The artist JR opens the door to a new era in art history with his groundbreaking “JR The Chronicles of San Francisco” mural at the SF MOMA
Exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Floor 1, Roberts Family Gallery).
New technological advancements can have dramatic effects on society which can be analyzed through art history. While populations greatly benefit from these dramatic and fast-forwarding shifts, they can also create “left behinds” and isolation for a certain category of the society. Isolation has been observed by artists as a consequence of the first Industrial Revolution for instance which they documented depicting the sadness, the sense of immobility and the unfairness of the poorest as a result of modernism. Today, experts name the incredible development and impact of new technologies: The Fourth Industrial revolution (cell phone, artificial intelligence, internet, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, nanotechnologies, robotics etc…). Scientists and entrepreneurs are now foreseeing in a very near future (sometime less than a decade) a world without car, robots and algorithm evolution, some even talk about solving death[1]. There is no doubt that this exponential development of new technologies benefits humanity, improves quality of life, provides communication and commerce to developing countries but there is a growing concern that it also creates isolation, lack of interpersonal connection, loneliness and a great sense that some are benefiting more than others.
As a result, a growing gap seems to form not only between people and countries who can afford and engineer technologies and those who can’t but also between human beings themselves favoring the use of their cell phones to face to face encounters. In his book Homo Deus[2], writer Yuval Noah Harari states “those who miss this train (technology) will never get a second chance. In order to get a seat on it, you need to understand 21st century technology, and in particular the powers of biotechnology and computer algorithms. These powers are far more potent than steam and the telegraph, and they will not be used merely for the production of food, textiles, vehicles and weapons. The main products of the 21st century will be bodies, brains and minds, and the gap between who knows how to engineer bodies and brains and those who do not will be far bigger than the gap between Dicken’s Britain and the Mahdi’s Sudan.”
Contemporary artists and writers (as their 18th century predecessors did) document the current events and their consequences on civilizations but one particular artist aims at re-connecting people through his art and create a more inclusive experience for his audience and society. This French artist with the enigmatic name of JR is one of the most important contemporary street artist and activist of the time. Through his young and prolific career (he is only 35) he has managed to identify areas and categories of population deeply affected by isolation, sometime even fully forgotten by the rest of the world. Through his worldwide and provocative projects, JR not only shines a new light on these populations but also tries to re-connect them with the head of the wagon. Through his groundbreaking project series, JR has created new conversations between borders (between Mexico and US, Israel and Palestine), between the French outskirts (banlieues) and Paris, between a Mayor and outlaws, between abandoned slum mothers in Brazil and the media, between countryside and cities, between art and people not exposed to art, between generations … and more. JR sees art as a powerful mean to create awareness and change perceptions. In 2018 for the first time, he decided to set camp in the heart of a city famous for its tremendous impact on new technologies (home of the world biggest startups), its liberalism, and its homelessness: San Francisco. The results of his work, a unique and groundbreaking mural entitled JR The Chronicles of San Francisco will be opening at the SFMOMA on May the 23rd 2019 and is promising to portray the city like never before and to connect people in a unprecedented manner.
A parallel can be made between JR’s artistic ambitions and the artists of the 19th century who witnessed the birth of trains, railroads, industrial automatization as well as the renovation of Paris by Haussmann. These artists were part of a new art movement called “Realism”. While previous art movements such as Romanticism and Neo-Classicism embraced idealized academic beauty, exoticism and passion within art, Realist painters decided to showcase life as it was without embellishment. For the first time, painters portrayed real people in their everyday life (the peasants, the workers, the laundresses etc.…) and shed a new light on them, depicting them with pride and dignity. Realists were also influenced by Naturalist authors like Emile Zola who in his novels (l’Assommoir (1877), Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)for example) described the hardship of Parisian workers and conveyed the emergence of a social conscience (which was a huge departure from Romantism and Neo Classicism).
However, this new art movement was received with much uproar and indignation by the critics and was a true scandal at the time. Such “Grand Manner” and historical portraits (the highest style of art in academic theory) were traditionally reserved for important people of the society, aristocrats and leaders. The French Royal Academy of Art (ruled by classical aesthetics) rejected most of the Realists’ paintings submitted to its Salon which lead some artists like Gustave Courbet to create his own personal exhibition: “Le Pavillon du Realisme” in 1855 alongsidethe official Salon of the Academy. Later in 1863, the Academy rejected so many paintings (3,000 pieces rejected out of 5,000 submissions) for its Salon that Napoleon III created the famous “Salon des Refusés” or “Salon of the Rejected” which was an immediate success. However, it was such a departure from academic canons that it created much scandal and even physical fights in front of paintings such as Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe by Edouard Manet (1862). These controversial salons were important because it meant the opening of a new door towards modernism which saw the birth of the Impressionist movement.
Very much like the moderns, JR’s early career as a street artist embodied a fresh departure from what it meant to go to museums as JR took control of his own art exhibition and distribution. In 2001, for one of his first campaigns called Expo 2 Rue(Fig.1) or Sidewalk Gallery, JR simulated museum walls on the street of Paris spraying paint in the shape of art frames and illegally pasting black and white paper portraits of his friends from the “banlieues” (outskirts of Paris) printed with the use of a simple Xerox machine. Overtime with the weather conditions, the paper portraits would disappear but the frames remained, creating a new type of artwork and leaving the artist’s trace behind (Fig.2) as to say “I was here”. These marks are like artists’ signatures and can be traced back to the Paleolithic era, where the first cave artists left hand prints as to inform future generations of their presence in the world and consciousness of humanity. JR’s first street campaign was groundbreaking on many levels. First, it allowed JR to find a new way to showcase and promote his work and democratized access to art. Parisians were able to enjoy art without going to a regular museum and pay a fee. JR was able to exhibit his work outside of the highly criticized gallery and museum circles. He evidently did not sell any artwork but he certainly received a lot of attention and was able to launch his career. Second, it stressed philosophical art questions such as the longevity of a piece of art, its place within society, its purpose, its intent, its decaying and ephemeral aspect, etc.
These questions have tormented artists, scholars and art critics for ages. For instance, Realist Artist Gustave Courbet was influenced by his friend Charles Baudelaire (poet, art critic and philosopher) who urged him to convey the heroism of the modern life in his work, which he did by portraying workers and rural people from his village of Ornans and by portraying them with pride and dignity.
When confronted to Courbet’s The Stone Breakers(Fig 3) for the first time, critics of the time said that the artist chose and depicted ugliness. Baudelaire anticipated the scandal such a painting would produce in an article published on September the 21st, 1850 where he described Courbet’s painting as “domestic scenes as large as history paintings” and claimed that Courbet understood that art had entered a new era where paintings no longer would misguide future generations on the reality of their time[3]. Baudelaire stated “The era of Plumets is over, many are regretting Van Dyck’s garments, but Mr Courbet has understood that paintings can’t mislead future centuries on our true garment”. However, Courbet was not simply painting reality he was opening the door with Baudelaire to Modernism and what will be studied later as the philosophical concept of “reality of painting”.
So, the Realists defied the Academy’s established categories of painting and elevated regular and poor people to new ranks reserved until now to the aristocracy. Similarly, JR decided to elevate women from isolated regions to new status in his project “Women are Heroes” which was also the subject of JR’s first movie. Started in the slums of Brazil in 2008, the project was later extended to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kenya, India, Cambodia, and France (le Havre) and paid tribute to women who are the true heroes of our societies, but are victims of abuse, war, political or religious fanaticism. The slums of Rio de Janeiro are the epitomes of isolation, often fully cut from the rest of the world, inhabitants are struggling to survive. At 26-years-old, JR and his team traveled to Favela Morro da Providencia and met with these women, got to know them and heard their stories, stories of dead children victims of gun violence. He gained their trust and photographed their faces. Working in difficult conditions, with steep hills and unsteady buildings JR covered the entire slum with these women’ eyes (Fig. 4 and 5). These gigantic black and white photographs of worried, harsh, questioning, sad, proud gazes covered the whole hill almost overnight, visible from far away. The media then wondered what was happening and tried to get in touch with JR who offered no explanation and promptly directed them to talk directly to the women from the slum. Brilliantly, as did the Realists, JR gave these women the treatment they deserved on a piece of art (they were depicted in a monumental and powerful way) but also as human beings by giving them a voice. Finally, media paid attention to their predicament and JR managed to restore a dialogue that was broken between the slum and the city. But more than anything, just like he did at the beginning of his career in the street of Paris, JR brought art in places where art didn’t have a place to exist and where people had never been exposed to art.
JR, by introducing art in these remote places raises the philosophical question of the purpose of art and what it means to be exposed or not exposed to it. It’s a vast question and scholars like anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss[4]have tried to establish definitions of what visual arts’ purposes are, from expression of imagination, to healing purposes, to propaganda, to social change, to legacy to future generations, to historical trace of our civilizations and more… JR seems to think that the purpose of art is to produce thinking and change perceptions. His entire body of work aims at proving it. But just like Strauss’s stated “The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions” JR seems to want to raise ethical and philosophical questions and let the direct stakeholders answer them. While it is not new for an artist to travel the world to report on oversees situations; French Neoclassic painter Antoine-Jean Gros, for example, traveled with Napoleon Bonaparte during his military campaigns and was instrumental to Bonaparte’s propaganda. In contrast, JR vigorously refuses any corporate sponsorship or political affiliation.
From the beginning of his carrier JR seems to want to create art on his own terms and disrupt the establishment. First of all, as a street artist, most of his projects were executed without legal and city approvals which obliged him and this team to operate illegally. Understanding that getting authorities’ approvals would undermined the projects’ viability from inception, he acted at night or sometimes even in broad daylight to avoid suspicion. From these early years, he kept loyal to his black sunglasses and his enigmatic name making him a hero of modern times but also a symbol of the isolated Parisian “banlieues”. Proclaiming himself as an activist, now a mature artist, he is able to bring subject matter to the forefront of the media scene and recently created a cover for Time magazine (Fig 6) where he united 245 people from both sides of the American gun control debate within the same room (magazine cover). While as a youngster he created street museums walls outside the usual museums circuit, he now works with iconic museums such as the Louvre. He twice created spectacular Trompe l’Oeil for the prestigious museum and revealed his latest installation on March 29th 2019 for the museum’s pyramid 30th anniversary (Fig 7). With the help of over 400 volunteers he created a gigantic black and white paper collage of 2,000 pieces of paper. The work of art created the illusion that the Louvre’s iconic glass pyramid raised dramatically from the earth’s entrails. Immediately, visitors came and walked on the installation itself which was destroyed in less than 24 hours. Again, by doing so, JR pushes his audience to think about the nature of art, its longevity and purpose. Interestingly, in JR’s beautiful book Can Art Change the World?published in 2015 a reader would find a simple paper insert with the following bold headline: “Art is not supposed to change the world, but to change perceptions, art can change the way we see the world.” Signed by JR. The fragile insert appears to be JR’s direct answer to the question posed by the impressive heavy coffee table book.
In 2017, in his documentary Faces Places, JR and famous film maker and friend Agnes Varda (recently deceased) documented their intergenerational beautiful friendship (she was 90) and their journey through France’s countryside. During months, they went and meet the people who work in areas that are economically struggling and painted them in a new light, celebrating their heritage and pride. They pasted their monumental faces and bodies on homes, factory walls, ship containers, war bunkers etc…The results were visually stunning and the reaction of the sitters extremely moving. Coal miners, farmers, bell ringers, mailmen, dock workers are often forgotten by our society, sometimes their work (once so important) has become irrelevant, and to be elevated to new peaks and simply being seen and acknowledged on such a scale thanks to art is moving, often reducing people to tears. Loneliness is omni present during the documentary, a farmer uses the term “asocial” to describe his life, stating that a farm like his would have hired dozens of workers in the past but today, due to the use of machinery, he is alone all day on his tractor (fig 8.).
Even the most active supporters or creators of new technologies are recognizing its ill-effects on human relationships. Mark Benioff, the Salesforce founder has been quoted saying “Technology has addictive qualities that we have to address”. Evan Spiegel, the Snapchat founder was also quoted saying “the combination of social and media has yielded incredible business results but has undermined our relationships”.
Other contemporary artists have tackled the subject of loneliness in modern times. Famous Performance Art artist Marina Abramovic through her very emotional performance The Artist is Present[5]at the New York MOMA in 2010 revealed people’s extreme loneliness and intrinsic need to connect. In a large white room which contained only two facing chairs with a small table in between, she invited visitors to sit down and gaze at her without talking. The performance was a tremendous success, during three months, people of all kinds and ages started to line up to get the opportunity to sit and gaze into the artist’s eyes. What happened was one of the most emotional performances involving an audience, numerous people were simply crying, overwhelmed by emotions. The simple fact to be looked at, to connect with another human being through the eyes in silence, to be fully present seems to have touch people’s souls. Abramovic also speaks about the experience as an inner experience; in that room, with cameras and the audience watching, the person sitting in the chair staring into the artist’s eyes had nowhere to go, nowhere to escape and was forced to explore his/her inner self.
On May 23rd 2019, JR will unveil a groundbreaking mural that he claims will attempt to imagine and depict a whole city through art. The mural will be placed in the free section of the SF MOMA (Floor 1, Roberts Family Gallery) which means that everyone will be able to access it. As in all JR’s body of work, this installation appears like a gift to the people he portrays. The artist seems to say to the sitters “you trusted me and here is my gift to you”. The free access to the mural fits within JR’s ambition to democratize art by making it accessible to a wide audience and to expose people to art who usually aren’t visiting museums.
There is a great sense of “push” and “pull” in JR’s work. He pushes and imposes monumental images on people, there is simply not a chance to not be exposed to a JR’s installation when passing by, it is so extraordinary that it is unavoidable. Thanks to JR, art is for the first time entering uncharted territories, getting into the most improbable places without warning or authorizations. It becomes almost organic, like a vine that would have grown overnight on an old house’s wall.
At the same time JR’s art pulls people into places like museums where they might not usually enter. He pulls people into conversations they would have never had and forces the dialogue. During his talk at the event Night of Ideason February 2nd, 2019 in San Francisco, JR said that he hoped all Chronicles of San Francisco mural participants would visit the free exhibition, search and find themselves within the mural and to have others recognize them triggering conversations between complete strangers.
San Francisco also has a long history of murals, one if his most famous representative being Diego Rivera whose murals from 1931 inspired JR. Diego Rivera was himself very much a socialist, he loved the idea of new technologies building a more inclusive and just society. The study of JR’s career shows a similar attitude and vision of the world and he refers to Rivera by portraying a man dressed as Frida Kahlo in his Chronicles of San Francisco mural.
JR, The Chronicles of San Francisco installation is revolutionary on many levels. First, on a technical level, the mural is actually a video featuring over 1,200 people portrayed moving in slow motion. Each individual remains in its place but faintly rotates, moves or makes a slow gesture. As if a moving mural was not a technological breakthrough in itself, JR announced that he actually interviewed each individual and that the museum visitors will be able to listen and watch the interviews with the use of an application on their cellphone. This will give, for the first time in art history, the sitter of an artwork a voice. Who hasn’t wished to listen to the Mona Lisa, to hear directly from her whether she is happy, or sad, or sick? to answer those questions that have tormented and still torment scholars to this day. And what better a place than San Francisco, the heart of the world best innovations and technological advancements to introduce such a disruptive work of art.
But JR’s work is also groundbreaking in its technique. Ever since the Italian Renaissance and the artist Brunelleschi, painters have aimed at creating depth and perspective within their artwork. They consciously decided to guide the eye of the viewer within their compositions using colors, linear perspective, diminutive perspective, sfumato, subject size, cropping, overlapping, lighting effects etc… while JR still retains some of these techniques in his work, he clearly makes the decision to ignore others to create a truly innovative artistic direction. By using Black and White for example, colors don’t attract or lead the viewer’s eye through the artwork. Through color, usually the artist is able to tell the viewer’s eye where to look first and create a hierarchy of important elements within the composition, color is a tool that helps create focus. By choosing black and white, all subjects of JR’s artwork are made equal. Light has a similar purpose in art, it helps guide the viewer’s eye within an art piece. But in his mobile truck studio (Fig 9), JR has total control of the light conditions and invites each of his sitters to pose in front of a green screen and everyone is shot in the exact same light exposure, once again making them equal. But if JR controls the light, colors and composition of his artwork, he doesn’t control his sitters’ behaviors. JR doesn’t direct the individuals who voluntarily entered his studio, he tells them that they can pose in any manner they wish (and in the video they can talk about any subject for as long or short as they want). This freedom and lack of control may lead to a true representation of the city.
Thanks to JR’s artistic technique people in the mural are made equal. The Governor and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for example is not depicted in a larger manner or more colorful than the homeless, no special light effect is shone on him. The audience’s eye will be free to travel around the mural with no such direction. JR also intends to not only unite these two people on the mural but also in real life as they both will be invited and celebrated (and probably meet for the first time) at the opening of the mural in the museum among the thousands other individuals who participated in the project alongside the visitors.
What strikes the audience when viewing JR, The Chronicles of San Francisco mural forthe first time (beside its monumental scale, the mural is 120 feet long) is the overwhelming and lively ocean of people descending like a powerful wave over the city of San Francisco. This human wave is made of 1,206 individuals who each lives in the city and who volunteered to meet JR in his mobile studio in 2018 and pose for the mural. This oceanic analogy (the wave) can be useful to describe the mural as it provides the reader with a sense of rhythm, harmony, dynamism and also provides a narrative to the overall composition.
The mural’s background is populated with well-known San Francisco landmarks, with iconic old Victorian homes flanking the mural on each side operating like “repoussoirs” or “parenthesis”, keeping the eye of the viewer within the artwork itself. This “repoussoir” effect is echoed by the first crowd of people located on the far left of the mural who look towards the right and the crowd of people at the end of the mural (on its far right) who look towards the left.
If the viewer’s eye starts to explore the mural as a narrative and start from its left it will therefore look at these century old homes and then travel through the more modern downtown skyscrapers and then end back on the Victorian homes again on the far right of the mural. The mural can be read as the historical tale of the city with its highs and lows, strength and weaknesses.
The first crowd that could embody the beginning of the narrative or the source of the wave high on the far left is made of a hundred of faces, appearing not unlike a school of fish or bubbles about to pour like water into the city’s first steep street. It seems relevant to read that first group of people as the beginning of the narrative because at the bottom of the crowd, one can spot a woman on a rolling bed who just delivered a baby with a doctor happily showing the newborn to her (Fig. 10). This new mother represents the beginning of the story and creates a link between the initial crowd and what comes next.
After channeling through the birth of the baby, the wave of humanity is accelerating and pouring onto a second scene. The speed of the wave is symbolized by the steep street and a group of runners that create movement and lead the eye towards the right. Now the wave has hit the ground of the mural, the people are no longer facing the same direction (some are facing the viewer, or turning their back to the viewer or facing against the current) very much like the bottom of a waterfall would behave in a splash or gush of water. Some people on top of the wave are holding blankets above their heads creating triangles like small surfs. One of the Victorian houses has caught on fire and firefighters are climbing into a dark smoke which could be the foam of the wave. This scene seems to represent the turmoil the city faces with numerous homeless paving the bottom of the sea, a police officer trying to help, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur (Michael Birch) pointing at his own head as if trying to think how to resolve the mess (Fig.11), homeless people in heavy wheelchairs are looking up but are stuck to the bottom, a bunch of police officers seem completely disheartened or clueless as of how to contain this mess.
This water metaphor seems to work as a little bit later the viewer’s eye is being pulled into a garage’s open door where swimmers are stroking in the same direction like in a fish tank (reference to the people who swim daily in the icy-cold bay water). Like a wave, the eye moves up and down the mural. At time, the gushing human wave seems to slow down, like a river changing its course and becomes quieter when the stream meets a group of people hugging each other tenderly. The watercourse seems to stop when encountering an obstacle represented by a newspaper stand for example (Fig. 12) which is square and static forming like a boulder in a river with the flow of the crowd running around it. But the quiet flow accelerates suddenly again meeting a crowd of people protesting vigorously with signs.
The mural can also be read as a melody, or a symphony, sometimes peaceful sometimes very loud (the group of protestors appears noisy against the nearby quiet group of huggers). The sound level reaches new heights with the tip of the wave and then goes low with the wave going down. The lyrical aspect is reinforced throughout the mural by the presence of numerous instruments and singers. After the noisy demonstration the wave falls down into an old-fashioned open theatre where artists perform on stage and the crowd listens or cheers in the foreground. The scene is highly participative as the viewer becomes part of the theatre’s audience. Except for a couple of individuals, the audience turns its back to the viewer, allowing the viewer to enter the scene. There is also a person filming the show and slowly turning and pointing the camera towards the viewer, pulling the viewer into the artwork.
In this “theatre scene” one of the individuals in the foreground attracts the viewer’s attention as he is not behaving like the rest of the crowd and is not looking at the stage like everyone else. The person can easily be identified as the street artist Fnnch (Fig. 13)as he is kneeling to the ground painting one of his iconic honey bear bottles onto a canvas. Fnnch has recently been painting these recognizable bottles all over the city making a political statement. Fnnch states “The bears were inspired by things children want to be when they grow up, like firefighters, artists and astronauts. […] The mural (Fnnch Mural) is intended to support children and their dreams, regardless of their origin and background. There is an incredible amount of nativism in this country and, to a shocking degree, in this city”.
JR seems to echo his fellow street artist by appearing on stage with a broom (Fig. 14). For the untrained viewer he just appears to sweep the floor. However, JR had made comments in his movies that people think of him as a photographer when most of his time is spent on scaffolders pasting pictures on walls with his broom. It is interesting that the artist decided to portrayed himself in this manner, he seems to ask the viewer whether images can be deceitful (is he sweeping floors or pasting art?). JR also portrayed himself a second time within the mural, this time pasting on the wall of a house.
After the “theatre scene”, the human river continues its flow and goes back up to meet the Golden Gate Bridge which seems to open the door to the modern and progressive aspect of the city symbolized in the background by skyscrapers and among the crowd by the presence of entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. It is in this panel that the viewer can identify politicians, engineers, but also the famous writer and LGBT activist Armistead Maupin for example, who seems a bit defeated looking down alone in the crowd (Fig. 15), a unicorn (symbol of successful startups but also of fairytales), a famous basketball player, people exercising etc… this is also where the artist makes a statement on technology creating isolation, showcasing crowds of people fully absorbed on their laptop or taking selfies without connecting to one another (Fig.16). A woman is even wearing a VR device on her head completely absorbed and lost in a virtual world while another woman standing next to her holds a sign “I am here” (Fig 17).
Finally, the human wave seems to violently crash onto the last Victorian home (like onto cliff) with everything the city has to offer in term of performance art, from ballet (symbolized by famous French ballerina Mathilde Froustey of the San Francisco Ballet and two little girls mimicking her) Chinese dragon dance, tribal dance, Japanese drums and a group of little kids attentively listening to their professor (Fig 18).This powerful end of the human wave crashing onto the house looks like rumbles which could be caused by an earthquake, maybe the artist’s reminder that the city is always at risk.
The artist’s challenge of portraying accurately a city seems to be a success. In this one space he is able to represent the city various religious communities. In some areas he even seems to ask the viewer if the answer to turmoil is praying or texting? He touched upon lovein all its forms (family hugging, gay couple kissing, dog lovers etc…). he showcases the connection, disconnection dichotomy of the city by portraying people engaging with each other (arguing, smiling at each other) and others completely alone. JR also reflects on the city as a society in what is beautiful and ugly. A person is getting a Botox injection, another is smoking pot, homelessness, someone is getting a tatoo screaming among an army of indifferent people typing on their laptops. Grave matters such as firemen handling a fire moving into the dark smoke (leaving the viewer wondering if they will come back) are juxtaposed against frivolity (with a man impersonating a king with his wacky court on a balcony oblivious of the fire).
The artist’s intent is also to display hope, with people looking up towards a brilliant future, a pregnant woman, people caring for one another, children being cared for by their families and being inspired by adults like this little girl (Aliyah Moore) dressed up in her basketball outfit throwing a ball from one side of the mural to famous basketball player on the other side of the mural. The ball is animated and creates a beautiful bridge between both generations and again this device keeps the viewer in and holds the composition together. Hope is also displayed within the numerous protests that highlight the city political force and its influence within the country, a city that historically is progressive that doesn’t give in and will rebel against attacks on human rights.
The theme of isolation is constant within the artwork. Many individuals within the mass are unaware of one another, poverty and desolation are depicted through the presence of numerous homeless people looking down while everyone else is looking up towards the future. The viewer is also able to enter the intimacy of people’s homes through their windows and as a voyeur would do watch people’s loneliness or family in disarray looking worried and in despair (Fig 19 and 20).
If JR’s intent is to seek the truth when depicting this city by exposing its inhabitants in a very raw manner by letting them show to the viewer how they want to be perceived, he still retains control over the composition. By arbitrarily placing an individual next to another, the artist seems to make a statement and ask the viewer to think. By doing so, the artist brilliantly exposes the numerous talents and opportunities the city has to offer but also its majors challenges, extremes and lack of cohesion. The term “horror Vacuii” (fear of empty spaces) comes to mind when looking at the mural, every inch of the mural is overwhelmingly covered with details and the flow of information is such that there is nowhere for the eye to escape. Again, there is a sense of dichotomy in JR’s work, on one hand, the mural is very hopeful and joyful (especially when it comes to the young children, the art performances and education) but at the same time it is suffocating, chaotic and at times uncomfortable which could represent what the city is all about today. What remains is that each of the 1200 individuals were photographed on their own with their physical features (color of skin, age, etc…) and personal beliefs but somehow the artist managed to group them all together in a very harmonious composition as if to say that despite their differences they are all part of a same world, a same city, part of the problem but also part of the solution.
[2]Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, byYuval Noah Harari, 2015
[3]Baudelaire et la painture realiste byYoshio Abe, Cahier de l’AIEF 1966
[4]Look, Listen, Read by Claude Levi Strauss, 1997
[5]Marina Abramovic The Artist is Present, New York MOMA, 2010
A huge thank you to Diana Scott for being a wonderful mentor
