Issue 09
Miss Van
By Caleb NeelonPhotos By Miss Van
An artist’s impact is truly felt when their work becomes so familiar that it’s hard to remember what the world was like without it. When the Toulouse native and current Barcelona resident MISS VAN’s sultry female characters began to pop up on city center walls in the mid 1990s, they instantly possessed a timeless quality, as if women had always painted such graffiti in the streets. City residents developed relationships with their local MISS VAN characters. While MISS VAN’s work incurred the wrath of some feminists who found them offensive to women, on the whole it has a rare appeal that transcends gender-an appeal that also extends to the work that she shows in galleries.
Of course, MISS VAN’s formula-painting wide-eyed female characters in the street, often on their own and separate from any other graffiti in the area, and usually done in the non-standard graffiti medium of latex paint-hasn’t been around forever. Ingenuity and success is often a setup for others to poach, particularly if one’s innovation is a novel way of painting something with such instantly accessible and broad-ranging appeal as voluptuous women. So MISS VAN’s style and formula were imitated. And while she was quite comfortable painting in the busiest of city streets, it didn’t mean she was especially outgoing. Her characters kept evolving, becoming less cute and more dangerously alluring-their sexy aura made all the more complex by their increasingly ambiguous facial expressions. The more she moved into gallery work and could work with the nuances of more fragile media than the streets would allow (pencil, for one), her characters grew even more sensitive, subtle, and delicately rendered.
[SWINDLE/S]: You call your characters poupees, which is French for dolls.
[MISS VAN/MV]: I started naturally calling them poupees because, for me, they were my babies, but not really human ones. So, for me, the poupees are between reality and fantasy. As I didn’t want to give them any names, I called them “Les poupees de MISS VAN,” as a part of me.
[S]: I remember when I first started seeing your work in graffiti magazines in the late 1990s. While you’ve done a lot of refining along the way, it seems as though you didn’t try out a million ideas before settling into what you do. What was your learning process? Was there a “normal graffiti” phase for you?
[MV]: Since I was young, I’ve been drawing characters and animals. In the early 1990s, I started discovering graffiti with friends of mine, tagging a little bit and following them, taking photos and stuff. Then I wanted to be a part of it. The characters came out spontaneously. I chose to use acrylic paint because I was using it while studying, and I found it more comfortable than spray cans, even if it wasn’t a graffiti style.
[S]: In the early 1990s, it looked like there was a movement of women who painted female characters in Toulouse, with you and FAFI and MADEMOISELLE KAT.
[MV]: I met KAT at university, where we were both studying art. We motivated each other to paint some fresh and unseen stuff in the streets with acrylic paint and brushes. At that moment, we didn’t realize that it was something new on the graffiti scene. We both influenced many other girls to do the same. Then some of them couldn’t find their own style, and it came out looking like a copy for many years. No names.
[MV]: I guess we created something like a feminine movement in Toulouse, supported by the guys, and then the graffiti scene became more and more important in Toulouse. Also, Toulouse was a more tolerant city, and police got confused by seeing girls paint.
[S]: Were you studying art then?
Yes, I studied four years at university and got a Bachelor of Art degree.
[S]: When you started to paint poupees in the street, the idea of painting a detailed character-in the street, no background, no graffiti piece next to it or anything-was kind of novel. Your use of latex paint was especially unusual. TWIST had been doing it in San Francisco, as had OS GAMEOS in Sao Paulo, each rather differently. It is a very effective way to work, and people respond well to it.
[MV]: I was using latex paint because it covers easily and the colors are bright and opaque. It doesn’t smell or make any noise either, unlike spray paint. I wanted to have a contrast. Within the urban context, my work had to be effective when you passed by the streets, like a big sticker on the wall.
[S]: Have you heard stories from people who have personal relationships with their neighborhood poupees?
[MV]: I want people to have any sort of feeling seeing my poupees, good or bad. Some of them are in love with my girls and others cross and even paint over the faces in black. I’ve met some guys that have had fantasies with my dolls and want to meet me, thinking I was like my drawings. I’m a little bit uncomfortable sometimes, but proud at the same time, provoking any strong feelings just using my imagination. Lots of people were passing by on the streets of Toulouse, every Sunday, trying to find a new poupee. It became like a habit. It has helped me to meet people and be a little bit more social.
[S]: You had some problems with people that felt your poupees were bad for women.
[MV]: I had problems with some feminist girls in Toulouse. They were the ones painting the faces black. I guess it was a silly reaction because it’s just painted images and fantasies, and people need to see it with more distance. It’s like something bringing you away for a few seconds, like daydreaming, when you’re walking down the street. If someone crosses out or paints over my stuff, I prefer to come back and make a new painting on top and then see what will happen.
[S]: How do you usually go about painting in the streets? What makes a city a good place for you to do your work?
[MV]: A good city is a city with graffiti. I look at walls, wood panels, the tags. In the 1990s, there were a lot of good cities for graffiti. Now they have started cleaning everywhere, and that makes it hard to find some cool places to paint, even more because I’m accustomed to painting in city centers. When they started cleaning Toulouse, I spent two years almost depressed because there was no possibility to paint on walls. But then I went to paint with some friends in Barcelona, and I was amazed by the crazy scene they had over there. I fell in love with the city, and I made a choice to move there as soon as possible. I was enjoying painting there for three or four years before they started cleaning. Now I don’t know where to go, but I’m staying because I still love the city.
[S]: Graffiti is such a boy’s game. Do you think being a girl made it easier for you to get away with it?
[MV]: It must be the only boy game that I like. I guess it was easier to handle everything with the police.
[S]: Street art has exploded in the past few years, and you have become well known. Do you continue to be motivated to paint on the streets?
[MV]: Of course things are changing with time, and the laws made me lose motivation, in a way. I tried to keep on tagging and pasting posters as it became harder to paint. I still love it, and I miss it. And I wish I could paint more. Being famous didn’t change my motivation.
[MV]: I am not really interested in working and making commercial products. I would prefer to follow my artistic way, building exhibitions and concentrating on my paintings. I really care about protecting my image, my paintings,and myself. This is my passion, and I want my work to last instead of becoming a product. Anyway, I have been working with the brand Fornarina on limited-edition collections of clothes. It was a good experience-and we made some nice stuff together-but after two years it was enough.
[S]: I heard that you lived in an all-pink house that looked like the world of your artwork and that you dressed like your art too.
[MV]: It’s true-in the middle of the 1990s. I still love pink, but not exclusively. I stopped wearing my princess dresses, and my hair is not pink anymore. My house is still colored, and I live with many animals-fake ones.
[S]: Your work is very sexy. You could paint pictures of boys, but you don’t. Why sexy? What does sexy do?
[MV]: The only answer is that I’m a girl, and being a girl means that I know more about girls than boys. Then again, I’m not too sure that they’re always sexy. They could be sad, melancholy, arrogant, or expressing any sort of feeling, just like us. It’s never been my purpose to only paint in a sexy sort of way. I just enjoy painting my fantasies without censoring myself.
[S]: What makes your work yours?
[MV]: First of all, it’s my sensitivity. I can be copied, but my sensitivity and my fantasy stays mine.
[S]: What were some of the things you changed when you took your work indoors?
[MV]: Working indoors makes me experiment more with different techniques and media that I can’t use in the streets. When I’m in my studio it could seem boring, but it’s easier to concentrate on my painting and to make it evolve, trying some new things. In the streets, it has to be quick and precise to be effective. I like to choose a special place with nice architecture or a wall full of tags, a dirty wood panel, or any sort of detail that will make my painting more special.
[S]: If you got a wish and could make an artwork regardless of cost, what would it look like?
[MV]: I would like a painting of mine to cover a really big building-covering it completely. I would like to paint on a big hot air balloon, floating around in midair. I also would like to paint on nature, like mountains and trees, big rocks and stuff. OS GEMEOS inspire me to paint on really big surfaces, but I’m more comfortable with small and more delicate pieces.
[S]: What are you working on now?
[MV]: I’m going to start to work on my first book and on future shows. Recently, I’ve been enjoying traveling a lot with my work. For now, I’ve shown my work mostly in Europe and in the United States. I’m looking forward to visiting Asia and South America. I don’t have any amazing dreams because I’m already doing what I enjoy the most. I just want to keep on going.
MISS VAN will be showing her work at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles in February 2007.