Thierry Noir, Art Lesson

 

We have taught this lesson before. Check out this link for details on another post.

 The Art of Thierry Noir (Berlin Wall Art...Funky Graffiti People)

 

Thierry Noir 

Thierry Noir retrospective 1982 - 2014 

I used 9 x 12 White Paper
Assorted Markers

Thierry Noir retrospective 1982 - 2014.

Thierry Noir, the man to who we owe the longest concrete painting in the world. His paintings, with their bright colors and their melancholy poetry, represent nowadays the art of the Berlin wall. His wall works survived longer than all the others did after the fall of the wall in 1989.

Thierry Noir was born in 1958 in Lyon, France. He came to Berlin in January of 1982 with two small suitcases, attracted by the music of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, who lived in West Berlin at this time. From April 1984, Thierry Noir started to paint the Berlin wall.

The perfection of this frontier was at the same time, through the graffiti on the concrete wall, a reflection of its absurdity. In fact at the beginning of the Berlin wall and until the end of the seventies, the bad quality of the stone blocks and after, the first concrete pieces prevented automatically the artists, from doing any paintings. The few graffiti were big words written in white, not so easy to read on the stones. 

At the beginning of the eighties, on the wall of the fourth generation, the people wrote their names, then words or phrases, mostly political slogans, and then came the paintings. At historical places such as Potsdamerplatz, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburger Tor, and in Kreuzberg, those graffitis changed the Berlin wall into a tourist attraction.

The wall was built, 5 meters beyond the official border, so the east-German soldiers were allowed to arrest any person standing near the wall. 

To paint the wall was absolutely forbidden, so the painters had to be quick, always painting with one eye, the other watching for soldiers.

That's how he realized that he had started something special, and to stop would bring one more question: "Why did you stop painting the Berlin wall?" The most frequent question was: "Why did they want to make the wall beautiful? Why did they want to ornament the Berlin wall?" 

He answered every time: "I am not trying to make the wall beautiful because in fact it's absolutely impossible. 123 persons have being killed trying to jump over the Berlin wall, to escape to west-Berlin, so you can cover that wall with hundreds of kilos of colors, it will stay the same: One bloody monster, one old crocodile who from time to time wakes, eats somebody up, and falls again back to sleep until the next time". The paintings on the Berlin wall always had an exceptional touch. 

It was always one extra emotion in the air which transformed every wall painting into a strong political act. As the years went by, the paintings took on phenomenal proportions, which were rapidly recognized by the international arts community. The object was not to embellish the wall but to demystify it.

The paintings of Thierry Noir became a symbol of new found freedom after the reunification of Germany and the end of the cold war.

(See link above)

Enjoy, 1969
Everyone can be successful with this lesson.