happen in a few countries… But I always defended the fact that I was the first to do it, I defended it because it’s a pretty hard task, with time, people forget about it. There have always been people trying to take my place, so during 30 years I have always had to defend my “godfather” position if you will… The first person to call me the godfather of stencil art was Pure Evil, it was back in 2005 when he invited me to live at his place for 15 days in order to do stencils in London. One night he had invited some people and he told them ‘Let me introduce you to the godfather of stencils’. The name came from there. Are you optimistic about street art’s future ? Yes and no… Yes because it is really the most interesting art movement since the Renaissance … But at the same time no because it is the most fake art movement to ever exist. I use the word fake because there is a lot of guys who call themselves street artist but they are not real. They did maybe two genuine pieces in their lives and they immediately knew how to contact the media, get on TV, get journalists onside and pull some
very slick PR together. Suddenly they become great street artists because they knew how to promote themselves. But I believe time will cleanse all that and with time, only the real artists will stay. Guys like Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Slinkachu and hopefully myself will stay. So I’m very optimistic yet very pessimistic at the same time. In the next few years there has to be a real cleansing. It’s like in music - there was a time when all youngsters wanted to be rock stars but only the good musicians remained, only the great rock groups, and all the bad ones faded into oblivion. All the bad ones, those who want to get into the movement to make a quick buck or get a magazine cover, all those need to be chopped away and forgotten. At the moment the problem is that we don’t know how to distinguish between good and bad because there is too much stuff going on. It’s so prolific that we don’t know who’s who anymore; who’s a good artist, who isn’t… We don’t know how to make the difference anymore but time will tell.
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