Nan Goldin is a survivor. Nothing could get the best of her, not family trauma, not drug addiction and not the death of many loved ones over the years from suicide, AIDS and overdoses. She photographed it all.
Now 72 years old, Goldin has been stringing the decades of often-graphic images she has made documenting her turbulent life into “films” – actually sophisticated slide shows interwoven with related images of artworks and more, and enhanced with powerful soundtracks. They are currently on show in “Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well” at the Grand Palais, each one projected in its own specially designed black structure, and at the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière*.
Many of the images in these works will be familiar to those who have followed Goldin’s career, notably in “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” which has been called her “magnum opus” and “a kind of downtown opera.”
One of the most moving of these works is “Sisters, Saints, Sibyls,” presented in the chapel on the grounds of the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, where I saw it when it was first shown there in 2004. The story of the short, stormy life and early death of her rebellious older sister, Barbara, when Goldin was still a child, the piece resonates intensely with its setting, the chapel of a hospital where women were once imprisoned on the feeblest of pretexts (ranging from prostitution to the wishes of a husband wanting to dispose of her) and were later experimented on and exhibited like zoo animals by neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. The piece continues with photos of Goldin’s own difficult years of drug addiction and self-harm.
These are hard images to look at, but Goldin doesn’t flinch when it comes to depicting herself and her friends in disturbing situations, although when she herself is the subject, the photos tend to go blurry, as if to soften their horror.
The other films in the show are “The Other Side,” which brings together her photos of her trans friends, whom she photographed beginning in 1972; “Memory Lost,” a saga of withdrawal from drugs; “Sirens,” about the lure of drugs; and “Stendhal Syndrome,” the most recent, an ode to beauty in art and a kind of Greek Mythology 101 based on stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Many of the images pop up in more than one installation and will be familiar to those who have seen previous shows of Goldin’s work, but they are put together in new ways here and take on new meaning when juxtaposed with different pictures with a musical background.
One can only admire Goldin’s tenacious resistance to all that life has thrown at her. More recently, she has gone to bat for the victims (herself included) of the opioid crisis in the United States by founding P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now).
One might have thought that such a life might not “end well,” as Goldin’s choice of a title for this show seems to predict. In fact, things don’t seem to be going so badly after all.
Note: The Paris exhibition is the last European stop for this show, which has been touring cities on the Continent since 2022.
*Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière: 47, boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75013 Paris. Open Tuesday-Saturday, 4pm-8pm (until 10pm on Friday); Sunday, 11am-7pm. Free admission.
See our list of Current & Upcoming Exhibitions to find out what else is happening in the Paris art world.
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