Pierre et Gilles

Galerie Samia Saouma, Paris
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Paris, Galerie Samia Saouma, Les Saints, November - December 1988
Tokyo, Parco Par II de Shibuya, and Osaka,  Pierre et Gilles, January - July 1989 - 1990
Paris, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Pierre et Gilles, Vingt ans d’Amour (1976 - 1996), November - January 1996 - 1997, illustrated in color
Munich, Stadtmuseum,  Die Welt von Pierre et Gilles, May - August 1997
Valence, Museo de Bellas Artes, Pierre et Gilles, June - July 1998, p. 115,  illustrated in color
Turku, Turun Taidemuseo, Pierre et Gilles, November 1999 - February 2000, illustrated in color
New York, New Museum of Contemporary Art; San Francisco, The Yerba Buena Center for The Arts, Pierre et Gilles, September - May 2000 - 2001, illustrated in color 

Michel Beltrami, Pierre et Gilles, L’Odyssée imaginaire, Paris 1988, illustrated in color
Nicholas and Momus Curie, Pierre et Gilles, Cologne 1993, illustrated in color
Benedikt Taschen ed., Postcard Book, Pierre et Gilles, Cologne 1993
Dan and Bernard Marcadé, Pierre et Gilles, l’Oeuvre Complet 1976 - 1996, Cologne 1996, p. 203, illustrated in color
Bernd and Kim Levine, Pierre et Gilles, Helsinki 1999, p. 28, illustrated in color
James L. Johnstone ed., Quickies & Quickies 2, Short Short Fiction on Gay Male Desire, New York 1999, illustrated in color and illustrated on the cover in color
Dan Cameron, Pierre et Gilles. London, 2000, p. 68, illustrated in color

Since 1976, Pierre et Gilles have created a series of unique, hand-painted photographs that renegotiates the visual and intellectual parameters of the portrait genre. After sketching their ideas, the set and costumes are hand-made by the artists and their assistants: Pierre photographs the model and scenery; Gilles then paints the unique print. The Real now becomes the Hyper-Real, with individuals (sometimes famous, most generally unknown and, more often than not, male) transported into a seductive realm of sexy tableaux vivant: a glitter-ball world of physical perfection that is fuelled by the frisson of sex and sexuality. Often the environments in which these models are placed are free of context; their dreamy sets, and often kaleidoscopic, ethereal colors being the product of the artists’ fertile imaginations. Sometimes, however, the artists employ a specific context, which is inherently accompanied by a range of subtexts that further adds a social and political dimension to their work. This is the case with the present work, Saint Sebastian – Boubdallah Benkamla: a depiction of an Arabic model ‘impersonating’ a Christian saint in a sultry tableau that throbs with a homoerotic charge. The antagonistic politics of religion and of sexuality are now forced to confront each other.

Saint Sebastian – Boubdallah Benkamla is the first of three meditations the artists have made on the subject of Saint Sebastian. This work, executed in 1987, is iconographically faithful to art-historical precedents of this subject. The large tree stump in the center of the work, together with the bound body of the saint, provides a stark vertical thrust to the pictorial space which vibrantly projects the saintly figure, and his torture and ultimate death, out of the picture plane. This device is used by a number of Renaissance artists in their renderings of the saint, most notably by Antonio del Pollaiuolo in his Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (1473-75) in the National Gallery, London. There the saint is projected high above his torturers, so that the actual act of martyrdom becomes the physical ascension to Heaven. Sébastien de la Mer – Laurent Combes (1994) transports the saint to a fantasy island. With his ship on the distant horizon, and partially dressed in his sailor’s uniform, the ‘saint’ is now stranded on a beach teeming with glittered shells. The stormy sky above also frames the figure – its intensity recalling the kaleidoscopic sets of The Wizard of Oz. In 1996, Pierre et Gilles made Martyr de Saint Sébastien – Jiro Sakamoto (1996). The figure, now a young Asian man, is shown in three-quarter pose, revealing just his head and upper torso. The rapture (both religious and physical) of the saint is echoed in the constellation of disco-light, dizzying stars that flutter across the surface.

Traditionally, the figure of Saint Sebastian has always been an image of a handsome, young man in a loin cloth whose physical prowess is at odds with his demise. Pierre et Gilles continue that tradition, employing extremely attractive models, but using them in such a manner that animates several complex questions about the evolution of this specific depiction, in that the artists openly and unashamedly ‘homoeroticize’ the image. The two tiny arrows signifying the saint’s torture are incidental to the vast, muscular landscape of the model’s upper body, which has been airbrushed to perfection and becomes the focus of the viewer’s gaze. They manipulate the symbolism of the penetrating arrows; the upward gaze of the saint expressing a heady mixture of pleasure and pain; the supple body of near-naked man. Certainly, these are all aspects of the traditional iconography of the subject, but are now spoken with a different voice. Just as Derek Jarman manipulated the narrative complexity and vernacular resonance of the religious subject in his celebrated film Sebastiane (1976), the submissive paralysis of the religious martyr now gives way here to the active impulses of desire.