About Pierre et Gilles
Unlike many contemporary artists whose work is based on theories of popular culture, Pierre et Gilles' artistic achievement is deliberately fused with popular culture in the present tense. Beginning with their early celebrity portraits of the late 1970s (Iggy Pop, Yves Sait-Laurent), Pierre et Gilles have created a visual world in which artifice and reality are inseparable. Employing props, make-up, costumes, and lighting that emphasize the staged quality of their photographic sets, Pierre et Gilles pursue an ideal beauty in their extravegant, hand-painted photographs that systematically demolishes any distinction between kitch and expressions of the sublime. Both the artists and their subjects seem to insist on the complete believability of their allegorical characters, at the same time as they revel in the evidence that everything in their photographs is an illusion.
View a small gallery
Pierre et Gilles' roots in commercial illustration for magazine and record album covers have resulted in an extraordinarily powerful combination of celebrity culture and archetypal Christian and mythological iconography. The very perfect of the beautiful boys and glamorous, weeping women who populate their artificial paradise hints at the tragedy of doomed youth and fleeting innocents that becomes increasingly explicit in their later, darker work. Eros and Thanatos are Pierre et Gilles' abiding themes, present from the start in their images of martyred saints, and coming increasingly to the fore in the sinister shadows and almost occult iconography of their latest pieces."
I was first introduced to Pierre et Gilles when I bought the album Wild by Erasure. Nearly any fan will agree that the portrait inside the cover is the most beautiful picture of Vince and Andy. In 2003, I came across a portrait of Marc Almond, recognised the photographer's names and knew I was in love, so I bought the New Museum book on Ebay.
A fanlisting is a fansite that hosts a list of fans of a subject from all over the world. From Denmark to Mexico, Brazil to Sweden, England to the USA. Anyone who submits at least their name and email address will be added to the list within a few days. You don't have to use a full name, and though I must require a real email address, you can choose to have it never shown on the site. I'll only use it to let you know if the fanlisting ever moves, but other fans may use it to contact you if you opt to have it shown.
|
