JÉRÔME MESNAGER
A WHITE SILHOUETTE TO LIGHT UP THE STREET
TRAINING AND FIRST STEPS
You were a student at the Boulle school: could you tell us about your training and how you became a painter?
The Boulle School is a school where you learn the crafts of furniture making and woodworking, but also decoration, cabinetmaking, and interior design. There are also excellent courses in drawing, art history, and modeling… This combination is fantastic for developing artistic awareness while learning practical skills. I think it's important to be familiar with techniques like these to be able to become an artist. It kept me from getting bored in a traditional school setting.
Before creating the character of the White Body, you were already painting a lot, especially more abstract figures. Was this a search for reference points?
At the time, I was painting abstract works, using fluorescent colors or composed of paint splatters, with a strong emphasis on color. It was the 1970s, and I was inspired by artists like Robert Malaval and Yves Klein, a generation of painters who embraced rock culture, comic book culture, and a more intellectual one. When you start out in art, you gravitate towards what appeals to you: for me, that meant comic books and creating pleasing paintings. It was within this world that the White Body could emerge.
You then perform in which you are disguised as a ghost, which will later lead to the birth of your character.
Around 1981, I was invited with some friends to a festival in Avignon. There were many artists and a large audience, for whom we needed to create things in motion, things that could be seen. The action was as important as the finished painting. At the time of the Free Figuration movement, each opening featured a large canvas that everyone painted together. It was a tradition that we find somewhat in Street Art, when several artists paint the same wall on the same day. It wasn't a traditional exhibition; people came to watch us paint: performances emerged in this context. I would arrive disguised as a kind of ghost, a white figure, but alive. I painted my body white, and we would go and perform our actions in factories and other abandoned places, mainly marginal and underground locations. Many of them no longer exist today, like the Michelin factory in the 17th arrondissement.th district of Paris.
THE WHITE BODY
In 1983 you painted your first character, in what context was this?
It was for an event with the Zig-Zag collective in the savannah, which brought together dancers, musicians, sculptors… We set up on the Petite Ceinture railway line, near Rue Belliard, close to the Porte de Clignancourt. There was a disused space there, but it was visible from the street. Unlike enclosed spaces, passersby could see us. That's why I chose to paint my figure in white. I chose that color because the wall was very dark and the space very poorly lit. We needed something luminous. It's the same as in the catacombs. As soon as the light from a lamp hits white, it creates a flash, like fluorescent light. White in a dark place is anything but natural. Since the event was public, there were a few journalists there, which allowed us to preserve the memory of the moment through photographs. We continued these Zig-Zag days for two years afterward, before I went back to painting my White Bodies on my own. It's important to remember when something first appeared. When I was painting it, I realized that this character was a good sign for moving forward because it allowed me to depict a huge number of different situations.
What are your sources of inspiration? We are thinking in particular of Renaissance paintings or mythology.
I quickly started thinking about interpreting old paintings, so I could make allusions to art history with my recognizable character. I really admire Rodin and Michelangelo. Sculpture is an interesting model because the marble body represents another way of depicting the white body. It shows me that I can suggest volume, and I'm interested in being able to work with both two and three dimensions.
Of this white body you say that it is a symbol of light, strength and peace: if it represents freedom, this figure is also imbued with dream and poetry.
The white body in the street is a symbol of peace; it runs, it is free. It is focused on dynamism, movement, life, love, and therefore freedom. This is somewhat the lesson Ben taught about street art: the simpler it is, the more effective it is. In large group exhibitions, it's essential that you immediately recognize who painted what. That's how I learned art history: at the Centre Pompidou, you can immediately tell what was done by Miró, Rothko, or Dalí. The lesson from the masters is that the public must know immediately what you do and who you are. Furthermore, you must be able to produce work endlessly while maintaining this distinctive, recognizable signature. This identification technique was a simple formula for initial recognition. It later allowed me to pursue a career without having to take on another job that consumes time and energy.
You paint on different types of surfaces such as wood, walls and canvas: how do you make the connection between them?
It depends on the medium, but also on the context. In the street, you have to work quickly. I can't get into anything too complicated, especially because it's impossible to erase and correct a mistake. You have to be good right away; the risk of going off track is much greater. On a canvas, thanks to the background color, it's very easy to correct yourself: you just go back over that color, which is a wonderful eraser. There's a margin for error on canvas that you don't have in the street.
Little by little, the White Body has become an icon of urban art, one of the few figures easily recognizable by passersby. Do you think its minimalist appearance gives it greater visual impact?
Some artists, like M. Chat or Invader, amplify this minimalism even further, creating instantly recognizable figures. I think, however, that one must be careful not to go too far and remain within the realm of Art. Behind the painting, life is at stake, and for me, it's crucial to always maintain the same enthusiasm for painting. The day you get bored, you have to stop; it's over. With this in mind, if I set myself the goal of painting larger formats, it's also to challenge myself. You must constantly seduce and re-engage your audience with a certain novelty. The White Body is never always in the same place, nor exactly the same.
PAINTING AND MEMORY
You paint the White Corps in a multitude of locations around the world, including places steeped in history like the Great Wall of China. How do you choose these locations? Is it a way of situating your character in time?
When I paint figures in front of the pyramids, I inevitably feel that my painting resonates with history, as in this case with Napoleon's famous quote. This resonance also lends value to the resulting photograph. In tourist areas, paintings don't last; they are more ephemeral. Photography then becomes the representation that outlives the painting itself—that's its greatest strength. I can post photos of walls that are important to me online. There are some I painted on thirty years ago, but whose image still resonates thanks to the photographs. Sometimes the painting itself lasts a very long time: for example, we recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the mural on Rue de Ménilmontant.
It's interesting to revisit the legacy of the White Body. Historically, this shadow projected onto walls evokes a sometimes dark past. One might think of the bodies trapped in the ashes of Pompeii, or the shadows of Hiroshima fixed by the atomic bomb. Symbolically—and this takes on its full meaning when you paint in French Guiana—the White Body also refers to penal colonies and slavery.
Since my approach is rather positive, I prefer to imagine it as a kind of ghost! However, in certain places, the weight of memory is obviously very strong. In the penal colonies of French Guiana, one inevitably realizes the tragic nature of the place's history. I painted a prisoner's body there, a ball and chain attached to his foot, to etch the memory of the place, thinking that if one day they removed the remains of the penal colony, all that past would disappear as well. It's true that the works I did there are imbued with a certain suffering. But I went there determined to paint in those places.
The shadows of Hiroshima have always been a reference point for Gérard Zlotykamien. But Ernest Pignon-Ernest's early works were black silhouettes placed on the Albion plateau, which was a nuclear test site. He acted in a way similar to Greenpeace members today, to protest by revealing the tragic nature of these silhouettes, a direct echo of those of Hiroshima.
In your autobiography you highlight the Parisian art scene of the 80s and 90s. This era seems to be illuminated for you by a few great figures, such as Jean-Pierre Le Boulch or Robert Malaval.
Jean-Pierre Le Boulch lived on Rue Hélène; he was a neighbor. He was fascinating, one of the first true stencil artists with incredible technical skill. In my opinion, his current incarnation is Artiste-Ouvrier, who pushes the concept of stenciling to its limits. Jean-Pierre Le Boulch published a magazine, Chorus, with people like Arman, César, Ben, and Fromanger. It was the period of Narrative Figuration. Robert Malaval was a very important painter who hasn't had an equivalent since in pure rock painting. More than references to music, his style evoked an era: the rock spirit, in painting, hasn't been all that common.
Could you elaborate on the creation of the Ménilmontant zoo in the 1990s?
I had met Nemo a year or two earlier, and we had already painted over a hundred walls together. The idea for the zoo came about in 1996 when we met Mosko & Associates. We had planned to paint a vacant lot separated from the street by a fence. The Moskos only painted animals, and Nemo already had the hippopotamus and the tiger among his stencils. Since we didn't want to include any humans, I had to paint an elephant and some penguins. People liked it until the day a cinder block was erected to hide the zoo. Then it was all eventually rebuilt. Once again, we have the photographs. We can still enjoy them because, in any case, these paintings were destined to disappear. But for the life of a neighborhood, these vacant lots that become squares or imaginary zoos are poetic. After the turn of the millennium, street art emerged, with a craze for large-format works that became widespread and global. One might wonder if there will soon be any room left for the eyes to breathe.
You name as many events and people as possible in your autobiography as if not to forget them; these achievements in abandoned places also mark a certain nostalgia for the memory of these places that are likely to disappear as reconstructions occur.
I also made this book to remember things myself. We forget so quickly. Sometimes we feel like we're looking nostalgically at an album of a vanished Paris, like with the photographs of Robert Doisneau or Willy Ronis. This social aspect is precious. In its own way, a dilapidated old street is a kind of diamond.
You are part of a long line of street artists. How have you experienced from the inside the changes brought about by the art market within street art?
It's the public that has changed a lot. They first accepted, then came to love street art. This also coincides with the arrival of the internet. People go out and photograph walls, take pictures of themselves. There's something about this hunt for images that's a bit like hunting Pokémon. «"I saw this wall, I photographed it before."» Because street art is ephemeral, whoever has an image of it has obtained it before the painting is erased. It can therefore be seen as a race for points, like what Invader does with the treasure hunt of his hidden murals.
What question haven't I asked you?
We haven't talked much about school walls. I think it's wonderful to paint for children. I've often had the opportunity to paint playgrounds, like the one at the school I attended as a child. Children are a potential audience, potential viewers. They have a power of observation that adults often lack. They truly look at what I do, with genuine interest, without thinking about selfies, Facebook, or the price. They're only interested in what's being depicted.
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