Summer’s final roses are still ripe for the picking here in Brooklyn, with no threat of autumn’s frost in sight and late September sun to illuminate them as you scuffle by on concrete sidewalks. Street Artist YZ lives and works in Montreuil near Paris and has been bringing rooms of an old cabaret alive with roses this summer and shares with us today images of classical figures she painted with india ink on silk paper for these decaying walls.

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

“Each room has it’s own character and the natural light sometimes reveals a different aspect of the original painting,” she says of the nudes originally created by Bouguereau, Lehmann, Gerome, and Merle.

The historic old building once housed “Le Cabaret de Sancerre” and the owner invited YZ for an artists residency inside this place that once hosted a mystical cabaret, a cinema, a dancing room and many lovelies of all persuasions.

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

“Pasting those women in a different context where love has been present over several years brings this old building alive again,” she says, and indeed the figures summon you to contemplate them and their natural beauty and the passage of time.

“Edmund Spenser wrote in the 16th century, ‘Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time’”, YZ tells us, “and this is the leitmotiv of the series.” The recurrent theme throughout the rooms may you of the excesses of love and lust and the necessity of giving over to them both, now, before the winter comes.

So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth flourish after first decay,
That earst was sought to decke both bed and bowre,
Of many a Ladie, and many a Paramowre:
Gather therefore the Rose, whilest yet is prime,
For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre:
Gather the Rose of love, whilest yet is time,
Whilest loving thou mayest loved be with equall crime.

Edmund Spenser (I552-I599): The Faerie Queene II.XII.75

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

YZ. Le Cabaret De Sancerre. Sancerre, France. Summer 2015. (photo © YZ)

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