Street artists turn condemned Paris tower in to sprawling art installation The result is a tower exhibiting a range of artistic styles. There's a skull-inspired mural, Arabic calligraphy, a bloody bathroom, and a glow-in-the-dark cow crawling with snakes. Would-be visitors have lined up for up to eight hours for a one-hour visit, with signs at various points around the block estimating their wait time. Only 49 people are allowed in at one time in the apartment block, which overlooks the Seine. A handful of people are still living in the building and refusing to leave until the bitter end. Some of the artists of Tour Paris 13 are participating in an unprecedented international urban contemporary art auction on Friday, with pieces created spur of the moment on Thursday standing alongside works from Keith Haring and Basquiat. "I've been following graffiti and street art for about 30 years and so this represents another step in slightly different direction," said Martha Cooper, the famous street photographer who is documenting their work in progress. Having an auction in Paris, in a big auction house, is pretty amazing. A 1986 Basquiat piece, "Monticello," is estimated to sell at 600,000 to 900,000 euros (£511,000 to £767,000), and a 1984 acrylic of Keith Haring's "Sneeze," from 500,000 to 700,000 euros (£426,000 to £596,000). We are the new artists. Graffiti art is the world's biggest art movement," said Mear One, an artist from Los Angeles who was painting live outside the Drouot Auction House on Thursday. In the 1970s, art was so elite that only the upper level people could do art or appreciate. So it got boring ... and now, we are in a situation where this is the art form. All that other art is cool, but it has roots in the past, and we are the here and the now.