Mr. Cat
THE ETERNAL SMILE OF THE PERCHED CAT
COURSE
When did you start painting?
When I was 16, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was at Benjamin Franklin High School in Orléans, and after my second year of general studies, I switched to a specialized first year in electromechanics. There, I learned all the basic industrial techniques that allow you to work in a factory or as a lathe and milling machine operator. It was at that time that I met Michael Gaigné, with whom I created a graffiti crew called CP. For me, it meant not taking ourselves too seriously; for him, it meant... «"Criminal Power"». We started tagging in our high school, then in the neighboring high school, gradually developing occasional provincial graffiti. It was the early 90s.
Because I loved to draw, my parents enrolled me in evening classes at the School of Fine Arts. It was fun to draw nudes, and it impressed my friends. The Gaudier-Brzeska high school even kept the murals I painted when I was 16. One of my aunts then told me to apply to the School of Fine Arts. I passed the entrance exam, but to get in, I had to pass my baccalaureate, which I crammed for in two weeks to achieve an average of 11.3! I studied there for six years, at a time when there was still a Fine Arts/Communications division, which has since become a design specialization. There were many students and teachers from Paris who weren't necessarily successful and who came because of the distance. I hadn't understood how I was supposed to validate my studies: I wasn't eligible for a diploma after all those years, and I ended up helping other students get theirs. I wasn't aware of what I needed to do for myself. This can apply to the Cat: I have a solid foundation and I'm no longer a beginner, but I forbid myself from being aware of it.
Why did you choose Street Art?
When I started, street art didn't exist. So it wasn't a choice, but a reality that meant I was doing graffiti before the appearance of Mr. Cat. Mr. Cat appeared in 1997, at a time when graffiti was transitioning to post-graffiti, which is the intersection with street art. My character took shape during this period. When I was at art school, I wondered what I could do differently, because there were a lot of graffiti artists at the time. We were then at the beginning of the logotype, with people creating characters, which allowed them to have longer careers than those doing lettering, a specialized but niche art form. Street art appeared in 2000. This new art form came from the internet, which allowed it to flourish. When in Perched cats Chris Marker will talk about September 11th, he will lay a historical marker to define this period, or rather this change of period.
THE BIRTH OF THE CAT
Where did the character of Mr. Cat come from?
When I was a student, I gave drawing lessons to young children. One day, the Cat appeared in a little girl's sketch. I took a picture of her with her drawing to showcase her work. My boyfriend and I started reproducing it exactly on the walls: I liked its raw, art-like quality. It was also a change from my usual graffiti style: while graffiti artists generally strive for perfect lines, my style was more... flopper, ...letting myself be carried away by the movement. Around the time I started drawing the Cat, I was part of a collective with two friends called Beirut. One of them was a screen printer and typographer, very good at choosing colors. In fact, it was while repainting the kitchen with shades he had chosen that we found the yellow that would become the Cat's color. Through practice, I went from drawing that little girl to arriving at my current cat.
How would you describe it graphically? When Chris Marker talks about it, he compares it to Rosta windows, the large Soviet propaganda posters, both very simple and very powerful.
When you see the character of Mr. Cat, he seems quite simple, but he is actually very deliberate. Geometrically, he is an agglomeration of symbols: the circle, for example, represents unity. Ruedi Baur is a typographer who tries to understand how we arrived at writing. Letters all have archaic versions: thus, through the transformation of forms, typography can tell the story of humanity's evolution. I realized that I was fascinated by the circle. For example, I bought a calligrapher's work tool from a man who painted in the street because it was that shape.
I like the idea of an unconscious that I would mechanically reproduce and then project onto it a certain bestiality, a kind of wild abstraction. I confine myself to this style, but I believe there is still substance behind the paintings. If we take the motif of the Cat's hand, it is both a reference to Miró, who signed his work with his hand, and also an evocation of childhood, because its placement on the canvas is the first gesture that signifies "I exist." There can sometimes be Impressionist touches, which gives a surprising result, halfway between classical painting and comics. But this mixture defines my style. It also answers the question: why draw this character tirelessly? Because I find him intellectually perfect.
What are the artistic and popular inspirations for the character? One thinks of the Cheshire Cat from...’Alice in Wonderland but also to the Maneki Neko, the Japanese lucky charm.
At first, the Cat looked like a little mouse that had come out of the Cities of Gold with the mustache of the character André. We also find the references mentioned earlier, as well as the solar disk of the Egyptian god Ra. Aesthetically, even if some paintings seem very commercial and employ a pop and cartoonish style to resemble illustration, we can also find a choice of complementary colors that clash to create a strong visual contrast. Following in the footsteps of Keith Haring, I mix yellow, red, and blue to create electric contrasts.
Mr. Cat has spread everywhere, but what does he symbolize? We see this particularly in Perched cats The character appears in demonstrations, suggesting an awakening of political consciousness.
The Cat character is peaceful but also attentive. He has an intellectual stance. I wouldn't define him as political because that word evokes thought patterns for me that I don't find in my Cat. I prefer the term citizen. When I was a student, I dreamed of revolutions and I took part in demonstrations, but the violence and the stakes weren't the same, and they didn't yet have the global dimension they have today. My character followed in my footsteps by becoming a citizen and participating in these popular movements. He represented this desire to change the world, but without necessarily having solutions. By descending into the crowd, he gets closer to other humans. Thus, it is very symbolic to see him acquire wings.
Do you sometimes think that your character is a limitation in your artistic production? Is there a confusion between Thoma Vuille and M.Chat, between the artist and the character?
There's confusion between my name and the Cat, but for me, it represents my work, not my identity. Some see it as a nickname, but it's not my name. Perhaps at some point I'll want to create a painting that reflects me a bit more, and I'll become Toma Vuille again. But I don't want to run my Cat like a business; that's not what I want. I have this ability to move between the amateur and professional worlds, and that's what I like. I think I could paint something else, but because I'm attentive to people's desires, I continue to create what they want, even though I don't know if I would do it differently myself. If I were to radically change my style at some point, perhaps people wouldn't follow anymore.
CATS PERCHED, AN ENCOUNTER WITH CHRIS MARKER
You appear in Chris Marker's latest feature film, Perched cats. What was your vision for this project?
What's powerful about this film is that it's a work made at the end of his life. With all the restraint that characterizes him, I get the impression that Marker is revisiting his student days through Mr. Cat. He has a desire to change the world and leave his mark on it that corresponds to a vision of youth. Perhaps he also had a fantasized idea of the artist behind the Cat, a young Catwoman… At one point in the film, we witness the encounter between Mr. Cat and William in Egypt – Chris Marker's avatar – who supports my character and foreshadows the meeting of the personalities to come. The documentary, which until then had carried a desire for escapism and poetry, seems to return to the world of responsibilities and demonstrations. My Cat will become aware of the realities of the world, such as war and AIDS. The end of the film leads Chris Marker into what appears to be a reflection on his own death as he films the funerals of Marie Trintignant or Professor Léon Schwartzenberg.
Perched cats It is also a testament to France in the early 2000s. When did you first learn about the project?
The documentary can be seen as a poetic biography that speaks of all ages of life. Marker could afford to do that. The film, released in 2004, can be considered to have been shot between 2001 and 2003. This was right in the middle of that pivotal moment, a period that continues to this day. Marker was obsessed with the Third World War, which for him represented a kind of globalized world in which areas of extreme violence were linked to profound social upheavals. About a year before its release, a friend told me about this project, for which I provided some of the footage. I met Chris Marker at the end of filming, and I'm one of the lucky ones who can put a face to the name. I think he supported me because he felt he had to help Le Chat (The Cat), and he liked the idea of someone drawing smiles all over the street. I was waiting for something at the time, and meeting him allowed me to take the next step.
During the retrospective dedicated to you at the Pompidou Centre, you were able to draw a gigantic Cat on the forecourt. Did this performance make you become a more institutional artist?
This giant cat was institutional. Thanks to Marker, I gained significant media exposure and completed other major projects, which are often overlooked because street art didn't have the same audience back then. At the same time, I only participated when asked and without much ambition. Looking back, I realize that during that period I was in contact with cultural engineers and curators, which gave me an institutional image. Nevertheless, I quickly returned to projects on a human scale, only occasionally working with the public sector. For example, I collaborated with Francis Bueb in Bosnia when he was director of the André Malraux Cultural Center. I've developed a habit of working with individuals rather than institutions, because I thrive on personal connections.
BETWEEN STREET ART AND GRAFFITI
The perception of urban art evolved very quickly at the end of the 90s: in just a few years, we went from tagger to artist.
In the field of urban art, I'm one of the lucky ones. Tagging has become has beenPreviously considered an act of emancipation, graffiti is now seen as a form of offbeat advertising in public spaces. It's a somewhat outdated weapon. Street art is more readily accepted because it can beautify the streets and only gently disrupts the environment. A dialogue has developed with this art form, a dialogue that doesn't exist with tagging. These two worlds now coexist, each with its own distinct spirit. But this shift in perception is also linked to the market. The public respects what is valued because they don't otherwise know how to judge works and distinguish between what is and isn't art.
How does this opposition between Street art and Graffiti manifest itself?
This opposition manifests itself on several levels: there's an almost anarchistic violence in graffiti that isn't found in street art, which is more democratic. Recognition is gained, in part, by attacking the works of others, as is the case with my cat, which is regularly vandalized now that it's become a reference point. This form of defacement is called "toying": it's a provocation. It also depends on your legitimacy in the street: the legitimacy I have today in Paris didn't exist ten years ago. Another difference lies in the techniques used: while graffiti uses spray paint, street art uses collage, distortion, and stencils, which are somewhat more elaborate techniques. There's also a difference in audience: the graffiti artist does it for their friends, asserting their belonging to the group to gain recognition within it. The street artist is aware of the spectacle; they know they paint to be seen by people they don't know. This completely changes the dynamic.
Is there a turf war? Do you know that you can't always paint in certain places?
I couldn't paint on religious buildings, but I wouldn't mind painting on the Louvre. However, I find that painting aggressively on a wall is pointless. You have to take a stand in a place without damaging it, by honoring it. On a daily basis, though, there's a real turf war. All my accessible and iconic walls have been attacked. I manage to keep my mural at L'Écluse because it's historic. Yet I spend most of my time cleaning my walls, and since I'm not malicious, a lot of people try to trample me. In that case, the game is to repaint and repaint to hold out as long as possible. There's a certain segment of graffiti artists with whom it's impossible to reason, and who can be violent because they don't like street artists and the money they make from their work.
How do you choose your locations?
Generally, when it comes to walls that aren't on the street, I choose those that are abandoned or about to be demolished. For example, while walking under a bridge recently, I felt like painting there because there's an opening, a place no one is using, where I don't need any "deposit." Areas with a 45-degree angle are interesting because no one is going to set up shop there. The wall I'm talking about interests me because it's near the secondhand market, in a sort of in-between space at the intersection of the 18th arrondissement.e Paris and Saint-Ouen. But more and more, when I'm with my family, I just scout out walls I'd like to paint on. Simply visualizing my cat there is enough for me; it's almost conceptual street art. Now I no longer need to be rooted in the street; I can create more easily on canvas.
Mr. Chat and the Evolution of an Artistic Movement
Where does your character fit into this evolution of Street art?
Mr. Chat is taking advantage of the evolution of street art, even though I personally remain attached to graffiti. Today, an economy has developed around graffiti and urban art, making it possible to turn it into a profession, whereas before it was impossible. What bothers these early graffiti artists is seeing the difficulties they faced, while my generation has reaped the rewards. An artist like JR seems to come out of nowhere for these people. It feels as though, through his connections, he has almost become the artist of a globalized world, as demonstrated by the scale he achieved with the Louvre Pyramid. I prefer to stay in my lane, rather than try to fit into a role that isn't right for me.
Is there a logic of lineage in urban art?
Painting is an art form that allows you to improve through work. When you develop a cosmogony around your universe, you can attract people who start to follow you. I don't have a dominant message, but I have an independence that means I'm not a follower, even though I followed JonOne a little. You can find meaning in my work even if it doesn't create a revolution in thought. If the Cat hadn't taken off, we could have created a series of characters with a friend, because the idea of working together, each with our own unique style, appealed to me. But graffiti offers another form of lineage: when a name falls by the wayside, or you want to ride on someone's coattails, you can adopt their name. That's how I'm followed by Cat 2.
What does it mean to you to be an artist in our time?
Today, there are a thousand artists. How does that make sense, or is it just a series of opportunities? What saves me is telling myself I'm not a professional. I think that today you have to be a craftsman of art. Someone full of good intentions will be rejected if the public isn't expecting it. It's too risky to expose your innermost feelings. I think that very personal side is outdated, especially since I don't believe there are any geniuses left these days. Traditional painting is like a relic; tortured artists are gone, and our lifestyles are becoming more similar. People expect skill, rigor, a clean and attractive image. Why redo what's already been done? Being an artist means being able to produce quickly without going into a trance. The artists who dominate today are able to put together an exhibition in three weeks, which is the strength of their work. The last one to pull off such feats is Jeff Koons, that is to say, a financial wizard who became an art wizard.
For me, everyone is an artist, meaning a human being capable of self-expression. Everyone should be able to be an artist in order to escape. We have the technical means that allow anyone to create art. But what makes that art high-quality?
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