© Jean-Paul Goude THE MAGAZINE EXHIBITIONS Goudemalion Jean-Paul Goude retrospective For the younger members of the population, the parade on 14 July 1989 commemorating the bicentenary of the French Revolution may be ancient history, but the posters of the Galeries Lafayette staging Laetitia Casta for the last ten years are certainly not. For others, the explosion of poetry, imagination, humour and joy that Jean-Paul Goude orchestrated so brilliantly at the controls of this celebration is forever engraved on their memories. This incredible parade remains emblematic of the artist's jubilatory inventiveness. Here it is evoked by the steam locomotive leading the procession, and photos of the groups representing the nations of the 97 GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL I N° 12 world following behind. Nor will the over-forties have forgotten his commercials for Chanel, Dim, Perrier and Kodak, or the incredible photos of Grace Jones, which contributed to the future star's international career. Jean-Paul Goude met her in New York in 1978, where he had been living since 1970. At this time, the young <strong>Art</strong>s Déco school graduate left France to be the artistic director of the prestigious magazine Esquire, returning to Paris at the beginning of the Eighties. The title of the exhibition, a mixture of the artist's patronymic and the word "Pygmalion", pays tribute to the women who spurred Jean-Paul Goude on, and whose legend he forged. Inspiring or inspired, he fashioned them with all his creative genius, glorifying their qualities of femininity, androgyny, beauty or quirkiness. Tookie, Grace and Farida became true icons through the lens of this image-maker, whose time in the United States had taught him to turn established codes upside down. Lengthening bodies and constructing or deconstructing them seemed like an obsession to which he gave free and joyous rein. In a video, we see him at the beginning of his career, wittily describing his way of altering a look: a man's – height-wise with heels, widthwise with shoulder pads placed under his thick sweater, or head-on with dentures that mask two gaps detrimental to an appealing smile – or a woman's, like Radiah, his companion of the time, perching her on shoes with 30 cm platform heels. He found other means later on. In his photos with their saturated colours, the body is worked and transformed as though sculpted. Stretched out into amazing propor- Jean-Paul Goude Bicentenary of the 1789 French revolution, Paris July 14, 1989, pen, adhesive tape.
HD EXHIBITIONS THE MAGAZINE Jean-Paul Goude, Constructivist maternity dress, in collaboration with Antonio Lopez, New York, 1979. N° 12 I GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL 98 © Jean-Paul Goude