Codex Urbanus

Deborah Gallin • 6 décembre 2020

The most-extraordinary bestiary

If you've been to Montmartre, you've seen Codex Urbanus' creatures. These beasts are amusing, touching, and always hungry.

They nibble on walls, in museums, in a deck of playing cards, hidden among the more mundane creatures in a taxidermy shop, and lounging royally in a chateau. It's an eclectic crew, a bit like their creator, who has a wealth of knowledge from his street art and graffiti experiences.


He's been scribbling since he can remember, first in his class notebooks, then on his business papers, and since 2011 on the streets in Paris, Brussels, and select French cities

Deborah Gallin : Your name, Codex Urbanus, where does that come from?
Codex Urbanus : it's not supposed to be my name. It means urban manuscript in Latin, and that's the name of the bestiary. So, all of those creatures were pages or entries to this bestiary. It's just like you have the Codex Atlanticus, which is all the manuscript pages of Leonardo da Vinci or the Aztec Codex

It's just that originally, I was signing the creatures with my real name. And then nobody paid attention. Since Codex Urbanus was written above the creatures all the time, people started calling me Codex Urbanus. But it doesn't make any sense if you think about it.

DG: Do you refer to your work as street art or urban art?
CU: I refer to street art because I think it's the term used worldwide for this, more than urban art. Urban art is a little posh. It's more of a gallery term, while street art is what people in the streets say. Then, of course, some people will not agree with that, but to me, street art is really the general term for that. If you go anywhere, you will use that term.

DG: What about "urban contemporary art?"


CU: That's even posher. That's what they use on Graffiti Art Magazine actually; it was an urban contemporary, etcetera. That's because there's still something missing in "street art." The contemporary art scene, experts and art historians recognize it; it has recognition. If you want to sell, you want to use that "contemporary" term in the name. "Street art" doesn't work for this.

Also, street art is dirty. If you take the "street" out of street art, you focus on the art side, which is more bankable, and that's why they use all those terms. As you know, I still prefer street art. Because as you know, for me, street art comes from the streets. I'm kind of adamant about that.

DG: What's the role of street art in society?


CU: Wow, that's a tough question because that's a fundamental question of art's role in society. In my book, I define art as being what's necessary and not useful. How do you like that?! But it's true.

If you want to reduce a budget, the first thing you're going to get rid of is art. And we see that all the time and you can see this in front of your house. They take all the ornaments out because it's cheaper.

That's what the 20th century is all about, and we saw the result of that. It's not necessary, but for whatever reason, there are few homes on the planet where someone did not put something on the wall. The wall doesn't need that thing to hold up the roof, but something happens.

I guess street art is the overflow of art on the street in a world where art disappeared for budgetary or intellectual reasons. That's how I see it.

DG: What's the role of the artist?

CU: In my opinion, street art is an extremely selfish thing. I don't think any street artists step out in the streets and say, I'm going to just put an ornament here. That's not what happens. I think there's an urge for some of us to create images and to do art, and we live in a world where there is no real place for this. Therefore, putting it in the street is a solution. We could take all the street artists and ask them one by one to explain why they're in the streets.

There is freedom, especially if there is no technicity in what you're doing. Do you know what I'm saying? Bankable art that is official is either les beaux-arts or some conceptual stuff that is not art. It's just people that don't know how to draw and decide to be artists, and that's fine. Or highly skilled people who know how to draw and can be illustrators or work in video game companies or stuff like this. That's how you can live off your art nowadays.

A lot of artists also go in the street because they want to do this, but they did not learn or did not do anything that teaches them those skills. And that's where freedom comes into the picture. Then you don't have to justify yourself anymore when you're in the middle of the night, and you're doing whatever you want. And that makes a difference. But it's hard for me to say that that would be the main drive for street art. If it had been the main driver, this would have existed in the past centuries; but that's not the case. There's no street art before 1950, pretty much, so it never happened.

You will not find an artist in history who decided to place art without authorization, systematically and for free in a public space. That that never happened. You do have some stuff that comes close to it either punctually or more conceptually. This one guy took a statue in Rome and was putting all this satiric poetry on it. That could be seen as some kind of a street art thing, but it's not really street art.

DG: Why is street art considered interesting? Why is it valuable?


CU: Street art is interesting because we've lost art and figurative art in this world. As I said, there is no fundamental figurative art in contemporary art in France. For all the people that need to see images, suddenly, bam, they see painters. They haven't seen painters for the past 50 years. If you go to the FRAC and all that you won't see any paintings there. If you go to the Palais de Tokyo, you won't see any paintings. There's a need for that, and that creates value.

Suddenly, city halls and cultural institutions realize that there's a demand for this, and street art is a drive that calls people, and then it is used. And that's how it gets more and more valuable because you can use it.

But that's not from the artists' side; it's more from the institutions. That's why every city now in France has a street art festival. I mean, I'm kind of joking about it, but it's really getting there.

DG: Is street art this wonderful, exciting thing that everybody's jumping up and down and "got to have?" I'm told that's the way it is.


CU: Oh, man, I wish!

It is an accelerator for sales. You do sell more if you're a street artist because you embody these different values. Freedom is one of them. Transgression is one of them. Youth, in a certain way, is one of them. Especially when you're aging, it's kind of cool.

Also, it's not because something is dubbed street art that it will sell. You know, there is still no incentive for people to buy art from living artists. It's hardly ever existed! In the 1900s, there were plenty of art collectors, and if you were part of the lower bourgeoisie, you would still have commissioned paintings and such. Nowadays, maybe 2% of the French population buys contemporary art. It's extremely low. People don't buy art that much. There are many more street artists than there is a demand for art.

Street art is creating its market. You see all those galleries that we go to, like the Cabinet d'Amateur, LIgne 13. Those galleries don't have the same art collectors as regular contemporary art galleries, and that's one of the things street art succeeded in doing: to create its market.

DG: Street art collectors aren't young 20-somethings.


CU: No. Even when you're painting a wall in the festival, you will notice you have lots of retired ladies and such and then and they will not buy anything because it's nothing their culture and then they're not there for you. But you realize that this figurative way of representing things--because most of us are in figurative art…There's a huge need for it. It's a crucial desire and need for society to be provided with pictures. And, especially for the older generations born in a world where they had paintings and such, they disappeared little by little in the 1960s and 70s. And they're rediscovering it on the walls in their cities. So that's probably an explanation

DG: What's the evolution going to be?


CU: That's an excellent question. I'm very curious about what's going to happen because, to me, street art is in the street because it could not be anywhere else. But if that little coup d’état that street art is doing is successful. If suddenly figurative art comes back into the picture. If suddenly, the French state and the French institutions start funding figurative artists instead of conceptual artists like they're doing today, then there may be a lesser need for street art.

I don't know if people will keep that habit of being in the streets illegally, or if suddenly, if there's a big enough market and they can live off their art, they're going to stop.

But I can tell that among the successful street artists, we can say that maybe 75% of them stopped working in the street once they start making money, like Atlas, and you don't see them in the streets
anymore, at least not illegally, and some of them still carry on doing it like Invader or Ella & Pitr or Mr. Chat…So we'll see.

DG: You talked about how street art is in"the street," and it's about figurative expression. You also said that people are interested in it because they have access to it and because "people want to see pictures."
What's influencing street art and street artists today? What's influencing the artists other than this capitalistic, immoral thing that's taking shape?


CU: Besides the drive of being an artist, which to me is the main driver, you have a few examples that opened the doors to street art.

Of course, that's why we need to talk about graffiti. Graffiti is not figurative; it's about writing letters and "writers." It's an actual movement that could or could not be separated or kept within street art. But it is a conceptual movement with roots in the Zulu Nation, hip hop, slam and breakdance, and graffiti…

It comes from the ghetto. It's both artists and gangs, at least at the origin, but still today, you know….some of them are in galleries, others are in jail.

So, graffiti is not the source of street art because people like Ernest Pignon-Ernest came before graffiti. They're two different things. But it is an example that was followed. And it's very inspirational and aspirational.

Then you have the French culture, which is first of all Contemporary Art. When people like Ernst Pignon-Ernst went in the streets, he was doing street art (and was one of the first street artists ever), but he thought he was more land art and before that something more contemporary.
I think he was more of an activist doing activist-land--art; and by doing so, he was creating something new.

For street artists today, there are a lot of examples that drive them to think about the street. When it comes to graffiti for the first artists, I think it's the overall ghetto, Zulu Nation artistic side. When it comes to street art itself for people like Ernest Pignon-Ernest, the pioneers, it's an overflow of contemporary art that decided to take them to the street.


 DG: Is street art a movement?


CU: It is definitely a movement. The reason it's a movement is that it did not exist before.

DG: I thought to be a movement, it had to have a manifesto.


CU: No, no, that's how we see things today, but many movements appear later or receive names later. In medieval times, people doing Gothic art didn't think, "Hey, I'm doing Gothic art." The term Gothic arts is a pejorative term and appeared in the 1600s.

We tend to think that everything is in cycles, and everything repeats. The overall system of scandal-manifesto-movement is what art historians tend to see. But they're not doing their job when they do that.

One of the reasons we can say that is because of street art. You can't ignore street art anymore. It's too late. It's true.

I always think of the example of Catherine Millet, the art historian focusing on post-war and contemporary art, who wrote books that are popularization of all the different movements. She talks about Fluxus, about Support-Surface, Op Art, etc. Those books are from 2005, but she doesn't mention street art; she doesn't mention graffiti. She only mentions Keith Haring and Basquiat as being graphic-ists, whatever that means, and that's one line. When I say this, I'm clearly saying that she's "blind," that she's not seeing what happens because you cannot ignore an art movement happening, and that's street art.

What makes it difficult for people to understand, unlike graffiti, which has a unity of form and meaning. It's territorial; it's about your gang, your crew. Street art is extremely playful; it never has the same face. It can be conceptual or figurative, abstract or surrealist, made of mosaics, or done with chalk or stencils. It can be paste-ups. You name it. It's totally diverse, but it's united in its liberty, its freedom. That's because it's done illegally, systematically, and for free. That's why it's a movement. The thing is, how do you collect street art, and what do you leave for the next generation? That's, that's another question

DG: Every movement is in response to or in opposition to something else. Is there a trend or another movement that is separating itself from street art?


CU: I think a few new movements are the sons or daughters of street art. To me, one of them is neo-muralism: all those big walls that you see appearing everywhere, which are not street art. Those huge 30 meters tall walls cannot be done illegally. They're all done very legally by people who sometimes have never been on the street in an illegal manner. They're skilled, and they can do that. That's new also; it's a return to the figurative thing, but that's different from street art, and I think it's an offspring of street art.

It's not the same ballgame if you are alone in the street and doodle or paste something. And if you have one week, a huge scaffolding, tons of paints, and a municipal team to help you out. It's a different game, but it's not less interesting. It's just that this game, the mural game, could not have happened without the street art game before.

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DG: The artwork that street artists show in galleries for me is street art. I spoke to a street artist about this said, no, it's not street art. It's fine art.


CU: It's true. What do you call the art street artists present in art galleries? That's an overall question. Someone talked about inter-mural art. A guy in San Francisco created that term. Why not?

For me, street art is must be on the street. If you're doing something for an art gallery, then it's no longer street art. However, the art gallery won't call you or sell your work if you are not considered a street artist. There is a straight link between what you do in the street and what you sell in the art gallery, and cutting it would not make sense. If tomorrow ARDIF is doing watercolors of young girls, he won't sell. What he can sell is Mechanimals because that's what he's doing in the street, and he's known for that.

So, there is a link. But if you look closely, it's not street art, which raises the question of how you collect street art and the different answers. None of them is fully satisfying.

DG: Why are they not satisfying?


CU: Well, for instance, if you were to collect street art from Codex, the only way to do it would be to actually take a piece of wall because there is nothing else that takes you to the street from me.

For graffiti, you have the black book that can be collected. It is an actual piece of art. For people making paste-ups, the artists prepare two paste-ups; that's what Invader is doing: one for the streets one for the gallery.

Or you steal, which is an interesting way of doing things. (Laughs)

The idea is to put it in the street. But you also know that it will be destroyed, that it's a game, and at one point, you think why not steal it? I will not do it myself, and I totally understand that people resent that. But I also find it normal that some art collectors think, well, people are placing art in the street without authorization. I'm just going to take it because I love it and I collect it. And that would be genuine. Some people have good techniques to steal…paste-ups, for instance. I discovered that people are actually engineers in street art stealing, which leads to artists that do paste-ups to come with engineering solutions, so the work is not stolen. It's fascinating!

DG: Are art festivals or invitations like the one from Grimaud useful?


CU: Yes, it's always useful to show art in a world that doesn't do it that much. So, yes, in that way, it's definitely useful. It's not useful for street artists that are already in the street. For instance, I don't need to go to Grimaud because my work is here in Paris, and it appears on the Internet, and that's how I got "famous."

That's how you get some kind of fame and then by doing it illegally in the streets. When you do it legally in a medium city or backwater, it's good because it brings art to people locally, people who will not see street art because often they are cut off from any urban scene. It's good for you as communication because it's one thing to do something in the street. It's another one when you have a township with a Communication Department and call the press.


 It's interesting for artists to do this, but the outcome is selecting a few artists who never did anything in the streets and are in all festivals. It also creates a new form of artists that you will never see in the streets like the rue des Cascades, but you will find it in most festivals.

DG: How do the "pseudo-street-artists" get into festivals?

CU: There are plenty of different strategies. Often, it's because they're using tools that make them look like it's street art: taking stuff from the streets in their art or using spray cans or not. But the hardest part is usually taking your first step. But once you enter the lineup for one of those street art festivals and you're called a "street artist, then the next one organizing a festival will look at the lineup and pretty much try to get all of them, especially if your work is not that bad. You know, I'm not saying that they're bad artists. I'm just saying they're not street artists.

DG: Are festivals useful for collectors?

CU: Yes, I think they're useful because art collectors need confirmation of their choice. If they see some of the artists they like appearing in cities here and there with a little bit of press coverage, it is probably flattering for an art collector. I think it is.

It's always good when you like something, and you see that little something being successful: it tells you well, you were right. I think that's a good thing for art collectors, and it's a good thing for street art overall. And I'm not even talking about people that speculate in street art because they need the festivals. They need any kind of coverage.

Codex Urbanus

DG: I hadn't realized that there was speculation in street art.


CU: An Artcurial auction is a great way to see how it works. Just look at articles in the press before the auction, look at the auction, look at what happens in art galleries after the auction. It's extremely interesting!

DG: What's the role or importance of galleries in all of this?
CU: Street art comes from the street. It's not recognized as contemporary art still today.

There is no street art in public collections in France. The FRAC doesn't have street art. The Pompidou Center doesn't have any. They may have something by Ernst Pignon-Ernst that they got in the 1970s.

Art galleries have a crucial role because they're claiming there is a market and therefore saying that art is fascinating. Street art is not just vandalism. It is art happening.

It's also a tool of credibility for street art. It's helpful to street artists, first, financially, and it gives them confidence. It's not easy when you're a vandal on the streets to think that you can actually make money out of it and be recognized as an artist. That's one of the roles of the art gallery.

The gallery is also sending this message, which is crucial: street art counts, and street art matters. It is a movement that is as interesting as Fluxus or Supports-Surfaces that can be sold in art galleries, and that can create exhibitions addressing this or that topic. So, art galleries are essential.

Then, of course, there is the problem with all art galleries, which is turning art into money and that in the process, you lose something. I think what you win when you do this clearly matches what you lose. It's really worth the game.

DG: What do you lose?

CU: To start with, you lose your freedom. When you're doing something in an art gallery, you need to fulfill a buyer and the gallery owner's needs. You cannot really do what you want; you have to do something that you can sell. You need to adapt.

DG: I would never have expected to hear that. You're an artist, and you do what you want to do: you're express your feelings, your thoughts, whatever it is, you're expressing.

CU: Well, that's on paper, but you don't want to be disappointing.

Freedom is not always a question of having a loss, and you cannot do something; sometimes, you just have the feeling that you can do something. When you're alone in the street in the middle of the night, no one's watching you, and you do whatever you want.


But when you provide pieces to an art gallery that must pay the rent, electricity, communication, the way I see it, you feel committed to not disappointing that person. You have to do something, which takes most of the fun out of when you create but is part of the game.

The fun is when you can organize yourself and what you want to do together with the gallery owner. That's a bit different, but it depends on what kind of relationship you have is your gallerist. But that's definitely one thing.

Again, an art gallery is a marketplace; it's not a museum. So, if I feel confident with an art gallery that I can do whatever I want, then it's fine; it's almost the same. But I get this also when I work for institutions like museums and Les Egouts de Paris…. You must fulfill, to satisfy the people that let you do it. That takes a bit of fun out of it. At least at the end, you don't get that sentence of: "how much do you sell?" That's also why things that you learn to ask yourself in school like "what percentage of your solo show did you sell?" "How much money you bring in?" That's life, but it's not pleasant.

DG: Has street art become too monetized?
CU: No, because the good thing is if you want to refresh your ideas or thinking, you just go in the street at night and, bam, you forget everything else. So, it's not too monetized.

But if you only do financial deals, then yes, I guess it would be too monetized, but you don't have to. It's up to you. You know, the street is always there. There will always be a wall somewhere for you.

DG: Why do you do street art?
CU: Remember that urge to draw that I mentioned? I've had that all my life that's part of me and. I never noticed it was such an essential thing because I thought art is not crucial like most people. You know, art is not necessary.

I never realized it's part of who I am. There's a chemical reaction in me that pushes me, urges me to do this, and I've been doing it since I was born and in school and then when my life changed and I stopped working seated at a desk with paper then there was a withdrawal.

However, by doing this, I started having requests for street art tours. These tours never occurred to me because I am a good boy, and to me, street art was an offense. I had to take it in, and I discovered that it's actually art on walls. It's not just vandalism. It's not just defacing, and I kind of got sucked in.
Of course, I didn't dare to do it right away. I was too much of a good boy. I don't commit offenses like that. So, I first studied where I could paste something because it's not as bad when you place it. And so I wanted to paste all ceramic tiles, but it was such a bummer: It was heavy because you had to take a stool and glue and whatever else you had to have, and it was no fun.

DG: What influences your work?


CU: All kinds of things. I've always had a taste for weird beings such as water insects, which are great! When I was a kid, I had an aquarium with water scorpions and water beetles and dragonfly larvae and stuff, which are great. Everybody should have one if you ask me.
It was even better when I was in Louisiana, and they have those crazy insects are there. So that's one source of inspiration.

Then, of course, comics. Sci-fi movies. Video games. Cartoon. Like most street artists, we use all of those pop culture, children's things as our new….mythology. Back in the 17th century, they were using Samson and Delilah or Perseus and Dromida… we tend to use Sponge Bob Square Pants or Darth Vader, but it's really the same.

All those pop culture characters embody different things. They're used the same way that biblical or mythological characters were used.

DG : You've written books. You describe your work as a bestiary….and you're making monsters with scientific names and groupings.
CU: It's a cross between different things. It really is between the medieval bestiary, which was only symbolic. When a person in the Middle Ages shows you a lion, he doesn't give a shit about a real lion. The lion is a symbol of all kinds of different things, and that's what he sees. Then the figure and the number, and the Latin name is this appearance of reason.

And that's what art is about: simultaneously totally out of these worlds and a bit scientific. Especially in the Renaissance, when all those artists and painters you can think of were actually engineers. All of them.

So yes, I'm fooling around with this, creating this both medieval and modern bestiary of monsters in the seven walls of Paris …

DG: Evolution is something that every artist does or goes through. How does that happen for you?
CU: Well, there are two evolutions. I think there's one that's technical. When you're like me without any background in art and the skills, you keep on learning. And as I said, 10 years ago, I never had used a spray can. I had never used a Posca. Then it takes some time to grasp it. It gets better and better by the year or the month. It's some kind of virtuosity system. The more you do it, the better you do it.

Then it's the concept of things that can evolve. Again, I knew I wanted to keep on the same track for a long time because I like to go deep into something, and I'm not a big fan of change either. So, I'm stuck with the bestiary for a while just because I like it. And that means everybody else is stuck with a bestiary for a while just because I like it.

DG: That goes in complete contradiction to what you said earlier about getting bored.
CU: No, it doesn't; it's never the same. The bestiary is always the bestiary, but it's always different. It's always challenging. It's always new; it's never the same animals. So, I'm creating a whole world. That's doesn't bore me.

Of course, I pop up with new ideas now and then, but I never last long because I'm really more of the bestiary kind of thing. When I did the Codex Pestilence during the first lockdown, I painted creatures with different disasters on the walls. Sometimes I do paste-ups like billboards and stuff like that, just for a change, and sometimes I do bigger walls. But really, the basis for my work in the street is the bestiary.

DG: You're mostly up in Montmartre. That's where you live.
CU: It's convenient. Whatever I do, I know at one point, I'm going to be back home. It's also because I'm one of the few persons to doodle directly on the walls. We're not that many people out there to do that. And when you do that, you get the covered really fast. They have those cleaning teams turning around Paris, and they just two strikes a roll, and bam, you're gone. If I were to try to be everywhere, and many street artists do that, I would never be anywhere because I need to have some kind of halo effect if I want to exist.

To be a bestiary, we need to have a collection of animals, not just one. So that's why I have to stay intensely on Montmartre because when I do four, there's only one left at the end of the week, so I cannot disperse myself. 


There are conceptual reasons also: most of Paris is starting to be a museum city. We're losing the center of Paris right: the Islands and the Sixth and the Marais…. We don't even go there anymore. 


When I moved to Montmartre 20 years ago, I was still going to Les Abbesses, Les Deux Moulins…. The place was packed with Parisians. And it was great. Now no one goes there anymore. It's only tourists. And, of course, the top of the hill has been lost. Like in the 60s, there are no Parisians who decide to meet and have a drink at the Place du Tertre. That never happens.


I like the idea of being one of the last Montmartre artists. Luckily, I live in the 18th, not far from the top of the hill. It's perfect to doodle on the walls because you have all of those blank walls and stairs. There are no police because the police are only in cars and cannot drive on the stairs at night. So, for all kinds of reasons, Montmartre is a great spot to paint.

You can see more of Codex Urbanus' work on Montmartre's hill bordered by the metros Anvers, Pigalle, Blanche, the rue Custine, and the rue Caulaincourt to the area around the city hall of the 18th arrondissement. It's scarcer around the rue de la Forge Royale (metro Faideherbe Chaligny). Sometimes you can spot his beasts between Faideherbe Chaligny and Chatelet. And, he tells me, that's about it in Paris everything else is very, very scarce. On an illegal basis, without authorization, there are only a few cities where you will find beasts by Codex Urbanus: one of them is St. Malo in Brittany, another is Sète on the Côte d'Azur, and another one is Brussels (Belgium). You can also see his ever-evolving bestiary on his website: www.codexurbanus.com.

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