Thierry Noir

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Piece of the Wall painted by Noir (1986)
Painted East Side Gallery (2005)

Thierry Noir (born June 3, 1958 in Lyon ) is a French painter who has lived in Berlin since 1982 .

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Thierry Noir began painting the Berlin Wall in 1984 with Christophe-Emmanuel Bouchet and Kiddy Citny . As the East Side Gallery , painted parts of the wall, including that of Noir, were placed under monument protection in 1991.

With his round, bulbous-eyed heads, mostly painted in unbroken clear colors, he shaped the image of the wall on the west side. Noir paints his pictures colorfully, this radiates joie de vivre. Colored heads in profile with protruding noses, huge lips, googly eyes and round skulls are typical of Noir. “It is the poetry of the moment, the poetics of the second, the irony of the moment that is my concern,” said Noir in 1996.

Thierry Noir, who was born in Lyon in 1958, moved to Berlin in 1982. In April 1984 he started painting the Berlin Wall together with Christoph Bouchet. In the beginning, painting was not without risk, claims Noir. According to Noir, four soldiers armed with machine pistols once jumped over the wall to catch him and Bouchet. However, they had just tried to peg into objects like urinals and drilled holes in the wall with a hammer drill. The Kreuzberg citizens as well as the West Berlin police accepted the wall painting almost without exception, since the wall was the property of East Berlin. "It's wonderful what they're doing there," said a West Berlin police officer, quoting Noir's co-painter Christophe Bouchet. Other graffiti artists, on the other hand, made fun of the property claim that Thierry Noir increasingly associated with his painting. When others were applying their graffiti, Noir would rush in at night and restore his paintings. "At some point Thierry Noir thought he was a kind of sole owner of the wall," said Rauchhaus roommate Max Müller , singer and head of the band Mutter . Noir's wall paintings became larger and larger over the years and also found increasing resonance in the art scene and in advertising. At first he only painted one head per segment, later - for example in 1990 at the East Side Gallery - he enlarged the format so that the heads could also be recognized by the passing cars. Although the East Side Gallery is a listed building, he had to restore his work here again and again (1993, 1996 and 1998).

Although the figures look pleasing, he was not interested in decoration: “I never wanted to try to beautify the wall because that is in fact impossible, since 80 people were killed trying to get over the wall, so that you can see the wall with can cover a hundred kilos of paint and it remains the same. A bloody monster, an old crocodile that wakes up from time to time to eat someone and then falls asleep again. "

In 2012, Kiddy Citny and Thierry Noir restored their paintings on the Berlin Wall and thus saved them from decay. The wall paintings are recognized as art and are auctioned for millions. Noir's work was recognized not only by the common man, but also by filmmakers and musicians. Today Thierry Noir is one of the most famous street artists in Berlin, especially museums and private collections in America bid for his wall paintings. At the moment he is working with screen prints and sculptures, which he sells in his own gallery. In September 2012 he was hired to design a vehicle for the public premiere of the new A-Class in the Mercedes-Welt am Salzufer.

Trivia

In 2005 Noir designed a Buddy Bear named Teddy Noir for the benefit of the children's aid organization Die Arche - Christian Children and Youth Organization . Noir helped set up the film Der Himmel über Berlin , in which he also appeared as an extra . In September 2019, it caused a scandal that Tom Kaulitz had a wall painted by Noir in his own garden as a wedding present for Heidi Klum .

Exhibitions

  • 2009 "Berlin Wall Art - Artists for Freedom" Park of the Palais Royal in Paris

Publications

  • Berlin wall painting. A documentary, multimedia walk along the Berlin Wall in the period before and during the fall of the Wall in 1989. Gründerzeit, Berlin 1999, [electronic resource], CD-ROM, with supplement ([7] pp.), ISBN 3-9806893-0- 1

literature

Web links

Commons : Thierry Noir  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Subculture West Berlin, pp. 140–151
  2. ↑ Subkultur Westberlin, pp. 148–151
  3. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Gift to Berlin. Retrieved January 11, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Jan Stremmel: Fall of the Wall: Who Sells the Remnants of the Wall. Retrieved January 11, 2020 .
  5. ^ Exhibition Thierry Noir in Paris - Park des Palais Royal
personal data
SURNAME Noir, Thierry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon