France Archives - Carl Kruse

Ememem – Puddles of Color

by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog

It is dawn, and the city is not awake, because in France, cities sleep when the night rolls through them. Maybe a light shines out from the backroom of a bakery, where a few bakers with sleep in their eyes pound and shape dough beside a firing stone oven so the breads will be baked in time for the morning traffic when it streams in through the bakery doors. Perhaps a waitress is walking dozily beside the flowing grey of the Rhône with the keys to her café jangling between her front two fingers. And somewhere, perhaps, there is a shadowy figure retreating unseen from a wide crack in the pavement, which he has filled with tiny shards of ceramics that glitter like stars as the sun glares up, up and above the towering white of the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste. The day has begun, and there is a new artwork by Ememem in the streets of Lyon.

Ememem is an anonymous artist, described by Ian Phillips of The Guardian as ‘France’s answer to Banksy’, and has produced over 350 artworks throughout the streets of Lyon; from potholes to pavements, from gaps beside wide gnarled tree roots to broking paving stones, Ememem’s ‘flacking’ (his name for the mosaic method he uses) shines through the gaps in the cityscape.

Ememem’s work seems, to me, a sort of variation on Kintsugi, the Japanese art of traditional ceramic repair, a way to visualise the mending process of broken ornaments which treats breakages as essential in the history and future of an object, rather than as something to be seamlessly hidden. The imperfections of these objects are highlighted and cherished using Kintsugi, as the cracks in the concrete of Lyon are highlighted and made colourful by Ememem.

The word ‘flacking’, which Ememem uses to describe their technique, is a neologism originating from the French word ‘flaque’, meaning puddle. I think this to be a most poetic way to describe Ememem’s artwork. As puddles of colour, with patterns pooling out from their centres and dribbling into the surrounding splits, just as water would. As natural as rain, Ememem’s works blend into the metropolis.

There are many roadworks occurring in my city at the moment. Holes in the road being filled with steaming concrete. Paving stones being unearthed from their soft cement beds and replaced by other such stones. Small potholes being haphazardly filled in – when they dry up, they make little molehills in the road. And all around these works is commotion. Trucks, huge machinery buzzing and whirring and crackling, men in neon waving this way and that, or bent over, tugging at rocks and earth, or stood observing as a mechanical arm picks up grey detritus before them. It is not that these works are not essential, of course not. But perhaps there are some instances where an Ememem-type figure could perform their quiet work, and calm the noise somewhat; maybe they might venture out from the woodwork in the dead of night, and fill in the deep crevasse that has emerged on the pavement over by that café, fill it with red circles and blue squares and orange crescents and green rectangles, fill it with colour and brightness and precision and beauty. It would be good, I think, if we were to fill in the holes of this city with more colour.

I like to imagine how Ememem might create one of their artworks. How patiently they must place the little pieces of ceramic, how very meticulously they must plan out the pattern in order to fit it exactly into the strange shape that has been gouged out of the street, or road, or wall. How quickly they must work so as not to be seen by a soul.

Not a lot is known about Ememem, but there have been musings about the reason behind their name; their agent of 15+ years, Guillaume Abou, asserts it may be a reference to the first letters from Lou Reed’s ‘worst’ album – Metal Machine Music (from The Guardian article entitled ‘France’s answer to Banksy: the anonymous street artist filling potholes with colourful mosaics’ – September 2022). Ememem have purportedly said that their name refers to the sound made by their moped when they go out at night to create their pieces (I challenge you not to make that noise in your head). I’m not sure which idea I prefer – Lou Reed or the rumbling of a moped grumbling reluctantly awake at midnight. We know that Ememem is French, though speaks with a bit of an accent (perhaps Italian, suggests Ian Phillips of The Guardian), and that they are untrained, artistically speaking, though their father was a house tiler. Might that make Ememem a street tiler? I’ve always thought it to be a wonderful thing to follow in one’s parent’s footsteps, to learn a craft from them and continue it on for generations. It is a lost thing, I think. These days, we find our own way, and reject the old ways of our parents in favour of paving a path towards the new. Always pushing forwards, quicker, faster. Never taking a moment to admire the path from whence we came, or taking the time to fill in the cracks in that path with our own mosaics. Rather, we move to different streets, different roads, and leave the old to whither in our wake.

It is refreshing to have an artist without a face. Anonymous authorship is not a particularly easy feat in the modern day, and, save for the aforementioned Banksy, I can’t think of any other known artists who have managed to successfully make themselves opaque to the public’s ever prying eyes. We live in a visual age, an age where parasocial relationships have become the norm. We believe that we KNOW our favourite celebrities, or ‘artists’ – we know what they eat, we know the music they like, we know who they’re married to or dating, what clothes they wear, where they live, where they grew up, what school they went to, who their friends are…and, perhaps, we might feel that they know us, in some way, or that they might be our friends, should we meet them in real life. So, to have an artist who rejects all that, who is known only for the patterns they’ve made in the cracks in a city, is quite magnificent. Ememem ‘fixes’ the city, makes it beautiful, and they do not even want us to know their name. This, to me, implies a humility and compassion that I do not think I possess as an artist, nor ever will.
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The Carl Kruse Arts blog homepage.
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include: Giorgio Morandi, Art for Arts Sake, and Single Mums.
Also find Carl Kruse at Kruse on Crunchbase am on an older blog at https://carlkruseofficial.blogspot.com/

Reflections of Montmartre

by Hazel Anna Rogers

The sun has been shining for some time now. At first, warmth came from behind bulbous grey clouds, yielding a muggy, wet heat, but now light has taken precedence and grass glows white in its piercing rays.

We were walking on one such sunny day and stopped beside the book shop some two and a quarter streets from our home. This particular shop habitually puts books out on a small, raised shelf just to the left of its entrance. On the shelf are titles it has found difficult to shift and each is priced at one pound. A small white spine was crammed between two larger tomes, and I reached in to take it out for a closer look. There are often gems to be found amidst the clutter on the one-pound-shelf, and this appeared to be one of them.

On the cover of the white book was a whimsical image of a side street in Montmartre, Paris, with a single bare tree at the fore and snow covering the paving stones. Below the painting was the name ‘Utrillo’ in dark pink, and below this was the name ‘Montmartre’ in block capitals.

I fingered through the book and found numerous pages with colored images of scenes in Montmartre, some cheerful and filled with city-dwellers, others people-less and barren. These paintings, though created some hundred years prior to my escapades in Paris, nevertheless brought back memories of my time in the city. I heard the sounds of life from Utrillo’s depictions; bustling corners with rows of vendors, and the loud ringing of bells that erupts from the ‘dômes blancs’ of the basilica.

Maurice Utrillo – La Place St. Pierre et le Sacré Coeur de Montmartre

It was a warm late October morning when I decided to make my way up to Montmartre. I had the weekends to myself when I was working as an au pair and would use my free time to explore known and lesser-known quarters of the city. It was peaceful to walk as the sun rose slowly up the white apartment blocks and shed its watery light over the glistening streets. I walked some twenty minutes up the continual mild incline towards the white dome in the distance and came across the Cimitière du Nord, or Cemetery of the North (as is officially named the graveyard of Montmartre) in the 18^th arrondissement. The cemetery passes below several archways and bridges which one can walk over to admire the city of dead below it. As is expected of such a large necropolis, the graveyard boasts wonderfully elaborate monuments amidst the 20,000 burial plots within its walls. I walked down the stone stairs from the road and walked among the dead.

Émile Zola’s grave was one of the first graves I came across. Above the tomb stands an ominous bust of Zola’s face in bluish-grey stone, placed in the center of a curvaceous speckled-brown marble arch. The clouds came over as I wandered on, and Zola’s eyes trailed me as I went.

The grave of Emile Zola

Shortly after my encounter with Zola, I discovered the brutal memorial attributed to Berlioz. A grey mount of Berlioz’ profile is buried in the middle of the three black marble walls which solemnly protect his body. A cross is marked in silver above Berlioz’ head. It is a cold grave, unlike Berlioz’ music.

I checked the time and concluded I should get on my way to Montmartre, considering it was a weekend and it would likely begin to get busy around late morning. I found my way back to the same stone steps I had walked down from and emerged back into Paris. The dead remained below.

I turned off of the main road after around ten minutes and found myself in some cobbled side streets. The only establishments open were a few bakeries wafting intoxicating clouds of freshly baked loaves and pastries. I didn’t buy anything, as I had already eaten. I continued on.

Up, up, up the roads went, and the white dome of the Sacré-Cœur became ever bigger as I made my way towards the inner-village of Montmartre. My legs ached, and my back was sweating beneath my bag when I finally entered the ‘old’ village via the Rue Lepic. Many shops were open offering tacky trinkets and memorabilia of the various artists who once called Montmartre home. I stopped to watch a crepe maker swirl batter over a black cast iron cylindrical block. Once the batter was spilled, he deftly swirled it right to the outer edges of the flat-topped iron with a wooden baton that looked somewhat like a shortened croquet stick. Once the crepe began to bubble, the gentleman took a flat spatula and flipped it over,revealing a perfectly pale-brown beneath. I watched him for some time, and took my camera out to film him. He laughed at me, and I laughed too. I walked on.

Faces smiled in the tepid morning sun. Each house was as charming as the last. I followed the street on past the Moulin de la Galette and its enchanting little wooden windmill, and entered onto Rue Norvins, the road that would lead me to the Place du Tertre. Time went slowly, and the breeze ruffled my hair softly. I felt I was no longer in Paris. The rush and racing of city life fell away when one walked these calm streets, and all that remained were images and poetry.

The Place du Tertre was a bustling hubbub of heckling artists, artisans, and musicians, yet somehow everything blended together into the sweetest symphony of village noise. I stopped to gaze at a few tableaus. Some were quite wonderful. An artist came up to me and demanded I sit for a portrait. I glanced at his work, and his depictions were indeed lovely – softly penciled faces with wistful expressions – but I politely declined. He continued to ask, and I responded by asking whether I would have to pay for his eagerly-requested sitting. The artist looked sheepish and scuttled back to his wicker chair.

Over on the far side of the Place, one can look out over the city. To the west is the leafy Square Louise Michel.

Between the two silver birches standing by the wall in front of the outlook, someone had fastened a tightrope. Down near my feet was a red beret with a few coins of change. I turned and walked back the way I had come, towards the Sacré-Cœur.

There weren’t many people on the stone steps leading up to the basilica when I arrived. I sat and took my bag off, then leaned back and looked up at the blue sky. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the world had changed color. The bells of the Sacré-Cœur began ringing and I jumped slightly at how very loud they were. The ringing continued in my ears for a few minutes after the basilica had become silent once more.

A man came and sat on a step below me, retrieved a small piano accordion from his bag, and began playing Le Temps des Cerises. I almost laughed at how very perfect it all was, how ridiculously French this little village was. An elderly woman came and stood beside the gentleman and began singing. I smiled, and did not stop smiling until I returned back to my apartment in the 8^th arrondissement.

Maurice Utrillo’s paintings make me nostalgic. They make me think on a Paris that is charming, romantic, and playful, one that captivates with its cobbled streets and wooden shutters, that mesmerizes with its secret alleyways and green balconies. His depictions of Montmartre create a Paris that one might meet in a dream, where colors are bright and time passes gently and calmly. For Montmartre is a reverie, a moment that cannot be grasped or held. It is a fragment of history that one passes through, then just as quickly leaves behind. Montmartre is the old beating heart of Paris, remaining static and unchanging while the city expands and modernizes around it.

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The Carl Kruse Art Blog home page is at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel Anna Rogers include Legacy of the Satyr and Grimes and the Future of AI Art.
The blog’s last post was Art of Atari.
An old Carl Kruse blog is here.