I've posted photos of these guys before because you find them all over Paris. They look like stencils but they're individually painted by Jérôme Mesnager, a graffiti artist who has achieved a relatively high degree of respectability, with gallery shows and private commissions. He calls the figure "le Corps Blanc"("The White Body") and has several books out detailing the adventures of this ubiquitous image. The latest is called "Il court toujours - 25 ans du corps blanc" ("He's still running - 25 years of the white body").
The one above says "Draw a democracy for me". Notice the figures are holding hands; democracy is a joint project. Next to it is this one:
It says "Together". The figures seem to be in free fall, but they're still holding hands, joined now by others, and forming a star.
The final one of the series seems to me to indicate what happens if the project fails; we must work together even to escape from the emergency exit.
Mesnager's white bodies, with their vision of possibility, seem to me a lot more hopeful than this other graffiti I saw today.
A slaughtered bull, looking like something out of Picasso's Guernica, hanging as if on the butcher's hook. A darker vision, but we're in a dark world. I hope Obama earns that Nobel Prize.
