BEAUTY RELIGION AND POP CULTURE
PIERRE ET GILLES
artistes - fantastique!
 
"Since they began their collaboration twenty-five years ago, Pierre et Gilles have done as much to redefine the limits of photography as virtually any other artists working today. In making such a sweeping claim, it may appear self-defeating to point out this is not the way their work is usually understood, even by their most fervent supporters. Still, from the outline sketched above, an argument can be developed for their painted photographs as the contemporary record of an image-rich universe, brimming over with pleasure, beauty, and all the inherent drama of religious allegory."
"Ironically, the sole means by which Pierre et Gilles could construct this hyper-modern world was by appropriating the most archaic themes and compositional devices they could find. Adding to this irony, especially in light of the argument offered above regarding the demands of new technology, is the fact that Pierre et Gilles employ no digital techniques to enhance their work. Each image, from its elaborately constructed set to its intricately detailed hand-painting, is produced through a lengthy and arduous process, which results in a unique, irreplaceable object."
"If their rarefied status seems to belie the ease with which Pierre et Gilles' images lend themselves to reproduction in limitless formats and quantities, this contradiction can partly be explained by the artists deeply conflicted relationship to the pictorial tradition. Despite the easy availability of software and tools to create comparable effects, Pierre et Gilles insist that the only way to reproduce their images is through the painstaking labor of craft. But this is a difficult position to have taken in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and their shared ambivalence concerning the restraints of tradition can be measured by the degree to which they load their work with irony and mixed messages."
SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL PIECES OF ART - AMAZING!!!

___________________
IF YOU GOT TRANCE IN YOUR PANTS WHIP IT OUT!!! IF NOT JUST WHIP IT OUT ANYWAY!!!
  
Last edited by Sean Cassidy on Nov-07-2005 at 11:34
|