Friday 29 July 2011

La vie s'eteint ...


More from Paris...  My eye was caught by this curiously beautiful graffiti. 

As far as I know,  "la vie s'eteint" means "life goes."   Does it have some extra shade of meaning in French? I don't speak it well enough to know. 

18 comments:

  1. and so it goes. . . .



    la vie s'eteint



    Aloha from Waikiki;


    Comfort Spiral

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  2. Hello Jenny:
    Although we usually deplore graffiti as being senseless and rather badly done, there are times, as here, when something one sees strikes a chord and translates into an art form of some kind.

    At the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Budapest, as English speaking guides, we were much involved with a Keith Haring exhibition a couple of years ago. Now he really had graffiti down to a fine art!

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  3. I find graffiti fascinating as they are an entirely new form of art, street art of course that reflects the evolution of society. They are brilliant when transforming ugly walls or buildings but become vandalism when made on historical monuments.

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  4. I don't know about hidden meaning, but I do love graffitti that is well executed; I find it exciting as it is a form of self expression for the artist and a large area makes a wonderful canvas.

    I would like to have been a graffitti artist, but then again, I would like to have been a travel writer, but writing about cats of the world. However ... I am neither!
    Thank you for visiting me, Jenny, and best wishes for all of your writing!

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  5. What an interesting photo - the graffiti is so unusual. Your blog is a window into another world :) Thank you for visiting my blog.

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  6. s'éteindre is hard to translate in English. It is used for light 'vanishing'. Extinguish would be closest, but of course that isn't a reflexive verb, which s'éteindre is.

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  7. What a wonderful find. Some walls are enhanced by grafitti; some grafitti is not worth the cost of the can of paint used to spray it on a wall. But this example is quite extraordinary. My French is sketchy, too, but I think of the verb "éteindre" to mean extinguishing, or snuffing out, as a candle...or, indeed, as a life.

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  8. beautiful! love paris.

    ithinkstupid.blogspot.com

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  9. Put me down as solidly anti-graffiti. I lived in New York City during its ugly graffiti years and only about 3% of what I saw had any artistic merit at all. The rest was ugly vandalism. Most of what I lived through was most definitely NOT of the Haring vintage.

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  10. Oh, yes, -E- I understood it to mean "life goes away" - but "life vanishes or disappears" sounds more poetic and philosophical and altogether better. @The Unbearable Banishment, I am in two minds about graffiti. I think it's overrated but at times it can be a genuine art form. In fact, I will soon post some images of a place I found really, really exciting

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  11. Nice catch! This is an interesting image.

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  12. Yes it's beautiful in an old meets new sort of way...... an interesting image,well spotted Jenny!

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  13. I keep telling myself I must do a study of graffiti. Something like your example would be a lovely on e to get started on - if I'm ever ready to start!

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  14. Wow, that is beautiful. I read what it means in some of the comments above, and the words there make it even more beautiful. I love to find unexpected art like that, it makes my day!

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  15. The colors and design on the wall are interesting too. :)

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  16. I find graffiti so fascinating - a real glimpse into a place.

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  17. Such fascinating images - this and previous posts. Your blog is a visual feast.

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