Les secrets de la Ville de Lumiere

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are copyright of my friend, travel partner, and fellow guerilla urbanist Steve Duncan. Steve is a wonderful photographer, and specializes in underground and urban photography. Prints are available - visit his website at http://www.undercity.org

One of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of visiting publicly inaccessible places is coming across amazing artwork that you never would have expected. In New York, the most famous of these “Underground Art Galleries” is probably the Amtrak Tunnel on the West Side of Manhattan. Throughout the 2 1/2 mile long tunnel, huge murals and elaborate graffiti pieces are painted on the walls. The most famous of these is probably an interpretation of Goya’s 3rd of May by Freedom and Smith that’s about 10×15 feet. In fact, this tunnel is sometimes called the “Freedom Tunnel” after the artist Freedom, who painted about a dozen or so murals down there. It’s actually not very difficult to get to, but only about a few dozen people visit it every year. And although the murals would definitely be worth seeing even if they happened to be painted along a busy street, I’d be lying if I said this exclusivity isn’t one of its appeals.

There’s a few other interesting things you come across while perusing the underground of New York (the most famous of which are probably pages of REVS‘ journal), but in comparison to the stuff we found in the Paris underground, it’s an entirely different ballgame. Just for starters, subway graffiti is way more elaborate - somewhat due to a different mentality over in Europe (by both the painters and the authorities), but I think mostly because the trains stop running for a few hours late at night, while in New York you’ve got to dodge trains 24-7. And when you get to the catas, things get just ridiculous.

After hitting the bones on our first trip, Steve and I headed off to some of the most visited rooms - rooms where artists had spent countless hours painting and sculpting for an audience of pretty much themselves, friends, and whatever other random people happened along. A lot of the murals (especially the ones we saw later in the German Bunker), were by a group called “The Rats.” Other than the castle, the room it was in contained sculptures of four different gargoyle heads (well, not technically gargoyles), and we came across various other carvings during our trips in. As far as the painting went, most of it was in larger rooms rather than tunnels - two of which were La Plage (which translates to “The Beach - check out the floor), and the Egyptian Chamber.

The tunnels themselves were interesting. They were either generally spotless, or completely covered in tags. I thought it was cool that people got to enjoy the freedom to paint and write graffiti to their hearts content, yet some of the tunnels were left to be enjoyed in their natural state. We left our mark also - Miru painted her rat she does a few times (which was kind of neat when we ran into it later), and on another short trip with Rosie and friends, Krisprolls threw up a few tags and a piece, and another guy did some work on a sculpture that had been started by somebody else.

It’s not just the catas that the cataphiles graffiti though - for instance, there’s also this seven-story high writing on the scaffolding of the Tour St. Jacques. F.C. stands for “Frotte, Connard!” Rosie told us this translates out to something like “erase, assholes!” It’s a challenge to the anti-graffiti crowd to try and erase their stuff. In addition, I’m pretty sure there’s one of those double-entendres that a non-local just isn’t going to understand in there also: “Frotte” is also a slang term for having sex. Translate the rest of the writing on the tower, and you’ll see this theory probably has some merit.

Still, as rude as that might be, it should be noted that the Tower itself was untouched - again, a nice balance of expression and respect. We also saw “FC” a lot in the catas - like in this entirely blue room. That piece of paper you see below the “FC” is a tract: usually just a piece of paper (might have a story, cartoon, party invitation, who knows) that people leave in the catas. You’re supposed to take it and leave another. A similar idea is actually trying to catch on in New York.

It was a great trip. Steve and I crawled out the same hole we went in about 12 hours earlier. There was only one place to go next: La Louvre!

Tags: art, Below, Catacombs, New York, Paris, Underground

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 11:36 am and is filed under Below. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.