Pierre Et Gilles: 'Double Je 1976-2007' - Book review

When Pierre met Gilles in 1976, an artistic marriage was made in heaven. The combination of Gilles' painterly sets combined with Pierre's photography has led to 30 years' worth of portraits ranging from the kitsch to the homoerotic, tinged with beauty and humour throughout.

Taschen's collection of their pop culture portraits dating from 1976 to 2007 is a thick tome with an introduction by Jeff Koons, whose own work has much in common with the French duo's. There's a cute photographic biography of the artists, taking us from their childhood to the meeting at the opening of a Kenzo boutique in Paris, through their subsequent longlasting and successful relationship.

Then come hundreds of Eurotrash-crossed with 1950s glamour pin-up portraits. Kylie Minogue as a nun on a rocking horse, half-naked blue-eyed boys in plastic pastoral landscapes, Rupert Everett shipwrecked on a glittery shore, the artists themselves as saints and spacemen... All have a glazed outlook and plastic sheen that separates them from earthliness. These are fantasy portraits, somewhere between painting and the reality of photography.

And there's a serious deconstruction of the whole body of works by art historian Paul Ardennes, if you want some theorising about all these kitsch and pretty pictures - though frankly, they lose something for me once you start talking about 'playful aesthetic formulas' and the 'transhistorical body'.



Published on 1st February 2008 by Taschen.

Written by Caroline Lewis.