Where Louis XIV Meets Crash and Blade
The French call it le graf or le tag: the style of urban artwork that was born nearly four decades ago on New York City subways and brick walls, influencing a generation of artists, self-taught and otherwise, across the world.
Now twin sisters, gallery owners in France, have organized an exhibition to celebrate the international stamp and cultural heft of what they prefer to call le street art, a genre that may have more establishment appeal abroad than it does in the United States. The show, “Whole in the Wall,” is billed as the largest exhibition of American and European street art from 1970 to today, and includes paintings, sculpture and photography.
“It’s youth, it’s movement, it’s lively,” said Chantal Helenbeck, who with her twin, Brigitte, runs the Helenbeck Gallery in Paris, which held a similar show in November.
Trailing parfum on a high-heeled tour of the installation before it opened on Thursday in a multistory studio space on Manhattan’s far West Side, the sisters explained what drew them to street artists. “They’ve changed my vision of my work,” Chantal Helenbeck said, speaking in French, “because they haven’t gone to school. They are taught by life, and you can see that in their work.”
Brigitte added, “They bring a joie de vivre to the gallery.” With works by pioneering Bronx graffiti writers like Crash and Blade and their descendants, including Blek le Rat, a Parisian known for his stencil work, and the anonymous British artist Banksy, the show offers a diaspora that many Americans may not know existed. It’s evolved far beyond early tagging (abstractly writing a name or word in spray paint or marker, usually illegally) to more painterly and figurative forms.