Montreal's Murals #6
The Lost Ones
The folloming murals can no more be found on the walls where they used to hanged.
This first one has gone missing along with the entire building it sat on at the end of the noughties. Le Medley, where metal and punk bands used to perform from 1995 to 2009, was demolished in order to make space for a residential tower call Le Métropole. For three decades before becoming Le Medley, the place was named Le Vieux Munich and used to host bavarian orchestras playing music in front of an attendance enjoying the flow of cheap beer.
Following the custom with these Montreal Murals posts, you can click on the adresses below the photos, it will lead you at the art work's old Google Map location.
It's hard to get a good idea of the size of the painting just by looking at the picture, but if you follow the link you'll see that if this guitarist was to come alive, there would be a giant walking among us.
We're still hanging out in downtown Montreal, now we are at the entrance of Chinatown. The drawing below was last seen in 2014. It has now been replaced with a much prettier one, if you can believe that. I intend on going to capture it on camera so that I can share it with you in a future publication. That I promise myself to do, along with picking up one of those delicious Taiwanese bubble tea as a refreshment drink.
Going up northward on the boulevard St-Laurent, about one hundred meters away from our previous location we end up at the Peace Park. There used to be two women waiting for us at that square, but it seems like they have disappeared since before 2009.
Going from the street which physically seperates Montreal's westside from eastside and symbolically the anglos from the francos, we make a stop on another famous street, probably the most popular in town, namely Saint Catherine Street. If you just happen to lo be looking for a nice hat to buy, you're at the right place. We're at Henri Henri, a business selling hats since 1932. Beside the store, where there was once a parking before but now where a new building has filled the space, there were graffitis. On one side there was a Henri Henri publicity, and on the other there was some kind of angel of the city.
One block further to the west, there is an alley of interest. Rue de Bullion is a small street but in terms of artistic value it's a fairly big ressource. It's mural landscapes are ever changing. If you had walked by in april 2014 you would have met Marilyn Monroe, Joe Pesci, Clint Eastwood, Mister T., Anthony Hopkins (as Hannibal Lecter), Bill Murray and others I don't recognize but that you might help in identifying. That is, two-dimensional reproductions of those Hollywood stars.
Also in april 2014, you could have seen a mad ice cream truck, but if you were in the area earlier by the year 2009, you would have witness a punk rock scene and a girl with her two flying pink teddy bears.
The Survivor
We'll cross the finish line with the only surviving art piece presented here. The medium used to produce it is quite different from other murals, which also makes it stand apart on its own from the other traditional painting-only graffitis. Not being a visual artist myself, I would have hard time describing what materials it is made of, but I know I like the fact that a different technique was used to produce it. These cardboard-like characters on top of a nature background produce a strange and interesting result.
