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Goude times

The Gen Art Collector’s Circle hosted a tour and reception at Hasted Hunt Gallery for the international gallery debut of Jean-Paul Goude’s solo exhibition, So Far So Goude, featuring photographs and drawings by the world-reknowned French photographer, graphic designer, illustrator, magazine art director and advertising film director. The exhibition is being produced in conjunction with the publication of Goude’s monograph So Far So Goude (Assouline 2005) which “chronicles his artistic journey not only as a photographer but also as major creative force in the US and Europe.” The Hasted Hunt exhibit opened on January 4 and runs through February 17, 2007.

MA was working at the gallery that night, keeping careful watch over the Gen Arters, who apparently have earned themselves a reputation for debauchery.

Goude has worked in drawing, poster design, photography, cinema, video, and event design since the 1960s. He is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Grace Jones on now-legendary works of performance and video art. Jones was Goude’s muse and his onetime wife; together they have a son, Apollo. His avant-garde artistry was instrumental in guiding Jones through a number of career transitions. One pair of improbably posed 1978 images — created around the time of their marriage — figured prominently at the exhibit entrance. The final, composite version (pictured at right, below) was used as the album cover of Jones’s album Island Life.

Goude’s theatrical staging and use of scale and color were evident in the pieces on display. Working with some of the world’s most beautiful women, and using only the most basic tools (an exacto blade, paste, and paint), Goude managed to create iconic images without the benefit of computers and PhotoShop. Other works on view that night included photos of boxers in training and some fairly sexually explicit (read: NSFW) illustrative storyboards and elaborately posed shots with callipygian models. I most admired the series of highly stylized fashion photographs, several featuring designers (John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Azzedine Alaia, Jean-Paul Gaultier) with their muse-models (Linda Evangelista, Estella Warren, Farida Khelfa.)

Goude (center, in striped shirt) spoke of finding inspiration in the female form (prompting cries of “Hear, hear!” from the assembled), declaring himself a deep admirer of women — most of all, his wife, Korean-American former fashion editor Karen Park Goude, “The Queen of Seoul.”

Goude has created several well-known campaigns for Perrier, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy and Chanel. He created the award-winning French Egoïste de Chanel commercial, which featured shrieking demoiselles bursting in and out of louvered doors as Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet boomed and swelled in the background. A couple of years later, he scored another coup for Chanel with Vanessa Paradis swinging in a birdcage to the tunes of “Stormy Weather” for Coco.

On the way home, a sign:

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