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Decades of ripped Parisian posters and deconstructed urban typography land in Anthony Vaccarello’s subversive rive gauche sanctuary.
In the heart of Paris’s 7th arrondissement, Saint Laurent Babylone continues to establish itself not as a traditional luxury boutique, but as a cultural battleground where high fashion collides with counterculture, rare books, and experimental art. For its latest exhibition, the Anthony Vaccarello-curated space turns its spotlight onto the late French Nouveau Réaliste master Jacques Villeglé—a pioneer who spent over half a century treating the peeling, torn layers of Parisian billboard posters as a raw canvas of collective memory.
Known for his iconic lacérations anonymes (anonymous lacerations), Villeglé rejected traditional painting to capture the chaotic, politicized visual noise of the street—ripping away layers of advertisements, political slogans, and pop culture iconography to reveal hidden graphic strata underneath.
“Villeglé didn’t invent images; he stole them back from the city walls, turning corporate advertising and political propaganda into raw, subcultural artifacts.”
Inside Babylone, the curated selection of works and rare archival publications highlights Villeglé’s obsession with urban typography, cryptic sociopolitical alphabets, and deconstructed street art. By embedding his raw, ripped canvases within Saint Laurent’s stark, minimalist architecture, Vaccarello reinforces the house’s long-standing affinity for artistic disruption, poetic rebellion, and Paris’s unvarnished creative underbelly.
