Anne Pigalle
Anne Pigalle is a French singer[1] and multimedia artist (writer, musician, art performer, poet, photographer and painter).
Anne Pigalle | |
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Background information | |
Website | www |
Biography
Pigalle grew up in Montmartre, Paris. She was brought up in an artistic home. Before she was ten years old, she was selected by the school choir. As a teenager, she played guitar in an all-female band, hanging out with punk musicians in Paris and London. She attended the Sex Pistols gig at the Chalet du Lac in 1976. She appeared in magazines such as i-D, Magazine No. 2, Grabuge and Facade.
In the early 1980s, she moved to London, performed in clubs, made some recordings with Adrian Sherwood and recorded for Channel 4 an opera called The Kiss, written by Michael Nyman and produced by David Cunningham. She then signed a contract with ZTT Records and released an album on ZTT/Island Records in 1985 called Everything Could Be So Perfect.
In 1986, Pigalle revamped Café de Paris, a club in Piccadilly, London, with a new concept: Les Nuits Du Mercredi. She also played at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club.
She was photographed by Lord Snowdon, Mario Testino and Nick Knight; her music and image were used in Japanese TV commercials for Jean-Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld. Around that time she toured Japan and Europe. In 1989, she performed for TV arts programme The South Bank Show for the anniversary of the French Revolution. Other TV appearances included The Tube (in the UK), Ardisson's Bains de Minuit (in France), Japan and Mexico.
Pigalle left ZTT Records at the end of the 1980s and produced and starred in a Japanese commercial for Isetan with her song "Tango Contre La Montre".
She was voted fifth Best Performer of the Year by Los Angeles radio station KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic. She played a show at Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles.
From 2001, mostly in London, Pigalle produced home movies and videos, electronic tracks, Polaroid self-portraits, paintings, poems, curated events in nightclubs, wrote an autobiographical screenplay, appeared in films, developed her art performances and the Amerotic Salons. The Amerotic Salon has been performed at The Colony Room and at Glastonbury Festival. From 2005 to 2007, she exhibited her paintings and self-portrait Polaroids (for which she created visual sets, erotic masks and crowns of flowers) at the Charing Cross Gallery, Michael Hoppen gallery, and the Aquarium Gallery. She called her art 'amerotic' ('âme' means 'soul' in French). In 2007, she launched a night at the Grill Room, Café Royal, called Spirit of Ecstasy, where she performed a futuristic cabaret show along with bohemian poets. In 2009 and 2010, she sang at shows in Mexico and at the Tuareg Festival au Désert in Timbuktu, Mali, Africa.
In 2010 and 2011, Pigalle released the trilogy, L'âmerotica Part I and II on iTunes—21 surreal and erotic vignettes of poetry put to music. In 2013 she released a collection of new songs and erotic poems called Madame Sex. In 2015, she released Madame Sex and L'ame Erotique as an art CD, and played live concerts in London. In spring 2015, Pigalle created La nuit Amerotique, a new venture night in Soho, with a new philosophy, performing various material relating to Pigalle, Soho, Art and Eroticism, in various locations. She included her poetry from Madame Sex and invited performance artists who have lived and worked in Soho to illustrate and share the show. In 2016 she performed a show at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In summer 2016, she played an art show, Not Dead at the G511ERY Gallery, dedicated to her mother. In autumn-winter 2016/2017, Pigalle created the Madame Sex art performances in Pigalle, France, and followed up in the bars of Soho. In spring 2017, Les P'tites Femmes De Soho, her art show in Soho's We Are Cuts institution, was dedicated to nightlife's little women. In autumn 2017 she organised a multi media evening in Soho, Soho Mon Amour, at the 01 zero studios. She again performed at the National Portrait Gallery in London during its Cézanne exhibition. She celebrated the 40th anniversary of punk with an art show and a concert of punk songs in Hackney Wick called Never Mind Jackson Bollocks, Here's Anne Pigalle...
2018: Performance of "Memo from Turner" for the 50th anniversary of the film Performance in Powis Square.
October 2018: vinyl album release of Ecstase in Soho—10 songs written and produced by Pigalle accompanied with film. Musicians guests includes Glen Matlock and Terry Edwards.The photography for the cover are Anne's own self portraits and graphics by Malcolm Garrett. 2019. Pigalle's image is used on a collage board at the entrance the centre Choreographique National d'Orleans by Agnes B in connection with a touring exhibition Les Jeunes Gens Modernes on French New Wave.
April 2019: CD release of Ecstase with a multimedia show at Horse Hospital in London.
October 2019: Anne is the award winner for best art film for the multi media project Ecstase at the Portobello Film Festival,2019.
January 2020: yet another Soho Extravaganza performance concert at century Soho with guests Ray Gange, Jenny Runacre, Museum of Soho,Phil Dirtbox
June 2020: Anne Pigalle participated to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, the largest cabaret festival in the world with 2 film bites for the special covid 19 edition, replacing a due live performance
Summer 2020, Anne organises safe musical picnics in various bandstands including Regents Park and Parliament Hills as well as St Anne's Gardens in Soho
September / November 2020 Anne's Album Ecstase is featured in an exhibition at Switzerland Chur's museum of modern art Bünder Kunstmuseum titled 'Dance Me til the End of Love " along with the greats from Andy Warhol to Man Ray and Neil Young to David Bowie Autumn 2020; Anne creates her Ecstase hand painted art masks
February 2021. Release of Ecstase on Bandcamp
Albums
- Everything Could Be So Perfect (ZTT Records, 1985)
- L'Amérotica I and II (iTunes, 2010/2011)
- L'Ame Erotique (iTunes, 2011)
- Madame Sex (2013)
- Madame Sex And L'ame Erotique (2014)
- Madame Sex Cd & L'Ame Erotique (2017)
- Ecstase (vinyl, A Pigallissimo Recording, 2018; CD, 2019, Bandcamp 2021)
References
- Reynolds, Simon (2010). Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews. Soft Skull Press. p. 306. ISBN 9781593763947.
External links
- Pigalle's site
- Smash Hits, 'Stranger than fiction', by Glyn Brown, 13 April 1985.
- Smash Hits, 'A Leftbank Rendevous(sic)' a conversation with Stephen Tintin Duffy, by Max Bell, 20 April 1985.
- Smash Hits, 'Anne Pigalle', by Peter Martin, April 24, 1985.
- Smash Hits, 'In search of perfection', by Robin Smith, 2 November 1985.
- Smash Hits, S(he) stranger, by Deanne Pearson, 23 November 1985.
- Anne Pigalle, in The Mind's Construction Quarterly (TMCQ), by Joe Gibbs, Autumn 2005.
- FAD Magazine, 15 March 2017, 'Anne Pigalle Celebrates the Soho of Dreams and Desires – Les P’tites Femmes de Soho', by Herbert Wright.
- Louder Than War Review at Louder than War by Ian Canty, October 2018
- The Arts Desk,[radio show https://theartsdesk.com/new-music/theartsdesk-radio-show-25-bohemian-chanteuse-anne-pigalle] By Peter Culshaw 2019.