Pierre et Gilles

Pierre

Born in La Roche-sur-Yon (France) in 1950, he lives and works in Pré-Saint-Gervais (France). 

Gilles

Born in Le Havre (France) in 1953, he lives and works in Pré-Saint-Gervais (France). 

A history of love

In the early 1970s Gilles was training at the beaux-arts in Le Havre while Pierre was studying photography in Geneva. Gilles later corresponded with the artist Annette Messager, who at the time specialised in caustic self-portraits. He moved to Paris and worked on painting and collages, at the same time collecting photo booths and doing illustrations for advertising. Pierre started working as a photographer for the magazines Rock & Folk, Dépêche Mode and Interview. As their gallerist, Jérôme de Noirmont, has written: “born at the same time as their love for each other, in 1976, for over thirty years now the artistic collaboration between Pierre and Gilles has been constantly pooling their emotions and their creativity in the service of a unique body of work which combines photography and painting and has become a fixture on the French and international art scenes.”

This broad recognition, which puts Pierre et Gilles among the best known living French artists, has been reflected in the retrospective of their work that opened the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005, by their participation in La Force de l’Art at the Grand Palais in 2006 and 2009, by their retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, Pierre et Gilles Double Je 1976–2007, celebrating thirty years of collaboration, and other major events. Pierre & Gilles were made Chevaliers in the Ordre des Arts et Lettres in January 2012.

The method adopted by these duettists was set right at the start: Pierre takes the photos, Gilles retouches them with paint, which guarantees the resulting works a status as unique “photograph-paintings.” Another unchanging characteristic of their oeuvre is its focus on the human: Pierre et Gilles’ great theme is humanity, and they approach it with a style of portraiture that combines pop aesthetics and Haute culture. A figure, usually a single figure, occupies the image, except in those rare cases when the subject is soldiers, lovers, or the couple formed in real life by the artists themselves (The Cosmonauts, The Newlyweds). The handling of a Pierre et Gilles portrait never changes. The photographed subject – often a star or a prominent personality: from Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, Catherine Deneuve, Mireille Matthieu, Jean-Paul Gaultier, François Pinault, etc. – is shown dressed up, donning another person’s clothes or status, be it that of a figure from ancient mythology (Ganymede, Mercury, Medusa) or religious history (Saint Sebastian, Saint Augustine, Buddha), or perhaps a sailor, a thug, a femme fatale, or a hero from literature or cinema (Captain Nemo, Anakin Skywalker).

For History is Mine! Pierre et Gilles are proposing a selection of works with a particularly strong connection to history, with Joan of Arc alongside the Arab Spring and Leonidas, king of Sparta and glorious victor over the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae. Pierre et Gilles come across here as artists of reconciliation with history. In dazzling concert, they celebrate the beauty of the sovereign human figure, placed at a calculated distance from the real, the better to bring out its mythological evocations. All Pierre et Gilles’ portraits deliberately evoke myth, insofar as they magnify our image as terrestrial beings. Myth, that is, in the sense of the hero whose flattering depiction raises him above common mortals; of the goddess or god endowed by essence with a supernatural aura; of the greatness of soul attained by saints and martyrs for the faith.

Pierre et Gilles very discreetly unburden us of the weight of history in a project of global de-alienation and liberation of the body. They use closeness as an amicable principle. The atmosphere of reconciliation staged by their portraits nearly always has a pacifying effect that, at the very least, is aesthetic, but can also be trans-historical and unifying. In the constant flight of time, we find our place, our figura, our pride. This is enough to cancel all warring deep within so that we can give free rein to our love of the world, in spite of it all.