‘It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable’: French artist JR on transforming Paris’ oldest bridge into a cave
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- JR opened 'La Caverne' on Pont Neuf on Monday, covering the 400-year-old bridge with 120m-long, 18m-high printed fabric designed to mimic the Lutetian limestone used to build Notre Dame and the Louvre; the opening ran 10 days late after gusts ripped the material.
- The installation is a direct tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 1985 Pont Neuf wrapping, conceived after JR met Vladimir Yavachev, Christo's nephew and head of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation.
- Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk composed an undulating wind-tunnel soundscape, while a professional perfumer engineered the barely perceptible smell of damp soil and rock to deepen the cave illusion.
- JR says the installation is deliberately disorienting — visitors cannot see the exit and must make 'a journey through our sources, our origins' — adding that it is 'supposed to make you uncomfortable in a certain way.'
- JR also recently designed L'Observatoire, a £60,000–£80,000 Orient Express suite for Belmond (part of LVMH) featuring a brass bathtub and a camera-aperture skylight, billed as the world's most expensive train ticket.
- La Caverne closes on June 28 as planned; the fabric will then be pulled down and recycled.
Why it matters: The installation draws a direct line from Christo and Jeanne-Claude's landmark 1985 Pont Neuf wrap — one of the 20th century's defining public artworks — to a new generation of immersive spectacle, while also underscoring JR's commercial ascent from banlieue tagger to £80,000 Orient Express commissions for LVMH.
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