‘You’re a Big Imbecile’: Russian Artist Pyotr Pavlensky’s Trial Over a Leaked Video That Brought Down a Politician Concludes With a Tense Spectacle
At the closing of the trial at the Renzo Piano-designed Tribunal de Paris on Wednesday, June 28, the public prosecutor also asked for Alexandra de Taddeo, Pavlensky’s girlfriend with whom Griveaux had an extramarital fling, to receive a six-month suspended sentence. The verdict is expected on October 11, 2023.
Pavlensky, 39, and de Taddeo, 32, arrived one hour late, holding hands. Clasping her recently published book, which chronicles her sexual relationships, de Taddeo was wearing a silvery pale sequined dress and Pavlensky was clad in a black T-shirt and jeans. The artist had previously spoken of Griveaux’s “political hypocrisy,” saying that it prompted him to launch his Pornopolitique website which he “envisaged as the world’s first porn website to involve politicians or elected and appointed government officials.” De Taddeo, a student, founded an association to finance the website. She claimed to have no creative role, merely a financial and organizational one.
Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky poses after setting fire to the doors of the headquarters of the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB, in central Moscow early on November 9, 2015. Photo by Nigina Beroeva/AFP via Getty Images In his summing up, Malka said to Pavlensky and de Taddeo: “You are the Bonnie and Clyde of the bedroom.” He accused the couple of thinking of themselves for “a quarter of an hour of celebrity” and Pavlensky of “pathological narcissism.” Malka said: “Art is an instrument for elevating, not a tool for sadism or reality TV.” Malka told the courtroom: “You [the public gallery] would also become the object of an artwork,” in allusion to Pavlensky’s statement about Subject-Object Art.