Pierre Et Gilles

A sorrowful French sailor boy submerged in a confectionary sea, a doll-like dominatrix bound to a cheap vinyl-coated chair, the young Yves Saint Laurent, a coy Asian nude holding the Ace of Spades on his left thigh, a muddy rugby player staring seductively ahead and a winsome Iggy Pop are just a few of the over-the-top, super-stylized images collected in this retrospective collection of spectacular images by the French photographers known simply by their first names, Pierre et Gilles. Spanning from the late 1970s until 2005, this large, square volume features a comprehensive collection of the duo's signature highly retouched portraits. Whether depicting celebrities or friends, the work of Pierre et Gilles is both idealized and irreverent, always erotic and usually set against fantasy backgrounds. It was compared sympathetically to the work of David LaChapelle, Mariko Mori and even Gregory Crewdson in a 2000 Artforum review by Vince Aletti, where the oeuvre was fittingly described as a "seductively gaudy, frankly homoerotic utopia, where saints, sailors and movie stars inhabit the same candy-colored never-never land."