I wanted to visit all of La Force de l'Art 02's satellite exhibitions around Paris, and was particularly curious to see what ORLAN was up to with her installation at the Musée Grevin.  Luckily I looked it up online before going and was pre-warned about the outrageous 19.50 Euros admission fee.  Even holding a ticket from the Grand Palais only gets you a measly 15% off.  So I opted instead to go for the cheapest version and see the Pierre et Gilles installation in the Église St-Eustache.

Pierre et Gilles here tackle the biggest celebrity of all: THE Madonna, not the pop star (been there done that), but the Virgin Mary herself.  Pierre's et Gilles' version of the Madonna and Child features French actress Hafsia Herzi dressed in a Christian Lacroix designed, quinzeañera-resembling, frilly white gown with a long veil, holding the Christ-child surrounded by a scene of crumbling grey high-rises, ominous clouds, detritus, constructions signs and rats.  From the rubble, lilies rise.  The portrait is suspended from a scaffolding erected within the chapel, illuminated by two fluorescents and a host of construction lights, those low-incandescence plastic yellow lights with reflectors usually attached to traffic blocks; here they echo the light of the candles throughout the church as they dim and flicker.  Traffic cones line the entrance to the chapel and grimy car parts scatter the floor below the Virgin.  A single prayer kneeler is placed before the installation.

Contemporary art can be quite provocative, especially to the unsuspecting.  Most people who passed frowned at the depiction, but those who stopped to pick up the pamphlet, flawlessly translated into five languages for all the church's visitors, lingered and absorbed it.  The pamphlet explains the piece in great detail and with great sensitivity to many concerns, explaining that the installation is far from defamatory or sacrilegious, that the surroundings of the Virgin instead form a classical composition, and that the Pierre et Gilles were brought up in the faith, insisting that the boys' "approach...is respectful and free from complexity."  The pamphlet was forwarded by a pithy, intelligent and sincere essay by the priest of St-Eustache, Luc Forestier, who outlines the church's intentions in showing contemporary art as a way to, "in a period in which religion seems only to offer a caricature of itself", break from the popular perception of the Catholic church today.  This outreach, this gesture from the parish is for me more touching and remarkable than the piece itself.

It is highly recommended to time your visit with the 6pm Sunday mass at St-Eustache.  Nothing compares to viewing this work with the ambience of the stirring music of the organ and choir.

--Natalie Hegert

(*Images, from top to bottom: Pierre et Gilles, La Vierge et l’Enfant, 2008-2009, installation view, photo courtesy of Église St-Eustache.

Pierre et Gilles, La Vierge et l’Enfant, 2008-2009. Modèles : Hafsia Herzi et Loric, Robe : Christian Lacroix. Tirage pigment sur toile, 200 x 134 cm. Coproduction Centre national des arts plastiques et les artistes. Courtesy galerie Jérôme de Noirmont.

Pierre et Gilles, La Vierge et l’Enfant, 2008-2009, installation view, photo courtesy of Jason Whittaker.)