September 4, 2009

This is Monsieur Chat, AKA Mister Cat or M. Chat, a creation of artist Thoma Vuille. M. Chat first appeared in the French city of Orléans, then in Paris in 2000, and quickly sprang up in a great many other European cities – this particular photograph was taken in Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. M. Chat was the subject of Chris Marker’s film Chats Perchés, which looked at the cat’s appearance over France as a reflection of the state of France post 9/11. See also: a website dedicated to collecting M. Chat appearances, an article on the M. Chat phenomenon, an interview with Thoma Vuille (en français), and the flickr group of Monsieur Chat photos. The mysterious and widespread emergence of Monsieur Chat reminds me of Sydney’s Eternity street writing, in which the single beautifully written word “Eternity” appeared throughout Sydney from the 1940s to the 1960s. It turned out to be written by one Arthur Stace, who, like Thoma Vuille, left his mark on the city anonymously for many years and allowed the art to speak for itself.

Here are two other photographs of street art that I took earlier this year. The first, of the banana, is in Bern in Switzerland, while the second is in Toulouse, France. I love that the vulture is pecking at the spot where the paper of the poster has ripped – it is the ever changing, ephemeral, mysterious, often anonymous nature of street art that I think makes it so special.