Blek Le Rat

After having studied the art of lithography and etching at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris,Blek Le Rat, then simply Xavier Prou, realised that if he wanted to pursue his artistic abilityhe would have to paint differently to Caravaggio, Monet or Picasso.

Inspired by some graffiti he had encountered in New York in the early 1970s and a distantchildhood memory of a Mussolini image he had seen on the walls of a building in Italyduring the sixties, he started to experiment with stencils. Then in 1981 he ambitiouslyroamed the streets of late night Paris stencilling black life-size rats along the walls of the14th Arrondissement. The rat, a symbol of the urban environment, is linked to the spread of contagious diseases. They are very clever survivors, widely distributed and problematic tohumans. The rat, an anagram of art, became Blek’s trademark and a metaphor of what wenow know as Street Art.

In the midst of the growing chaos that defines contemporary society, a new art form hademerged. It wasn’t just graffiti, Blek’s art had a social message, and the walls of Paris werehis canvas and the best place to exhibit. It was seen by everyone who passed by and therewas no admission fee. Advertising had changed forever.

The stencilled image could be used in endless reproduction. People would not have to walkinto a museum to encounter art; they could walk past it on their way to work. Whether theylike it or not was irrelevant, they didn’t pay to see it. And just like Warhol made us reconsiderthe myth of the painter, Blek says, “you don’t need to go to art school to make a stencil”The stencil has become the favourite means of expression in Urban Art, if not the verysymbol of the democratization of art.

If Street Art is by its very nature ephemeral, photographs are the sole witnesses, thememory keepers of what has become the biggest art movement ever and that is the point.Yet, the stencil is more than a young art technique; it has become an art form on its own.

Melbourne is the stencil capital of Australia so its fitting that Blek‘s first exhibition is atthe Metro Gallery in Melbourne. There are more than thirty works featuring iconic imagesstencilled on wooden panels, canvas, screen-print and photographs. “Le Ciel Est Bleu,La Vie Est Belle “, The sky is blue, life is beautiful, traces Blek’s oeuvre from the earlynineteen eighties through to his most recent works.

He may be the Godfather of stencil art, and Banksy may credit him for his early inspiration,but one thing is for sure, Blek is still ahead of his time.

SYBILLE PROU

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