Pierre et Gilles: 40 (trade edition)

On the fortieth anniversary of Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard’s romantic union, this volume traces four decades of artistic collaboration between the photographer and painter known as Pierre et Gilles. This year-by-year retrospective of their vast oeuvre, accompanied by an incisive essay by art critic Éric Troncy, showcases the genesis and development of their sublime, audacious, and explicitly confected fusion of photography and painting.
 
Highly sophisticated and shamelessly sexy, their art—stylized, idealized painted photographs—synthesizes tropes drawn from celebrity and mainstream gay culture with timeless themes of religion, mythology, and beauty, and many works feature international stars including Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Dita Von Teese, Kylie Minogue, Karl Lagerfeld, Mick Jagger, and Iggy Pop.

The book is available in a trade edition and in a limited art edition of 200 copies that features a signed and numbered limited edition print created especially for the book and presented in a deluxe clamshell case.

Photographer Pierre Commoy and painter Gilles Blanchard met in 1976, sparking an artistic partnership that has spanned four decades. Their work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the globe, and has also appeared on numerous magazine, newspaper, and album covers. The artists received Paris’s Grand Prix de Photographie in 1993 and the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres medal in 2012.
 
Éric Troncy is an art critic and exhibition curator. He cofounded the contemporary art magazine Documents sur l’Art (1992–2000) and Frog Magazine, and is codirector of the contemporary art center Le Consortium in Dijon, France.