"I have a half moon and a star, this is the sign of my family," says street artist Blek Le Rat, real name Xavier Prou, gesturing to the gold signet ring adorning his right hand. We are comparing jewelry: my band includes my initials in Arabic, while his bears the crest of his aristocratic family.
It's an unexpectedly bourgeoisie interaction considering Prou has spent his life illegally painting walls, but then again, he has always been one to make an impression.
Long before graffiti artist Banksy set up residency on the streets of New York or spray painted rodents around London, Prou was stenciling intricate figures around the world. Painting by the Seine in the early '80s - he has said he was the second person to make street art in Paris, after Zloty Kamien - his works have since explored the plight of the homeless, displayed the image of a missing journalist and remembered Princess Diana.
Dressed in a somber black suit and crisp blue shirt at the opening of his latest show in Manhattan's midtown Quin hotel, the sleek Parisian is a far cry from the hooded ragamuffin one might imagine a street artist to look like. Prou, 62, studied fine art and architecture at Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating in 1982. "I went to New York in 1971 and discovered the graffiti art there, on the subway," Prou recalls, in heavily-accented English. "I was so impressed it took me 10 years to digest what I saw."
"I’m very slow," he jokes.
In fact, Prou is far from it. Widely recognized as a trailblazer in the increasingly mainstream world of street art, Prou is credited with proliferating the use of life-size stencils. Now a common sight on walls worldwide, such stenciled images have gained popularity in the last decade thanks to the highly-publicized antics of British artist Banksy.
"Every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek le Rat has done it as well, only 20 years earlier," Banksy is widely quoted as saying. (Prou started stenciling rats around Paris in 1981, when Banksy, whose identity is rumored but not confirmed, was reportedly just in grade school.)
The illegal nature of Prou's work and the growing legitimization of street art has led him to exhibit in galleries with greater frequency.
"Its absolutely incredible having a really good piece in the street - the day after it is complete thousands and thousands of people have seen it," Prou explained. "It’s very important to be in the street, but also very important for artists to show different work in the gallery."
His latest exhibit riffs on a recurring theme of tango dancers, which he first painted in 1986. Several lithographs present violinists and ballet dancers, while he has also made a limited number of lithographs depicting President Obama. His pal Shepard Fairey, who designed President Obama's 'Hope' poster, has said of Prou: "Blek le Rat's stencils distill the essence of the human struggle into poetically concise images."
While Fairey's work can be seen at art fairs from Frieze to the Armory and Banksy's work has fetched over $1.1 million at auction, Prou's pieces remain decidedly affordable. At his show's opening, nearly every print, which ranged from a tiny $300 lithograph to larger $4,000 pieces, had already sold.
Prou has many places he still wants to visit - he says he would love to paint in Beirut, or return to Morocco. He has been to Dubai, but says the strict police enforcement there made him "too scared" to paint.
Our conversation returns to New York, where some of his paintings remain on public walls. When I tell him I have seen his portrait of Andy Warhol in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood, Prou is effusive. "That’s a great area, I love the feel there. If I lived in New York I would live in Bushwick. Bushwick looks like New York 50 years ago."
