Qui est Gigi Gaston? Or more to the point, quelle est Gigi Gaston? Josh Gosfield says she is a major Parisian actress and chanteuse. Or as Norman Mailer is said to have written in a 1974 Esquire story: “Could this Black Flower with a voice like Piaf have guessed that when she bloomed into a teenage singing idol for post-war European youth, and later became the Continental fashion icon and sexy French pin-up girl on the bedroom walls of the hippest kids, that the future would strangle her dreams of normalcy, like the protagonists in one her romantically fatalistic songs? No, of course not. Because the characters of Greek tragedies are always the last to know their fates.”

 

But did she really exist?

 

You can find out more in the exhibition that features magazine covers, photographs, and a film by Jean-Luc Goddard, expertly assembled by Gosfield at the Gigi Gaston: The Black Flower exhibition at Steven Kasher Gallery in NYC from October 22 through November 25, 2009 with a Reception on October 22, 6-8 p.m. Or see more pitch-perfect publications here.