{"id":425,"date":"2026-06-08T15:08:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T15:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=425"},"modified":"2026-06-08T15:08:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T15:08:34","slug":"inside-the-creative-cavern-of-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=425","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Creative Cavern of JR"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Somewhere between Venice and Paris, just as afternoon tea was served\u2014raspberry tartlets and biscotti squisiti, coffee poured from silver ewers into porcelain cups\u2014JR, the French artist known for his public installations, was starting to freak out. He wasn\u2019t panicking and, in fact, maintained a fa\u00e7ade as smooth and zippy as any of the trompe-l\u2019oeil murals with which he has wrapped famous buildings around the world. Yet, as the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express barrelled west, through the Dolomites to Colico and Berg\u00fcn and Brenner Pass, he contemplated the risks inherent in his latest project. He would begin installing it shortly after the train pulled into the Gare de l\u2019Est.<\/p>\n

Read more Kurt Vile Gets the Feeling<\/a><\/p>\n

The piece is called \u201cLa Caverne du Pont Neuf\u201d (\u201cThe Pont Neuf Cave\u201d). It was to be free to the public, accessible twenty-four hours a day, and would open forty-one years after Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the same bridge, the city\u2019s oldest, in more than forty thousand square metres of luminous nylon. \u201cI have to say, I never dared to dream of the Pont Neuf,\u201d JR admitted. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even think of doing it.\u201d He was sitting, legs tucked under him, on a sinuous tangerine-colored velvet banquette in the Observatory, a bucket-list carriage of his own design. It wasn\u2019t that he was afraid that no one would come to the cave. It was that he was sure they would\u2014in droves, and expecting the sort of ecstatic collective experience that the Paris Olympics delivered so ably, in 2024.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019ll have a generation of people who will remember it,\u201d JR said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the kind of thing where people say, \u2018Oh, really? Maybe I was there.\u2019 No, everybody says, \u2018I know exactly where I was when I saw it.\u2019\u00a0\u201d As the commander of a sort of public-art moon landing, he needed to make every memory bounce.<\/p>\n

JR usually creates things that you look at<\/em> rather than into. But, early on, he decided to approach \u201cLa Caverne\u201d as a piece of sculpture. He wanted height. He wanted volume. He wanted scaffolding, until he realized that was a horrible idea. \u201cWhere are you gonna find that?\u201d he said. \u201cBuildings reserve scaffolding for years ahead. You\u2019d have to get it in from all over Europe, and then what?\u201d Then he had an epiphany: he could build with air. The result is a giant inflatable structure, fabricated by Air Toiles Concept, a company out of Plougoumelen, in Brittany, that makes blow-up trophies for sporting events like Indian Premier cricket and the FIFA<\/em> Arab Cup. (Funding comes from the sale of JR\u2019s works and from corporate partners.) Visitors can walk its length, entering at \u00cele de la Cit\u00e9 and exiting in front of La Samaritaine. The cave motif has been a through line of JR\u2019s work\u2014in 2019, he \u201cexcavated\u201d the courtyard of the Louvre. \u201cWhen you look back in time, you realize that the only myth we all believed in was the fact that humans and animals came from caves and cracks in the earth,\u201d he said. \u201cToday, our caves are our phones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Michael Arden Catches a Flight<\/a><\/p>\n

A cave-raising is a political endeavor as much as an artistic one. In public art, much like in public life, you have to build a coalition in order to get anything done. \u201cWe started with Anne Hidalgo, and she said, right away, \u2018I\u2019ll do it,\u2019\u00a0\u201d JR recalled, referring to Paris\u2019s former mayor. (Her term ended just before the project\u2019s inauguration, so, to be safe, JR met with the other candidates during election season.) One meeting united more than seventy stakeholders, including the fire and police chiefs. Another presentation was devoted to assuaging the worries of the city\u2019s bouquiniste<\/em> union. Without the buy-in of these bureaucrats and booksellers, JR said, \u201cLa Caverne\u201d never would have made it off the factory floor. \u201cThey came together and really took me by the hand,\u201d he said. Merci to the Deep State, Municipal Summer-Fun Division.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A few months earlier, JR had performed a trial run in a hangar at Orly Airport. The practice cave had inflated properly, but it was still impossible to predict how, exactly, the piece would take shape on site. \u201cYou never know how the light will hit,\u201d he said. (Ultimately, it was the wind that proved to be volatile, ripping tears in the inflatable wrapping that has delayed the opening.) Now there were twenty-one hours till the train would pull into the station. JR would start construction at 9 A.M.<\/em> the next day. For the moment, he gazed out the window, blue rocks and green fields smearing past. \u201cSo, from then to the end of June, I\u2019m in this long cave,\u201d he said. \u201cEight hundred people are working on it, and what I love about it is that I\u2019ve always created projects I can\u2019t do myself.\u201d If you thought about it, the train was also a kind of cave.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more From Sturgeon to Knicks Gear, Barney Greengrass Has You Covered<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Riding in his custom-designed car on the Orient Express, the French artist reflects on his latest large-scale project\u2014turning the Pont Neuf into a giant inflatable cave. 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