Blek le Rat And His Meaningful Street Art

Blek Le Rat is one of the greatest street art masters of the 20th century. Graffiti and street art was essential only for New York and other American cities at the time, but he managed to transform it in correspondence to European mentality and cultural trends. It is appropriate to note that Blek le Rat is a French street-art painter and most of his masterpieces cover buildings and walls of Paris. To be more précised, he is acknowledged a founder of stencil graffiti that has already spread overseas.
 One more issue to consider is a nickname. A real name of Blek le Rat is Xavier Prou. In order to sign his work, he pick up the nickname from French comic books “Blek le Roc”, replacing word “Roc” with “Rat”. Rats are likely to be the only creatures, which can survive ad outrange human race. That is why the earliest of his paintings feature little stencil rats all over French capital, introducing a new stencil trend simultaneously. It was in late 1970s.
In 1980s, on the contrary, art by Blek le Rat picked up momentum. In 1983 he performed a piece at full length with stencil fonts. According to Blek le Rat’s idea, it is an Irish man, screaming at English soldiers. This image was taken from real that took place in Belfast in 1970s. However, many people misunderstand this painting and see a picture of Charlie Chaplin, gipsy or some anarchist. Probably, it appeals to human perception of street art culture notwithstanding its reference to social problems.
In fact, society issues are likely to be one more topic Blek le Rat uses in his images. Many of them depict political and national problems, among which one may pay attention to an army of marching soldiers carrying brushes instead of guns. He also painted The Lord’s Supper, where he replaced Jesus Christ with ordinary painter. As one could remember 1970s was a period of oil crisis. It could not pass by Blek le Rat’s attention, who also painted a laughing guy driving a petrol tanker. So, there is pretty much politics in works by Xavier Prou.
Blek le Rat still continues to delight his fans with new ideas and paintings. One of the most astonishing images was distributed all over Paris in 2005. They depicted a kidnapped journalist in Iraq in order to rouse social support and political respond to the problem. Hence, Blek le Rat proved that street art is an integral part of community and public livelihood.