About the artwork
This work depicts a black rat standing on its hind legs, holding a scepter in its small hands. On its head floats a large, stylized red crown, similar to a quickly drawn graffiti, a symbol of royalty but also of derision. The striking contrast between the deep black of the animal and the pure white background highlights the rat's silhouette, while the red touch of the crown immediately catches the eye. This image belongs to the emblematic production of Blek le Rat, a pioneer of urban stencil art, for whom the rat is a recurring, almost totemic motif. For the artist, the rat is at once a symbol of marginality, survival and the proliferation of urban art, infiltrating urban spaces like clandestine works. Here, the scepter and crown give the animal an ironic, subversive dimension, inverting the codes of power and social hierarchy. The work evokes both the resilience of street art and its ability to establish itself as a royal voice in the contemporary artistic landscape.
Expert opinion
This work is characteristic of Blek le Rat's style, in which the rat becomes king, an ironic and subversive symbol of urban art that plays with the codes of power and society.
About the artist
Blek le Rat is one of the pioneers of French urban art. Beginning to paint with stencils on the street in 1981, his work is recognizable by the little silhouettes of rats running along the walls of Paris. This anagram of the word "art" became his signature alongside his more or less famous life-size human figures. This seminal stencil work greatly influenced Banksy's a few years later.
Additional info
Signed
Framed
Proof of authenticity
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