JEF AEROSOL

JEF AEROSOL – AND THE STENCIL BECAME ROCK'N'ROLL

July 2017 – 5633 words

COURSE

We can't talk about your career without talking about music. To understand how you became an artist, we have to talk about American counterculture as a gateway to imagination and dreams…

I was born in 1957, and I often say that each decade of my youth was significant in several ways. The 1950s saw the development of the electric guitar and the birth of rock and roll: Elvis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis… At the same time, the Teddy Boys emerged in England, one of the very first youth movements, embodied by a particular spirit, vocabulary, style, and musical tastes. This rebellion against the previous generation marked a transition after the post-war period. During the interwar years, jazz crossed the Atlantic, of course, but in Europe it only appealed to a handful of aficionados, a certain elite, whereas rock reached a large segment of the working class.

I was ten years old in 1967, the Summer of Love in California, and the blossoming of Flower Power, the hippie movement, and psychedelia. In '68, the May events shook our country. I was just a kid, but I remember it quite well. The '60s and early '70s, the period of my adolescence, saw profound changes in society, whether politically, socially, or culturally. We witnessed the explosion of Pop art, the fight against the Vietnam War, the struggle for women's rights with Angela Davis, and the fight for civil rights with Martin Luther King. Rock became pop; all those instruments from the blues blended with other influences and became more sophisticated. The Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Stones, and Pink Floyd explored new territories and released concept albums. Record players were traded for hi-fi systems. I was too young to follow what was happening in the 1950s, but the 1960s and early 1970s hit me hard. I never recovered from the upheavals of those vibrant decades. Even today, my life and my artistic practice are deeply influenced by that period.

1977 was the year of the punk wave. At twenty, I was almost too old to fully experience it, but this period would change everything. Punk, just ten years after psychedelia, "set the record straight" and profoundly impacted my aesthetic and musical tastes.

Having been a rather shy and reserved child, I threw myself into these movements almost without those around me realizing it, and I found in them a right to dream, to poetry, and to a certain androgyny. When my parents gave me a guitar for my twelfth birthday, I wore my fingers out for hours learning songs by Dylan, Cohen, or Polnareff, and I spent hours with my friends playing those few chords, gateways to dreams and freedom.

In fact, your first visual shocks are linked to this love for music, particularly through 45 rpm record covers, with icons like Dylan, Morrison or Hendrix, but also their stencil graphics.

My first artistic steps and stirrings weren't strictly musical. I did get my first guitar at twelve, and I was always influenced by what I heard on the radio, and later by 45 rpm records, but images were just as powerful: for as long as I can remember, I've always drawn and painted. I can still picture my big box of Caran d'Ache pencils and my gouache paints: they were sacred tools to me! I loved art classes in primary school: if school had closed at midnight, I would have stayed, just to paint or draw again and again! This taste for images was therefore there, alongside music, and even before. Later, the times, as well as my personality, came to be embodied by artists whose music interested me as much as their image or their album covers. When I was young, I didn't really pay much attention to Dylan's lyrics (which I often struggled to understand). What captivated me was something else entirely: his voice, which everyone hated, his musical style (he wasn't a particularly good guitarist or harmonica player, but the overall effect was absolutely brilliant). Above all, he had that face, that mop of hair, that swagger, and he dressed incredibly well. For me, Dylan was an absolute work of art! I believe that a work of art isn't necessarily a painting. While I have gaps in my art history knowledge, I can say that I've seen works of art all my life, whether through album covers, posters, or people in the street whose looks fascinated me. Sitting on the subway in New York and London and fixing a mental image of what surrounds us, of those urban landscapes, of those people with their incredible looks, is like creating your own film, your own exhibition…

How did you move from these early stages to a more developed practice of visual art? What was the influence of more subversive collectives like Bazooka, which were developing in France at the time?

At that stage of life, between fifteen and twenty-five, each year counts for three. You're developing your personality and tastes for life. I found a drawing of a cat from that period, which I had signed and dated. Signing it shows that subconsciously it's a work you want to keep, and that you're accepting the "possibility" of being an artist. The second step is to show them, to consider that they might interest others, and to embrace this emerging status. In middle and high school, you find outward signs of artistic expression on bags or notebooks, the first signatures. In the midst of the hippie and folk revival era, I made small bracelets and other leather pendants that I then sold, using pebbles, nails bought from the blacksmith, and Breton symbols like triskeles or ermines. When I arrived at university in September 1975, I was still very much a "dreamy" hippie. In '77, the punk movement shook me up, but it wasn't until 1979, after my year back in Ireland, that I broke quite radically from the hippie folk scene I'd previously been involved in. I cut my hair, and I started wearing leather and boots.

The punk movement allowed what had been forbidden; it allowed a reconnection with the urgency of rock, with immediate pleasure, with a certain rage that had faded throughout the 70s. Music, clothes, images: punk marked the end of the decade. The Bazooka collective peppered the pages of Libération with incredible drawings that electrified me. They also designed record covers, like that famous Asphalt Jungle single and the album Skydog Commando. The first Sex Pistols album was designed by Jamie Reid: everyone knows that famous cover. Their single covers disseminated a basic, chaotic, photocopy aesthetic. cheap.

Norms and principles are collapsing, and the definition of a work of art is shifting. While in 1979/80 I was creating precise, meticulous, poetic-surrealist pen and ink drawings, what spurred me on in the press, on record covers, and concert posters was the complete opposite. Gradually, I abandoned this style to experiment with image manipulation, driven by a sense of urgency, a "do it yourself" ethos, and a certain aesthetic violence. I manipulated, pasted, cut, used photo booths, Polaroids, and especially photocopying and Letraset halftone screens. I was heavily influenced by the post-punk spirit and the imagery of 1980-81, which saw the birth of new wave. The ska revival and "two-tone" imagery were also influences. So, I was collecting photo booth pictures and practicing "copy art" (or xerography) when, in the early 80s, I started showing my work to bands who wanted to release singles and needed visuals. My first public production was a poster for the band Private Jokes in 1981, printed in 500 copies and pasted up in the street. By signing it, I acknowledged its authorship and I was very proud, but I wouldn't have really considered myself an artist at the time. I was just creating images.

How did you then transition to an urban practice?

As part of my studies, I spent a year living in Ireland in 1978/1979. Everything was mixed up there; a guy who played the bagpipes one evening might be playing punk rock the next. You could work at the post office with a green mohawk, whereas in France you'd get stared at for an earring, or a tattoo would be a deal-breaker at any job interview. Returning to France, I put away my acoustic guitar and listened only to rock 'n' roll, while continuing to create images. At the same time, I pursued my English studies. Why English? Because it's the vehicle for my passions: music, art, literature… What I love comes from England or the USA. After a bachelor's and a master's degree, I passed the CAPES (a competitive teaching exam) in 1982 (almost by accident!) and joined the French National Education system with the simple goal of earning a living, being independent, paying my rent, and being able to go on vacation. So, I arrived in Tours as a trainee teacher in the autumn of '82, without knowing a soul. Cutting ties with my Nantes upbringing, I felt fresh, free, liberated from all constraints, and ready to take on this new life. I immediately immersed myself in the rock scene: concerts, pirate radio stations, record shops, music stores, booksellers, clubs, and musicians' bistros. It was both a period of excess of all kinds and the discovery of a new life. Quickly, I wanted to assert my need to create images and to make it known. An enlarged photo booth strip cut from a piece of cardboard: my first stencil was born. I spray-painted it all over old Tours one night in the autumn of 1982, as if I were throwing my business card across the walls.

THE PRACTICE OF THE STENCIL

The stencil is the art of repetition. Should we find in your choice an echo of Warholian screen prints and Pop art?

My previous images were photomontages: I started with photos, cut them out, and transformed them. The Private Jokes poster was made up of two flat colors because that was the style at the time. At a Clash concert in 1981, Futura 2000 was spray-painting on stage: it was the first time I'd ever seen a can of spray paint and someone using it to create art. I'd known the Clash since their first album in 1977; they had a stronger following than the Sex Pistols, being more intellectual. There were lettering stencils on their clothes, Pollock-esque dripping on Mick Jones' shirts. That led me to stencils, as did seeing photos of Ernest Pignon-Ernest's work. I must also have seen Zloty's Ephémères once in Paris, around the Les Halles market. But the Warholian idea of repetition was also present.

What stencil technique did you use?

In 1982, we didn't have the tools we have today, so I worked with a simple stencil. Indeed, without computers or scanning equipment, you had to use tracing paper to determine the areas of light and shadow, and then use photocopying services to enlarge the prints. You'd hand in the original one day and pick up the copies the next, without access to the machines. I realized then that after going through the photocopier, my most nuanced photos came out only in black and white, because the toner was deposited in one spot or another, without any gradation. This helped me a lot in understanding how to then paint my whites and blacks. The arrival of the first photocopier that enlarged the image was extraordinary because, although the print was still A4, you could go from a photo booth image to roughly the actual size of a face. From that moment on, I made slightly larger stencils, collecting cardboard from supermarkets. I started by using large carpet cutters and Altona spray paint, the kind meant for painting mopeds… A few months later, I added a background to be able to subtly adjust the colors in the face. This simplicity also allowed me to work faster: with a can in each pocket and a stencil under my arm, creating a painting took a minute. The slogan I came up with at the time was "Quick and easy," which later became the title of the first book on street stencils, published in 1986 by Alternatives (a book co-produced by Agnès B). I developed my technique quite quickly, starting with my self-portrait: a mistake I made by analogy with a photocopier (where moving the original resulted in distortions) led me to discover that slightly moving the stencil while painting could alter the shape of the image. People began to associate me with this idea, and it became my trademark for a while in the 80s.

How do you decide between stenciling and collage?

It's primarily a practical difference: when flying abroad, I can't carry spray paint or large stencils. When I started out, I traveled without a specific project, so to keep my luggage light, I simply carried a box of powdered wallpaper paste in the bottom of a suitcase, along with stencils folded from very thin paper. Furthermore, in certain places, like the Great Wall of China, painting is out of the question. If you're caught in the act, a piece of paper can be easily removed; it's not considered damage to a historical monument. The visual effect is practically the same, and the differences can be positive: the fact that time alters the collage, for example, is aesthetically interesting. I don't like the words "legal" or "vandal": "legal" because it refers to the legal system or a certain "official art," but "vandal" even less because it suggests the idea of knowingly destroying public property. On the contrary, I love the city and I hope for a reappropriation rather than a destruction of these spaces.

The act of spray-painting itself is not neutral. It evokes social protests and leaves a lasting mark on the wall with a single stroke.

This tool is incredible. Technically, it adapts to all surfaces, and culturally it has become a rebellious tool, an artistic weapon, initially used more for slogans than for stencils. Blek had started using stencils the previous year; Hugo Kaagman had been doing it in the Netherlands since 1977, but otherwise, it was virtually nonexistent. In the United States, spray paint was used for tagging, but without any artistic or realistic considerations.

How did you gradually move from working with color, inspired by pop art, to working with black and white and silhouette?

It wasn't a deliberate choice; my first stencils were in black and red. Influenced by Warhol's screen prints, I continued with other colors. I played a lot with accumulation and repetition: starting with my portrait, I created a "framework" using typography, arrows, chains, or dotted lines, defining an edge that allowed me to work by composing the image, creating a dynamic, a graphic balance. If you delve into the works from that period, there are many monochromatic palettes, with dominant reds or blues. Gradually, this 80s aesthetic faded, and I progressively focused on the subject matter, because all those colors and shapes were interfering with what I wanted to convey. I continued to reuse posters or record covers, but I was also developing my own visual vocabulary. This transition happened gradually, particularly during the decade from 1995 to 2005 when I spent significantly more time playing music than creating stencils. My return was greatly aided by the sudden rise to fame, in the mid-2000s, of Anglo-Saxon figures like Banksy and Shepard Fairey. You could almost say I opened a second chapter of my career, abandoning color and painting more life-size figures in black and white, with shades of gray.

When do you consider your work finished? It seems to consist of three dimensions: the stencil, the scriptural signature, and the graphic signature through the red arrow.

This is a question that often arose for easel painters, who tirelessly returned to their work to add a small touch or accentuate a shadow. The artwork may never be finished, and at some point, one must decide to consider it complete. The stencil solves this problem: the image is already prepared; after the paint is sprayed, the work is finished. My choice of medium stemmed precisely from this speed of execution, this "quick and easy" approach. In the street, the stencil is finished once the red arrow and signature are added.

THE MAN AND THE ICON

Your work focuses on human beings and particularly on the gaze, which leads you to say: “A dead person is a body whose gaze has gone out.” Could you explain how the gaze allows you to establish links between all your characters?

This statement doesn't take into account the blind people I've painted, whose eyes could never have lit up, yet who are very much alive. I chose this subject out of a need for contact and sharing. I believe that within the physical body, the eyes are the opening that allows us to see inside. We don't truly see a person until we meet their gaze: thus, having an averted gaze is a refusal to take the risk of communication. Painting figures in public spaces who look at passersby is both a way of signifying my presence and highlighting the gift of ubiquity conferred by painting in the street. When I create my self-portrait, I am present in several cities across several countries, even when I am no longer physically there. This provokes an encounter and a reaction. While preparing the stencils in the studio, I am the first viewer of my own work. It is therefore essential that it resonates with me, because I myself am being looked at by the gaze I have created. If it's my own work, this effect is like a mirror, but when it comes to celebrities, it becomes truly impressive. I start with a photo I didn't take, of Dylan or Hendrix, and I bring it to life through the sparkle in their eyes: the resulting presence is far more important than the drawing itself. Creating a presence, even a frozen one, is striking.

Indeed, you also follow in the tradition of portrait painters, putting the human being in the foreground. What makes you choose your unknown models, from geishas to dancers?

I don't differentiate between someone famous or not. The photo I choose simply has to move me. Most of the time, this choice is initially a matter of chance. I stumble across a photo of a little girl with a stuffed animal online. If it touches me, I wonder if the image can be stenciled. If it's a very well-known photograph, I'll either refrain from using it or contact the photographer. Conversely, if I can't find their name, I'll use it. I'm very satisfied when I take the photograph myself, because I then feel like I'm the author of the entire process, but I also know that if I did only that, I'd spend an enormous amount of time on it, because I'm not a photographer and don't have the proper equipment. My motto remains "Quick and efficient," and even though I've sometimes had photographic aspirations, it's still very time-consuming. I wish I had several lifetimes to delve deeper into all these techniques!

The choice of portraiture is particularly visible in your interior design work, as you use the frame to "cut" people's faces as closely as possible.

I consider myself a photographer. I believe, without being pretentious, that I have a photographer's eye. I capture the image with my eye: I frame it, I think about lines, proportions, perspectives, the interplay of masses and fields. But I don't really know how to use a camera or adjust the focal lengths. I take photos without a camera, often using images taken by others. Framing is only relevant to my exhibition work, although in the street there can also be a predefined framing when painting large murals.

Could you elaborate on your choice to represent icons: is it because they allow us to appeal to a collective memory common to the greatest number of people?

On the contrary, not everyone will recognize them, and that's precisely what I like. During the Bièvre gatherings, I had painted a seated Hendrix that had been erased. While I was painting another figure, a little old lady walked by and said to me:

“Ah, so you’re the one who did these paintings. The little black man sitting at the end of the sidewalk, he’s not there anymore. They erased him. He was my friend when I went to walk my dog and buy my baguette, it’s a shame.»

This woman had never seen Jimi Hendrix, but this painting had created a presence in the neighborhood, becoming fully integrated into the everyday landscape. Hendrix or not, she had first and foremost seen a human being. My culture allows me to depict people I care about, and I like the idea of establishing a connection with the only guy in the neighborhood who will know an obscure figure, like Nick Drake. It's the same when it comes to clothing items, which are a matter of fetishism. While most people will find it ridiculous, I know there are a few of us on the planet who venerate these little things. That's enough for me to connect with others. It's these connections that shape us, build us up, and keep us from falling apart.

How do you explain that “The unity of images, through the medium and the tool, flattens the differences” and allows us to draw up encounters between figures that have nothing to do with each other.

My Shh! It's a self-portrait, but all over the internet it's labeled as Salvador Dalí because of his bulging eyes, so some people get confused. Nick Drake looks a bit like Jim Morrison, so a lot of people also mistake my Drake stencil for a Morrison portrait. When I started painting, it would never have occurred to me to consider celebrities and unknowns as the same. But over time my perspective has evolved, and I realize that the differences might not be as great as they first appear. Anonymous or iconic, it doesn't matter; they are, above all, human beings. I paint them all the same way: life-size and in black and white, without making any distinction.

You say that “Politics sometimes takes precedence over a more poetic dimension; we must not forget that an image appeals to sensations more than to feelings.”  Contrary to politically engaged street art, do you think that when faced with a work of art, the heart should take precedence over the brain?

Perhaps I didn't use the right word, because it's impossible to separate sensation from feeling. There's no separation between heart and brain. Where would the boundary lie? Whether listening to music, reading a book, or contemplating an image, emotion will precede any intellectualization or understanding of a concept, although this needs to be qualified, as this emotion can also originate from the concept itself. However, one must be careful not to create pathos simply to elicit tears for good intentions or to garner sympathy.

I am very interested in so-called committed art, while also being extremely wary of it.

THE CITY AS A CRUCIBLE OF SHARED MEMORY

Your work also stands out for its decidedly urban aspect. How do you envision the city as a space in the creation of your works, particularly through the disappearance of the frame?

I prefer to speak of contextual art rather than urban art, because it can be a village in the countryside, an interior, or a semi-public space. If you isolate a wall as an entity, it becomes a painting. A wall is a context because it is located on a street in a neighborhood of a city in a country; it has a color and reflects light in a certain way. It is the context that brings a work to life. A work on canvas is static, even if it evolves significantly over time. In the street, from the moment the painting is finished, the work has already changed: the light is no longer the same, it will rain, the passersby will be different. It is not a work in the street; the street is an integral part of the work.

With your mural in Place Stravinsky, the City silence, you become a muralist, and make the ephemeral work permanent.

I make a big distinction between what's called "street art" and muralism. wall It is, most of the time, larger than what we usually do. We always paint it with authorization and sometimes quite a lot of logistical work. It's also a different kind of work because it presupposes a format—the edges of the wall—that defines the frame. I tried to situate this work within the context of Place Stravinsky and this heart of Paris, but a mural of this scale isn't conceived in the same way as a furtive, often very ephemeral work. Because it's official, it takes its place in the landscape permanently.

I don't mind creating murals like these, however, I think we need to be wary of gigantism: what we wanted to do by bringing art to the street was to bring it to people and demystify it. If we offer them giant murals, we certainly transform the street into a museum, but by adopting some of the negative aspects of museums, such as the official or intimidating nature. Furthermore, I think the element of surprise is important, and if every building's gable end becomes a mural, we won't even look at them anymore. I'm glad I was able to do the Shh! And I have other large murals planned, but I often look for smaller walls. It would bother me if people's reaction to my work was limited to its size: I want them to be moved, but without that emotion being generated by gigantism.

Your work doesn't preclude collaboration with other artists, such as near the Européen in Place de Clichy, where you created several stencils alongside Jérôme Mesnager and Mosko. How has the city encouraged these collaborations with other forms of mural art?          

It was a bit of a coincidence. Jérôme and I have known each other since 1984, and we went through a period with Miss.Tic, Speedy Graphito, Paella?, etc., which allowed us to participate in many events together. Friendships were formed, paths diverged… We belong to the generation of street artists from the early 80s, which creates a bond between us. But collaborations often happen by invitation: for L'Européen, it came through the semi-nonprofit gallery Ligne 13, which we all frequented. It was the gallery that contacted us for the Rififi aux Batignolles festival. We first painted this theater facade in 2006, before doing it again in 2010.

RELATIONSHIP TO MUSIC

Your stencils showcase a huge number of musicians, whether it be traditional music, from the accordion to the fado of Amália Rodrigues, or icons of the 60s.

I regret that there aren't more musicians in the streets, that they aren't given a more prominent place. I started playing traditional music by busking: in Brittany, we played on terraces, directly engaging with people. I love street music: for me, painting an accordionist on a wall is also about recreating an atmosphere like the one that existed twenty years ago or more. France has preserved some traditional music, there are sometimes dances, but they are no longer the popular gatherings they once were. This is true for all street performers: I remember a time when John Guez gave acting lessons to passersby in front of the Centre Pompidou, while Mouna harangued the crowds a little further on, and magicians energized the audience with the sound of a barrel organ or a musette accordion.

You are not only a painter, but also a musician. Apart from music influencing your graphic work, what role has it played in your career and how has it resonated with your graphic evolution?

I played music seriously until 2005. Since then, the time I've spent painting has been too significant for me to continue pursuing it at the same level. For me, they were two separate things, which I rarely combined. With Open Road, I installed canvases at a few concerts, but the atmosphere we wanted to create wasn't related to my work. I think that movement always captures the eye more than stillness. In an exhibition, if musicians are playing in a corner, they monopolize the audience's attention, who then stop looking at the paintings, unless, of course, it's conceived from the outset as an overall scenography in which music and images play a role, or if it's a performance.

With Distant Shores, you place your work at the heart of Irish music: what is the importance for you of these traditional musics that you call “music of the soul”.

For me, there are two types of music: written music and orally transmitted music, which is a thousand times more significant geographically and temporally. The invention of musical notation is quite recent in human history and concerns a limited number of people and a limited type of work. When there is a score, it acts as an intermediary for the work that the musician will reinterpret. Conversely, for what I call "music of the soul," the transmission is direct, without any reference point other than the ear and the heart. This is the case with blues, fado, flamenco, traditional music, and also rock and roll. If I hum a song, I can do so because I have that music within me, because my father or the people in my neighborhood passed it on to me. It exists only because it existed once. If you need a written score to remember it, it means you haven't internalized it directly. Irish music in particular is played in sessions, at the pub. You play one day, then come back the next, until you find your pulse, Just like rock and roll. Rock is a blend of all these influences, ranging from the blues to white American music, itself originating from Scotland, Ireland, or France. Thus, in what Woody Guthrie sang, there were Irish influences, and a musician like Chuck Berry covered tunes by old bluesmen.

CONCLUSION: THE WORK IN TIME AND THE FIGURE OF THE SITTING KID

Your most famous stencil is the Sitting Kid. How has its meaning evolved throughout your career? By placing this character in a historically significant location like the Great Wall of China, are you seeking to situate your work within a long-term perspective?

The first time I painted it, I didn't know I'd keep it. It was just another stencil. Its advantage was being quite round, without taking up much space. Initially, it was a single layer, lacking a bit of white. You can even see in the film *The Art and the Way* that it's not quite the same stencil. I gradually grew fond of this little kid, probably because I myself experienced the effect he has on people. With his slightly sad and dreamy expression, he perfectly embodies my idea of Man in the city and in the world, a grain of sand in the vastness. The larger and emptier the wall on which he's placed, the more this aspect is accentuated.

On the Great Wall of China, it takes on incredible proportions. At no point did I intend to provoke anyone; I didn't feel I was committing a greater crime than anywhere else. It's true that when I place it in such a location, the postcard effect is there, and it allows you to appropriate—a little—the place. It's a tiny theft of a piece of humanity's heritage. I did it to feel alive, because I don't want to imagine that having been there exists only in my own memory. I myself am nothing, but by placing a small grain of sand on this immense thing, it's as if I've become part of it.

This ties in with the artist's need for recognition that you were talking about.

I am aware that with Shh!, One of my works has almost become a Parisian landmark. There's something a bit pretentious about this approach, but I think ego exists on an individual level. For an artist, it's almost become a cliché, but the ego of the car salesman or the baker is just as present. This need to exist is inherent to human nature, which cannot escape a kind of competition. You have to position yourself in relation to others: if you completely forget yourself, you cease to exist even for yourself.

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