Blek le Rat
blek​lerat​.free​.fr
Paris, France.

Curbs and Stoops:  Did you have any for­mal art edu­ca­tion? Does any of this show up in your sten­cilling work?

Blek le Rat:  I stud­ied fine art and archi­tec­ture at the “Ecole des Beaux arts de Paris”. I learned the tech­nique of etch­ing , lith­o­g­ra­phy and paint­ing for five years and then archi­tec­ture for six years. So I was stu­dent until I was thirty years old. I am the result of what I have seen, stud­ied, lived,in my life so I think yes my work reflects all things that I have learned .

Curbs and Stoops:  How did you grow up? Was art a part of your life as a child?

Blek le Rat:  I was born in Paris France in Novem­ber 1951 from a well edu­cated fam­ily but with no money at home. My father was born in Paris in 1914 dur­ing the first world war. His father was an archi­tect and a well known designer dur­ing the 30’s. He joined the French army when he was 20 years old and then in 1939 he was involved in the sec­ond world war, being pris­oner of war for five years in Ger­many, he came back to France to rebuild the coun­try which was destroyed by the war.The gen­er­a­tion of my father and also of mil­lions of other men dur­ing that time was a gen­er­a­tion of sac­ri­fied peo­ple. He did not have time to study and he did not have a real job. My father spent his life as a ghost who cross the life. He died in 1973 at age of 59. He was nice with me but did not have the time and the energy to teach me a lot of things for the life. I had to learn on my own and lost a lot of time learn­ing how the soci­ety was working.

My mother was born in Thai­land in 1917 from a Thai mother and French Father who was a French diplo­mat. Her par­ents sent my mother to have a French edu­ca­tion at the age of 9 years old. And so my mother was seper­ated from her fam­ily liv­ing in Thai­land . She never could get accli­mated to France. She always [lived] as a Thai woman and most of her friends [were] Thai peo­ple.
I was not really good at school and I would say that the worst moment of my life was from 6 years old to 18 years [while I was in school]. I don’t remem­ber [being happy] dur­ing my youth — I was very alone because I did not have any broth­ers, sis­ters or friends. The only rela­tion­ship with other peo­ple that I had in this time was at school, but every­body knows that the rela­tion­ship with other kids at school is usu­ally very super­fi­cial and based on a rela­tion of ego more than to share things with other.

Now, to talk about art. My father’s sis­ter who did not have child was really involved with the sur­re­al­is­tic group in France in the 30’s and was friend with Max Ernst, Sal­vador Dali, and all the band of sur­re­al­ist [artists]. She was an actress and gave me my first intro­duc­tion to world of art, bring­ing me to muse­ums, the­aters, cin­e­mas, gal­leries of art in Paris when I was about 12, 13 years old untill 17, 18.

Curbs and Stoops:  How would you describe your­self and the work that you do?
Blek le Rat:  I am a nor­mal per­son with a nor­mal fam­ily life [and] I am not extrav­a­gant. I am now 57 years old so I am get­ting old with more wis­dom than when I was a young man and I do not worry about things as I used to when I was young. I rarely drink alco­hol and when I drink a lit­tle I [get] drunk really fast, I don’t take drugs. When I am [have a pas­siona for] some­thing I have no limit with my pas­sion which is very dan­ger­ous some­times in life. 

Curbs and Stoops:  Where did the name Blek le Rat come from?

Blek le Rat:  It comes from an Ital­ian comic book trans­lated into French for young kids that we used to share with oth­ers kids in the court­yard at school. The real name of the comic was Blek le roc which means Blek the rock. He was a tra­por fight­ing the British in Amer­ica . I changed the name of” le roc” in Le rat because I was paint­ing rats on the walls of Paris at that time in the 80’s.

Curbs and Stoops:  Where does the inspi­ra­tion for your work come from? Are you a polit­i­cal artist? Focused on aes­thet­ics? Is the work per­sonal? etc…

Blek le Rat:  I take my inspi­ra­tion like many oth­ers artists do , from things I like or things I don’t like from my life expe­ri­ences, my envi­ron­ment and by things which touch me and I try to express all those things the clear­est way I can. Some­times I am polit­i­cal some­times I am not it depends the moment. Usu­ally I like [aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing] art and I am rather aller­gic to the art which is not aes­thetic but it is a ques­tion of taste.

Curbs and Stoops:  Where do you draw your inspi­ra­tion from? Who are some artists that have moti­vate­dor affected your work?

Blek le Rat:  Many artists from the past and from our time inspired me it is a long list start­ing by Prax­itele dur­ing the ancient greek period until Warhol and David Hockney.

Curbs and Stoops:  How do you feel about leav­ing a work behind once you have poured your soul into cre­at­ing it? Are you try­ing to be some sort of hero?

Blek le Rat:  When I leave an image on the wall of a city I always have the impres­sion to leave a part of myself on the wall and it is a great impression. Something like immor­tal. Yes I love the idea of being a hero for some peo­ple and leav­ing my trace for the future gen­er­a­tion. *smiles*

Curbs and Stoops:  Any inter­est­ing encoun­ters with author­ity fig­ures that you’d like to share (no , they dont have to be related to your art)?
Blek le Rat:  I was arrested so many times in my life that I can’t count them any­more. In 1990 I was in court in France for graf­fiti and I had to pay a big fine and had a lot of stress. 

Curbs and Stoops:  You are obvoiusly very pas­sion­ate about art but what are some other pas­sions?
Blek le Rat:  In this moment i am pas­sion­ate about under­stand­ing things related to the sec­ond world war. I try to under­stand what hap­pened his­tor­i­cally dur­ing this dark period of the twen­ti­eth century .

Curbs and Stoops:  Any­thing you’d like to say for the record?
Blek le Rat:  Thank you for your ques­tions and peace to everybody.

Curbs and Stoops would like to thank Blek le Rat for such a can­did inter­view. You are truly a pio­neer of the street art move­ment and we appre­ci­ate the legacy you have built.