The man described by Life magazine as "Europe's most admired young artist", Hean-Jacques Lebel has a remarkable capacity for upsetting the squares. A few years ago he was run out of Italy after a painting of his on show at the Milan Gallery was found to contain the words "Fuck the Pope"; last year his Happening near Marseilles caused consternation as an immense rubber penis arose out of the harbor accompanied by almost-nude swimmers. This summer 1-3 turned his attention to St. Tropez, a once swinging Riviera resort now noted for gorgeous chicks sporting bare midriffs, exorbitant prices and a strangely bourgeois set of local morals. Lebel had thoughtfully obtained the consent of Pablo Picasso to interpret the latter's only play, "Desire Caught by the Tail" and ambitiously planned to present this in a tent behind the Papagayo on the least visited side of St. Tropez's lovely harbor. The Papagayo's owner, a thoughtful looking man who wandered around dressed in kimono and smoking a foot long pipe, was only too anxious to host the performance, but the mayor had other ideas. Irked by a story in Paris' conservative Le Figaro to the effect that the play would include nudes, anarchistic viewpoints and a stripper actually pissing on stage, the mayor refused permission to the company who then proceeded to erect the tent at a crossroads about three miles from town in the neighboring village of Gassin. " We thought it would be nice to bring all the tourists a piece of genuine art to in aggrieved tones. liven their vacation and we get sent away" complained His disappointment was somewhat alleviated a few days later by the appearance at a Papagayo press conference of Le Figaro's female correspondent, author of the original story which had provoked all the tourble. Quite genially Lebel called her "a whore" and suggested that she might be happier if she returned to her supposed trade in the streets. The correspondent, not surprisingly, left in a huff and wrote another angry story about the production. Two weeks before the show opened the cast and miscellaneous staff were frantically dividing their time between the Papagayo, the tent, an old villa in which some of the cast were billeted and the elegant, barely finished $50,000 mansion of J-I's mother about 15 miles out of town. Here total nudity swiftly became routine and the succession of guests (including a novice correspondent from Time and staid reviewers from Le Monde) were stunned to be greeted by assorted nudists covered with art tattoos. Living in the spacious, unfurnished house was al fresco style with foam rubber mattresses on the floor, canvas beach chairs and continual indoor picnics of yoghurt, red wine, bread and cheese. By the time the show opened the chaos, far from resolving itself had become institutionalized. The play itself -a surrealistic fantasy featuring such characters as The Thin Anguish, Big Foot, the Onion and Taylor Mead portraying a vulgar dog -was a prescient allegory of the artist's dilemna, but this was almost dwarfed by the subsequent happening.
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In this, bare-breated waitresses served wine to the audience, a car was driven into the tent and spray painted, girls changed clothes on stage in front of psychedelic films, two actors pulled down their pants and displayed their asses, a violin was dramatically smashed and a seemingly endless plastic tube slowly inflated and snaked back and forth between the seats. At last report the event was fulfilling what seems to be the inevitable Lebel predestination: mysterious assailants had put two rifle bullets through the portable generator and the mayor of Gassin had forthwith prohibited future happenings. Said 3-3: "We are planning to move events to the beach".
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