Sign of the Times: L'Art de la Poubelle (Garbage Art) in Paris

Plus, Basquiat stars in two spring exhibits, & Olympics fans wrangle for tix in prize draw

Street art created from trash heaped on Paris sidewalks— giving new meaning to “found objects”. Photos by Bisk

Dear Subscribers,

I’ve often believed myself to be a little hyperbolic in asserting that French people can (and do) make art out of anything. The thought first came to me when I first visited the Paris Catacombs, and smiled at the way its late 18th-century planners had somehow managed to turn a mass grave for six million nameless Parisians into a highly curated space— complete with ponderous poems about death that confront you as you make your way through the circuit. Talk about “No Exit” (I seem to be thinking a lot about Sartre these days).

Still, maybe it’s silly of me to claim that there’s something culturally specific about any of this. That was my thought— until I saw this.

Bisk.art Instagram page

Parisian street and graffiti artist Bisk has captured the general mood in the capital by transforming heaps of stinking garbage— piled up on sidewalks for weeks since sanitation workers joined massive strikes against pension reform early this year— into ephemeral monster faces, giving humorous new relevance to the term “found objects”.