“An intelligent burst of laughter that challenges the ugliness of the world and its gravity.” Thus Alexandre Jardin describes the Cross portraits by Sacha Goldberger, exhibited until March 22 on the Promenade des Anglais, in Nice. “A prince of the positive lost in a century subscribed to tense news, an athlete of elegance”, adds, dithyrambic, the writer, this time about Goldberger himself. Jardin (alias Dracula in front of the lens) is one of the 38 personalities captured by the photographer-visual artist during the years 2021 and 2022, in the midst of a pandemic – his way of reacting to the closure of businesses other than basic necessities decided by the government . “Culture has finally been decreed as ‘non-essential’, he ironically then. These two words have put literature, painting, theater, photography, music, cinema, everything that has built our society, at the rank of anecdotal. It was about time.”
Born in 1968, the Goldberger phenomenon worked for a long time in advertising, before devoting himself to the little black box. At the dawn of his 40th birthday, he resumed his studies at the Gobelins school, before proposing maminka, a series and two kindly crazy books about his grandmother, which made him known. Followed Super Flemish, a pastiche of Flemish painting that the Parisian public discovered at the Gare d’Austerlitz over 7 meters in height. The state of grace continued when he chained the achievements in the rules of the art: a hundred collaborators are mobilized for his projects, like Secret Eden, which sees the creation of 17 diptychs from different periods. THE Cross portraits held in Nice do not cut it, carrying their share of light and digital assistants, stylists, make-up artists, hairdressers, model maker and other retouchers. Supported by the Cultura brand, Goldberger transforms personalities from cinema, song, theater or literature into emblematic figures of culture, real or fictional, ancient or contemporary. The result is rather pleasing, often surprising, sometimes moving, from time to time superfluous.
Pénélope Bagieu, author of comics, “Regan in ‘The Exorcist'”.
/ © Sacha Goldberger
Rejoicing, Guillaume Gallienne is, he who lives naturally the role of Molière, as if he had posed for the canvas of a master of the past, while Joann Sfar, as an inquisitive Bluebeard, astonishes, just like Matthieu Chedid, as an enigmatic and disarmed Charlot. More anecdotally, comedian Caroline Vigneaux takes on the costume of Wonder Woman, Goldberger being a fan of superheroes – Maminka knows something about it… As for the sadly under the spotlight Pierre Palmade, who plays a Charles de Gaulle in black and white half-worried half-determined, he was, unsurprisingly, excluded from the Nice procession. But it remains present in the book – put to press before “the affair” -, published this month by Revelatoer editions: 160 pages of incarnations told by the portraiture themselves or by the journalist Julien Bordier, who sheds light their historical context.
M-Matthieu Chedid, author, composer, performer, “Charlie Chaplin”.
/ © Sacha Goldberger
Sacha Goldberger’s approach is reminiscent of that of the Dutchman Erwin Olaf, the aesthetic and politicized photographer who is one of his inspirations. Even if, with the French, the aesthetic still takes precedence over the politicized, not without delivering fragments of the intimacy of the “people” from whom he draws the portrait; that’s what catches the eye. Winner of the Ministry of Culture prize “1 work 1 building” with its Renaissance Companions, and Leica brand ambassador, the artist is currently preparing a series on feminism through the prism of Hitchcock films. To be continued…