Forty years after Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped it, transforming it into one of the most iconic images of contemporary Paris, the Pont Neuf has disappeared once again.
This time, it has vanished beneath a mountain of rock and ice imagined by JR, who, with La Caverne, pays tribute both to the material origins of the city and to the tradition of artistic interventions capable of reinventing public space.
Following several setbacks due to adverse weather conditions, La Caverne has finally been inaugurated—the new temporary installation that JR, the iconic French urban artist, has created on the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris.
The name of the artwork, which translates to “the cave,” was born as an opportunity to reflect on the processes of extracting raw materials and, more specifically, the limestone that made the construction of the city and its most famous monuments possible, from Notre-Dame to the Louvre Museum.
Putting etymology aside, when viewed from the banks of the Seine, the artwork manifests itself above all through its sheer scale, taking the form of a snow-covered mountain that embraces and camouflages the bridge's architecture until it disappears entirely. It is a trompe-l’œil, therefore, capable of subtly recalling Plato's myth of the cave and the many illusions that our flawed perception leads us to embrace, whether consciously or not.
Printed on a lightweight canvas, the rocks and ice depicted by JR return to the realistic black and white—inspired by the pixelated photojournalism of newsprint—to which the artist has accustomed us throughout his installations.
Yet, it is only by walking inside the mountain-bridge that the inflatable structure, filled with 20,000 cubic meters of air, reveals its most intimate nature: that of a cavern in the twilight, a space-refuge brought to life by the sound installation created by Thomas Bangalter, a former member of Daft Punk.
The reference to urban history, however, is not limited to the epic tale of Paris’s construction, or to the now-invisible physical labor that allowed the grandeur of the city as we know it today to manifest.
La Caverne feeds upon another artistic mythology: in 1985, the Pont Neuf was indeed the stage for the incomparable The Pont Neuf Wrapped, the audacious wrapping orchestrated by Christo and Jeanne-Claude—the artwork that the couple always defined as the most challenging of their career.
With La Caverne, JR retraces the steps of the two artists, creating a tribute to the avant-garde power of their monumental, temporary interventions with the complicity of Vladimir Yavachev, nephew and historic collaborator of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
Forty years later, the invitation to reinvent the public space of Paris is renewed, urging us to imagine new ways of seeing the city beyond habit, and to make the Seine—as already demonstrated by the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, famously held along the river—an inescapable protagonist of the city's vitality.
The production of the installation, which received no public funding and will be open to visitors until June 28, was made possible thanks to the support of private funds and the sale of JR’s artworks, following the financial model adopted by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. A series of sketches and studies by JR focusing on the bridge and La Caverne are currently on display at Galerie Perrotin.