Cinema sets before our gaze, a world in harmony with our desires

-Jean-Luc Godard

Embodying ideas of creative freedom, art, sensuality, and above all the liberty to make artistic choices based on one's own desire, Le Mépris has been described as the first post-modern movie ever made.

Directed by cinematic icon Jean-Luc Godard and starring Brigitte Bardot it's the first time Godard and DOP Raul Coutard use Technicolor - creating an implosion of lush, saturated colours.

Godard Bardot explores the relationship between these icons and the use of colour in Le Mépris whilst seeking to bring new attention to the artistry of Godard's vision as a director and the potency of Bardot's sensuality.

Through a process of editing and isolating selected frames, Irish artist Jean Curran (The Vertigo Project), has created an edit of thirteen luminous original handmade dye transfer prints with the full support of Jean-Luc Godard, Brigitte Bardot, and StudioCanal. It is a fitting 60th-anniversary tribute to the film which was made in 1963.

While minimalist and cool in appearance, Godard Bardot is robustly layered with many different classical and post-modern art quotations and in particular references to Piet Mondrian's modern masterpieces and Yves Klein's blue. The role of the muse is also brought into question with renewed significance.

Curran's edit of Le Mépris considers the historical role of the "muse" and of how she came to represent artistic inspiration in the abstract, and how she was popularly incarnated as the female model or lust object of a male artist. Here, the muse is being acknowledged as an artist in their own right.

In Godard Bardot - Ms Bardot is presented as a muse-de-force. She is an object of perfection. One that lends herself to be admired, fantasised about and one that is also set apart from us by her unattainable, almost unimaginable beauty. Her nudity in some scenes only serves to aid her comparison to a goddess while paying homage to classical female studies.

Through Curran's edit, Godard and Bardot sit beside each other with equal significance and influence, highlighting the strength of each artist's intrigue

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