her money as the supa dupa dopest femme fantastic our icy neighbors to the north have turned out.

For those of you who can't get to the expo before its closing date, Monsieur Gallizia has taken you into consideration.  He has no intention of dividing or selling any of the pieces and instead has vowed that they will travel the globe as a permanent collection. If only our Renaissance patrons would've made the same commitment to their artists (Michelangelo's ceiling isn't property of the Pope - it was sold for an obnoxious amount of ducats to a Japanese broadcasting company called Nippon - far more of a sacreligious selling out than any graffiti I've ever seen on exhibit). So unless you haul ass to Rome you'll never have the Sistine Chapel in your backyard, but if you keep your eyes peeled T.A.G. just might come bombing on your train next.

T.A.G.

Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill

South West Gallery, Door H

March 27th - April 26th

Monday thru Friday, 11 a.m. - 7 p.m., open late Wednesday and Saturday until 11 p.m.

http://www.tagaugrandpalais.com/

William Blake at Petit Palais: Pity No More

After quite the combustible row with my better half this past Sunday I left our house in search of the one calming and comfort indulgence beside a tub of cookie dough ice cream, a crisp, lime garnished cosmopolitan and anything-but-missionary make-up sex that I was certain could soothe my frazzled nerves. A-R-T. With a great huff in my step and even greater puff under my eyes I hopped the metro and dragged my self-pity down to Grand Palais - a turn of the century exhibition space as equally stunning as it is imposing – in anticipation that the hottest ticket in town, The Great World of Andy Warhol, would Calgon me away from my lover's quarrel reality. But alas, when I reared my low-hung head up from the city's bowels I quickly discovered that 4:30 on a sunny spring afternoon in Paris has to be about the worst time for a jilted lover to fix herself on Warhol. A million and two people were snaked behind barricades around the building and considering that the exhibition closed in two hours it was obvious that it was the two and not the million that would get to bypass the velvet rope that day. For a fleeting moment I thought about appealing to the obvious lonely hearts in line - surely I wasn't the only woman here escaping domestic unbliss. Or, maybe I had a better chance of getting in by flashing a little cleavage to one of the undersexed, walkie-talkie toting custodians corralling all this Warholian cattle. Not to mention that they do say flirting is the best revenge. But just as I spied the perfect balding prey and began to tug down the zipper on my blue and white polka-dotted Old Navy sweatshirt of seduction, I had a vision of what it must have been like during the glory days of Warhol's Studio 54 when gaggles of desperate starfuckers waited for hours to hummer down on bouncers just to try and get in for a glimpse of Warhol and his poppered-up Pop Art posse. They usually failed. Thanks, but no thanks I thought as I zipped my dignity back up. After resolving that fate hadn’t crossed mine and Andy’s stars that day, I walked over to another of the current gems showing at Grand Palais, T.A.G., a showcase of over 150 Tag and Graffiti artists. More bloated and barricaded lines that by this time I had ceased brainstorming to surpass. Tired, defeated and harboring about as much self-pity as a stood up bride on her wedding day I turned around to slink quietly off and Ophelia myself in the Seine when divinity intervened. Across the street from Grand Palais lays it’s little sibling, another gorgeous exhibition space, Petit Palais, and within it was just the thing to unmake my brown eyes blue: William Blake: The Visionary Genius of English Romanticism.

I knew fate had lured me to the right place when, standing in line to buy my ticket, I looked over to my right and saw William Hurt – yes, that William Hurt – deeply involved in sketching the remarkable first floor ceiling frescoes.

The Accidental Tourist indeed.

As I made my way downstairs to the collection I could not help but think how proud my former thesis advisor Dr. Dorothy Clark would be of me at this moment, on my way to pour over the remnants of William Blake, English Romantic poet, artist, engraver and visionary extraordinaire. I was an English major in college and it was in Dr. Clark’s seminar Literary Responses to Evil (an uplifting semester as you would imagine) that Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell first came into my life. Not that I understood many of his brain twisting axioms at the time - “Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdened air; /Hungry clouds swag on the deep” WTF??? - but it gave me a grittier taste of Blake than I’d experienced in my previous British Romantics courses in which Blake, writing at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, was usually lumped in with the daffodil frolicking and elegiac Wordsworth, the whiny, melancholic and lovesick Keats and the classical myth chasing Italophile Shelley. Not to take anything away from this genius crop of poesy makers but as many critics agree William Blake transcends categorization.

Certainly there are Romantic conceits in his poetry but Blake’s vision was far more complex – and ridiculed - than many of his contemporaries. He was shameless and unwavering in voicing his blatant social, political and religious views in his work. Blake was a radical rebel with tremendous causes that lead much of the public and his contemporaries not only to assume him mad but, as is often the curse when the best of minds are born ahead of their time, Blake achieved minimal fame and lots of shame during his days because much of his work was sexually, religiously and politically explicit (truly, a man after my own heart). Blake was a Dissenter from the Church of England, held an audacious belief in racial and sexual equality, supported both the American and French Revolutions, imagined his own mythology, practiced vegetarianism, and reported having visions in which he was visited by God and the archangels. Okay, so this last bit is a little kooky but surely it doesn't render him ripe for a lobotomy.

Despite his eccentric reputation and the lack of recognition that plagued his artistic life, Blake relentlessly communicated his progressive beliefs through poetry and used his unparalleled skills as an artist and engraver to literally “illuminate” his work. Here I must note that the word genius is one that is often misused but in Blake’s case it is synonymous with his name. In 1788 he invented a new method of engraving termed “illuminated printing” and in 1795 he created a mode of painting called “portable fresco.” Forgive my crude attempt at technical explication but the former, inspired by the Medieval illuminated manuscript, was a process whereby Blake wrote or etched the background of a design backward (because a mirror image is produced when printing) onto a copper plate using acid resistant varnish. After the image had dried Blake treated the plate to varnish so that his design remained standing in relief. The copper plate was then inked over, pressed and finally hand-decorated with watercolors. This resulted in beautiful imagistic art but was an expensive and time consuming process that only allowed for a few printed copies of a given text. The latter Blake invention, “portable fresco,” was a method in which he MacGyvered together pigment, animal glue, lead, white chalk, water and Indian ink to create a given design. Again, genius, but a time consuming process that resulted in a limited number of available copies.

The fruits of these brilliant inventions and a myriad of other Blakean creations are set against minimalist white-walls, wood frames, glass display cases and adorned with various Blake quotes at this excellent exhibition. Donations from such astute archives as The British Museum, The Fitzwilliam Museum, The University of Glasgow and The Tate Britain give patrons an extraordinarily comprehensive mind’s eye view of the visions of an incomparable master. The exhibition commences with simplicity, in particular early portraits of Edward III, and builds up to a fantastic crescendo of mindblowingly fine work. To be quite honest, I felt like everything on display was a crescendo and that even if my mouth were stitched up my jaw would have forced the stitches out to drop. Precious, original versions of Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell are propped open to select pages and shown along with some of their original copper plates. Stunning oil on wood portraits of great Blake influences Chaucer, Milton, Dante, and Voltaire are on view and complimented by beautiful interpretations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tale "Pilgrims” and several dreamt-up images of damned souls from Dante’s Inferno. Blake was also a master at depicting darkly prophetic biblical, religious and mythological scenes. He did astonishing illustrations for the Book of Job, a famed interpretation of the 1st century sculpture Laocoon as an English, Hebrew and Greek annotated print with the central figures re-imagined as Jehovah and His Two Sons Satan and Adam and, shown ominously side by side are The Approach of Doom, Joseph Ordering Simeon to Be Bound, Our End is Come and Scene from the Last Judgment (took me right back to Dr. Clark's Evil course all over again). My personal favorite? Several brilliant “illuminated” panels from America: A Prophecy and Europe: A Prophecy, a vivid juxtaposition of images with a graceful yet dynamic and almost comic bookesque energy.

The exhibition culminates quite uniquely in a fitting honor to a man who was without his due during his lifetime. Two portraits of Blake by Jean Cortot are on display as well as a haunting Study of a Head inspired Blake by the austere Francis Bacon. An area is set up so that patrons can sit and watch Jim Jarmusch’s “Dead Man” starring Johnny Depp as a hero named after – who else? - William Blake. And in an interesting audio compliment to the spectacular visuals patrons can listen to two bard-influenced Patti Smith recordings, My Blakean Year and The Augurs of Innocence.

Oh yes - I almost forgot to mention that Blake’s Macbeth-inspired Pity is part of the collection. It stopped me particularly because I noticed it was the first work I’d come across with an elaborate - rather than a simple wood - frame. As I looked at it I reflected on the torrent of low emotion that had carried me here in comparison to how rapt and tranquil I felt now that I was in the midst of this Blakean bounty. I smiled at the tempting white cherub hovering above me as she looked down at woman laying prostrate beneath the nude baby in her grasp before I turned away thinking, Pity - suddenly I haven't energy to bear her anymore.

William Blake: The Visionary Genius of British Romanticism

April 2, 2009 - June 28, 2009

Petit Palais, Musee de Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008

Open everyday from 10 am to 6 pm, closed Monday, late opening Thursday until 8pm

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