Museum Escapees: Portrait Painting from the Louvre and Prado on the Streets
French artist and director Julien de Casabianca gave a new interpretation to masterpieces of painting, “releasing” them onto the city streets. One day, while wandering around the Louvre, Julien de Casabianca came across a portrait of a stranger by Ingres. Julien took a photo of the painting with his smartphone, printed the image and pasted it onto a house in Paris. This is how the Outings project was born.
Street art has always been a powerful form of expression that draws the attention of passersby to the urban landscape. But what if street art could bridge the gap between classical art and modern society?
Julien de Casabianca first tried his hand at graffiti back in 1982, when he was a teenager from the French suburbs. But it wasn’t until 2015 that the spark ignited again, leading the artist to a completely new creative path. Julien was inspired by the idea of taking characters from classic paintings from prestigious museums and transferring them to the streets.
The artist's first street work appeared after he was inspired by Ingres's portrait of a stranger, took a photo of the painting on his smartphone, printed out an enlarged image and pasted it onto the outside wall of a Parisian house.
The Outings project, created by French artist and filmmaker Julien de Casabianca, is a unique combination of street art and classic museum paintings. The main idea of the project is to “liberate” forgotten works of art from museums and transfer them to city walls. The project quickly attracted attention and is now supported in more than 70 cities around the world.
The idea behind the project is simple: anyone can take a photo of a painting in a local museum, print it out, and paste it onto the streets of their city, turning it into a kind of open gallery. This approach not only brings art closer to people, but also redefines its role in public space, blurring the boundaries between classical and street art.
The project has received recognition from many museums, who invite Casabianca to collaborate with them, making his work available to a wider public in various cities around the world, such as London, New York, Paris and others. In Outings, classical portraits come to life on brick and concrete walls, creating an unexpected visual interaction between art and the everyday life of city dwellers.