Red Pepper Flakes. A blog by Imelda Suriato

So Goude: Goudemalion. A Retrospective.

The first-ever retrospective of the work of Jean-Paul Coude, a French graphic designer, illustrator, photographer and advertising film director. You may not know of him but you’ve seen his iconic work.

‘Blue-black in Black on Brown’, New York, 1981

Opening at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs on Friday is the retrospective ‘Goudemalion’ of the work of Jean-Paul Coude, a defining 80’s artist, art director, photographerand image maker. The exhibition examines the work through the lens of the Pygmalion myth — a humorous nod to his most important muse, lover and the mother of his son, Grace Jones, to whom he is, as he laughingly puts it, her ‘Pygmalion.’¹

Goude didn’t like studying; in his own words he “was bad at it.” Luckily he was good at drawing. He began his career in the 1960s as an illustrator for the department store Printemps in Paris. he began his career in the 1960s as an illustrator. In 1964 he became the Artistic Director for Esquire in New York and 10 years later, he joined New York Magazine. It was there that he first met and photographed Jones and became instrumental in honing her public image, exaggerating her androgyny and producing many striking work, including the famous photograph of her impossibly twisted pose used on the cover of her 1985 album, Island Life.

‘Grace revue et corrigée’ (Grace re-visited), New York, 1978

Azzedine et Farida, Paris, 1985

First published in New York Magazine in 1978, this image is in fact a montage of several photographs spliced together. In the days before Photoshop, this was Goude’s trademark: Using scissors to chop up photographs and then reassemble them, elongating limbs and exaggerating lines and curves. He called this technique ‘French Correction’²— which is mostly concerned with glorifying and revealing the body, by exaggerating and subliming it. He redesigns the bodies of his models, photographing then transforming them.³

Aside from creating several well-known campaigns for brands such as Perrier, Citroën and Chanel, Goude is also a filmmaker; his film ‘Heartbeat’ traces his eclectic influences and highlights his diverse portfolio which has led to some describing him as a ‘polymath’. What is apparent from the film is that Goude was and is heavily influenced by black American culture and French colonialism — a result of having grown up in a predominantly black neighborhood in France. “I was an illustrator who used to illustrate other people’s fantasy. I naturally became an “image maker,” he says.

Designed by Goude himself, the retrospective is a giant installation retracing his 40 year career. The show is organized into different sections: One a chronological journey from his early days to his most recent work, another recreating the most celebrated moments of his career — special areas dedicated to his most influential projects: Les Galeries Lafayette, cut-up slides, neon furniture, Chanel, and his muses, from Toukie Smith to Grace Jones to Karen, his last muse and current wife.³

Self-portrait, New York, 1982

According to Amelie Gastaut, co-curator of the exhibition:

For Jean-Paul Goude, as for those of us who curated the show, there’s not much difference between Applied Art, commercial arts and Fine Arts. Behind each of these lies an artist and his singular and original universe. When the advertising world solicited his work in 1982, he had started his artistic career for about 20 years, and he’s still a major element of today’s French artistic scene.⁵

A highlight of this season’s cultural programme, surprisingly, it will be the first ever retrospective of the work of the now-iconic Goude on the French advertising and fashion scenes. And the perfect opportunity for viewers to gain an understanding of his unique world view.