PAINTING THE TOWN
Montreal is becoming a canvas for multimedia installations, murals and street art,
MONTREAL, QUE.— As I savour every last morsel of my melt-in-your-mouth tuna tartare, Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Darth Vader all seem to eye my plate hungrily.
Their images are splattered across the walls of Être Avec Toi (Ê.A.T.) in the W Montreal hotel, along with the likes of hockey legend Maurice (Rocket) Richard, Batman and Mr. T.
It’s an impressive list of regulars. Who knew Montreal would be able to deliver my dream dinner party?
But that’s the magic of a city steadily becoming a living, breathing work of art. Through the likes of murals and new multimedia installations, all of Montreal seems to be a canvas.
There’s no place that demonstrates that better than Ê.A.T. The wall art, from deviant wildlife to pop-culture mash-ups, was created by a who’s who of famous graffiti and street artists — most of them local.
Arthur Gaillard, artistic director of MASSIVart, the creative agency behind the decor, calls it “street-art inspired.” Beyond minor space and colour constraints, each artist was free to follow their muse. “The history of Montreal street art is found in here,” Gaillard says, noting MASSIVart aims to make art more accessible to the broader public.
Montreal’s annual MURAL festival takes that same attitude to the city’s walls. The 2016 edition included new murals from local Ê.A.T. contributors such as Stikki Peaches, and international artists such as Israel’s Klone Yourself, New York’s Buff Monster and England’s D*Face.
André Bathalon, co-founder of MURAL, says the fest has produced nearly 20 new murals each year since 2013 and maintains a growing legacy of over 50 permanent pieces on Montreal’s walls. They even employ a repair artist for touch-ups. “Once the party is over, the art stays on the wall,” he explains. “The murals become landmarks or beacons. This is art tourism, a walk of discovery.”
The murals are all found in the vicinity of Boulevard Saint-Laurent. The multi-storey murals pop out in unique ways depending on factors such as sunlight as well as your distance and angle.
From a mystical weeping woman, and a boy with a sling shot aimed at the stars, to a jungle-themed, old comic book cover, the murals feel like magical little windows in the urban landscape. Sidewalks are fair game, too. On one corner, I’m forced to step on the drawing of a giant, 71⁄ 2- metre-long pink squid, his long tentacles reaching over the sidewalk and into a nearby sewer grate.
Bathalon says each mural has four lives and is reinvented by the changing seasons — especially in the winter, when the snow sharpens the surreal colours. Citizens serve as de facto guardians, fiercely protective of the imagery on their building or neighbour’s wall.
In 2015, Montreal’s murals earned it distinction as the first Canadian city to be added to Google’s street art gallery. With more than 150 local murals available, it joined the likes of Barcelona, Philadelphia and London as a public art wonder of the world. Montreal’s new motto could be, “Come for the art, stay for the city.”
Case in point, Cité Mémoire in Old Montreal, where spirits of the past are brought back to life by a living spirit of creativity and innovation. A new, free app allows visitors to jour- ney through time via the project’s 18 after-dark tableaux. The multimedia vignettes, triggered by motion sensors and smart devices, project stories of the city’s milestones and famous characters onto the area’s historic walls. Four more will be added for the city’s 375th birthday in 2017.
As co-creator Victor Pilon says, “All these people that made and built Montreal are still in its bricks.” Thanks to him, both literally and figuratively. During my visit, I witnessed a towering Maurice Richard take a slap shot, Jackie Robinson swing a bat, Oscar Peterson play a piano and even glimpsed a scene from the Great Montreal Fire of 1852.
Old Montreal isn’t the only public intersection of everyday life, history and art. An arts charity called MU helped the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy celebrate its rich jazz history with giant murals of homegrown heroes Oscar Peterson and Oliver Jones.
Meanwhile, the air above Montreal’s Gay Village is a work of art: Les Boules Roses showcases 200,000 pink balls strung above pedestrianonly Rue Ste-Catherine East and casts a rosy glow on the trendy nightlife from May through September. The area is also home to the annual Festival International Montreal en Arts, an open-air multimedia gallery. The city of Montreal is even spending $40 million to create an elaborate light installation on Jacques Cartier bridge for 2017.
It makes you want to get in on the action, which is why I readily accept a personal graffiti lesson from local graffiti artist Future Laser.
His signature design is lasers, shooting out of human or animal eyes. Step by step, paint can by can, and working largely with stencils, I add layer after layer to create a rainbow-hued shark and turtle on a makeshift wall.
The artist works under an alias because he has “a real job,” but enjoys the “challenge and adrenalin” of street art. MURAL is one of the few times he can legally ply his trade in the open without fear of the police. In effect, MURAL legitimizes an underground art form — employing it for a municipal makeover.
Every inch of the city is waiting to become a landmark. “We unlock that potential,” Bathalon says. “We give artists a giant canvas . . . and we’re beautifying Montreal.”
From unsung neighbourhoods and serene parks, to outdoor artistic marvels, that beauty is far easier to discover travelling on your own two legs. As I walk back to my hotel on my last night, the story behind Leonard Cohen’s famous song “Suzanne” lights up the Old Port’s clock tower (courtesy of Cité Mémoire), and I then bid farewell to the night with a final cocktail at Ê.A.T.’s bar sitting next to Star Wars’ Boba Fett and Beethoven. Only in Montreal. Très formidable.
Chris Lackner was hosted by Tourism Montreal, which didn’t review or approve this story.