French Street Artist's Amazing Creations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scrolling through Charles Leval's work is not only fun but illuminating. His work can be seen all over Paris. Enjoy!

Street art is a usual sight in many cities and towns. Most of the time, the street art we see is not that impressive—random tags or writings that you can't even read. Sometimes, however, there is artwork that takes your breath away. It livens up the surrounding area and makes it look much more cozy and colorful. And although many people dislike street art, we hope this artist and his work can change your mind.

The French artist Charles Leval, better known as Levalet, creates the kind of art that brings cities to life. He creates designs that interact with their surroundings, often choosing a humorous theme. His art is playful, funny, and very beautiful. He told Bored Panda: "I didn't start working in the streets because I was first and foremost interested in the street. What I wanted—and what keeps being my aim—was to work on reality and produce a context-sensitive art. Not simply to show one’s productions ranging from picture rails on a neutral medium and beckon the eyes to enjoy it, but also an art which is a means of intervention and joins an outside reality and aims at modifying it."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secret Tiles All Around Tel Aviv

This from Atlas Obscura -

In the early 20th century, Tel Aviv had a distinguished industry of beautiful decorated tiles, which can still be seen in some private homes, apartments, stairwells, and public buildings. After peaking in the 1920s, the tiles have become more and more scarce over the decades. Now, there’s a renewed appreciation for them.

Between 1921 and 1925, Tel Aviv’s population went from 2,000 to 34,000. The new city’s architects were European Jews who trained in art schools in Eastern and Western Europe. Their building style came to be known as Eclectic. Architect Professor Nitza Szmuk, the guru of historical building conservation in Israel, says Eclectic architecture represented “the attempt to create a synthesis between East and West, thereby generating a local notional style.” The architects’ perception of Palestine and the Near East remained Orientalist, even when walking in the Tel Aviv sunshine or buying a tomato at the local grocer. The tiles in their buildings were part of this European Oriental fantasy. In the words of Architect Yossi Klein in a Domus magazine article, “the contrast between ‘the Oriental style’ and the European building technique allowed Zionists to return to a ‘sterile Orient,’ while maintaining European modes of living.”

“This was the golden age of the painted tile,” says Avi Levi, a landscape architect and hunter of derelict buildings and decorated tiles. “They became a local fixture and the connection to the European origins was forgotten.” The decorated tiles prevailed during the early 20th century in houses in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. They were found in luxurious villas and humble apartments. However, “after three decades, people started to think of the tiles as old-fashioned, expensive and excessive.” Ultimately, “this style flourished only for a short time,” Klein writes, “and as the conflict with the Arab community escalated, Modernist tendencies prevailed.” The romantic, Eclectic style gave way to the clean, modernist Bauhaus. Decorated tiles were abandoned in favor of simple, cheap, industrial tiles. As a result, most of the factories have closed. But at the end of Herzl Street, a street of woodworkers and craftsmen in southern Tel Aviv, the small tile factory of the Gluska family is operating to this day.