Graffiti - again

Yesterday I made three posts - I added a last one in the evening concerning an interview that Cuckoo made on her blog. To compensate, today I will make an easy one.. and also almost repeated.

I already some three months ago made a post on two painted storefront shutters. The shop (bar and restaurant) owners in a small street which is on my short way to or from Montmartre, rue Cavallotti (18th arrdt.), decided a few years ago to let some painters decorate their shutters. Their hope was probably to avoid some improvised and not really wished graffiti (or tags). Some quite professional jobs were done and the shutters were decorated “with the manner of…” different well-known artists. Already in my previous post I mentioned that only two shutters have since been left almost untouched, but all the other ones have been “tagged”. The other day, Sunday early afternoon, all the blinds were down rue Cavallotti. So, I could again take some photos of the almost intact “Modigliani” and “Vermeer”, but also of all the others. It’s today hardly possible to see to which artists the others were supposed to refer (you can guess Gauguin on one). Graffiti can be nice if well done on appropriate places, but I think this is really a pity. Some young painters have obviously been hired by the shop owners to make the original work – and quite nicely - and then some others have not seen the “value” of this. … and why were two left? By a specific respect for Modigliani and Vermeer? I doubt.

In another previous post, now some four months ago, I also showed some graffiti made elsewhere on other shop shutters. (In my previous posts I called the shutters “stores” – like it’s said in French. What’s the correct word? Shutter, blind…? I hope you have understood.)

Vermeer, Modigliani...

A couple of weeks ago (May 14), I made a patchwork of graffiti that I had found on some closed shop stores in my neighborhood. I left two out, as they differed too much from the other ones and certainly not could be considered as tags.

I found these two ones, rue Cavalotti. When I passed was a Sunday – the reason the stores were closed – and nobody around to ask, but I have later found out that the two examples I can show you here actually were part of a series of similar ones in the same street, made in the late 90’s and supposed to represent different famous painters. These two are the only ones still in fairly good shape.

I would believe that the idea was not have paintings made as pure copies, but rather “à la manière de”, as if they had been painted by X. Anyhow, I have desperately looked for what could have been the originals, but have not found them.

One is as a “Vermeer” and the closest I could among the – unfortunately – very limited number of Vermeer paintings was “Lady in Blue”. The same lady seems to be more or less copied, but the fantastic Vermeer touch is of course missing. Anyhow, I don’t think that the “store artist” pretended to make anything as well as Vermeer; could anybody ever?

The other one is a “Modigliani” and also here I failed to find the original. I found one with a woman sitting in a similar position, although the baby is missing, and another one with a lady with a similar haircut. That’s the closest I could come, but the number of Modigliani paintings is of course much larger than the Vermeer ones.

Please feel free to look for the originals. I may be wrong.