PARIS — He has infuriated just about everyone.

The Russian authorities threw him in jail for setting fire to the door of the secret police headquarters in Moscow. France, which gave him asylum three years ago, also jailed him, also over a fire, and is now investigating him in connection with two new criminal cases, one relating to a New Year’s Eve brawl in a chic Paris apartment, the other over his release of a sex tape of a French politician.

He is on such bad terms with his longtime partner, the mother of his two daughters, that they have not spoken in months, despite their having come to France together to start a new life.

By his own lights, however, Pyotr A. Pavlensky has never achieved quite so much. “The job of the artist is to be a bone in everyone’s throat,” the Russian performance artist said in an interview on Monday in Paris. On that score, he has certainly triumphed.

Hailed by avant-garde art aficionados as an exceptional, if highly eccentric, talent, the 35-year-old Russian artist — who now considers himself French “because I live in France” — has never been popular with the powers that be.