60 years ago, a young Yves Saint-Laurent presented the first collection that he signed with his name. That January 29, 1962 marked a before and after in the life of the designer and in the history of fashion: one of the most important firms of all time has just been born, whose legacy lives on today.
Now, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of his debut, six Paris museums are joining in the exhibition Yves Saint Laurent aux Musées , conceived and realized by the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation and curated by Mouna Mekouar.
A) Yes, the Center Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Louvre Museum, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée National Picasso-Paris and the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris will host a series of retrospectives that will illustrate the deep links of the couturier with art in general and with French public collections in particular.
Yves Saint Laurent aux Musées can be visited until May 15, 2022 (at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum the exhibition period will be extended until September 18).
Portrait of Yves Saint Laurent, 1971.
SAINT LAURENT AND THE ARTS
Yves Saint Laurent acquired a vision and a style that made him one of the most inventive and influential fashion designers of the second half of the 20th century.
as stated Madison Cox, President of the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation , “The unique dialogue that existed between Yves Saint Laurent and the innumerable sources of inspiration he found in the fine arts, spanning a wide range of cultures throughout history, was a key component of the couturier's boundless ingenuity and creativity."
What better way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the house than with not one, but six tributes to the extraordinary talent of the master?
“The selection is not exhaustive –explains Mouna Mekouar–, it could have included other names and other works. Each installation was conceived in close collaboration with the various directors and curators of the associated museums, as the way they look at Yves Saint Laurent's work echoes the way they look at his own collections”
5 avenue Marceau.
Different stories and dialogues take shape in the museum house, offering various perspectives and facets around Saint Laurent's forty-year career, during which he broke barriers and introduced bold new silhouettes.
From the tuxedo to the safari jacket passing through trench coats and tailored suits, garments designed by Yves Saint Laurent speak of an entire culture and embody a vast artistic universe derived from his passion for visual arts, both contemporary and historical.
Yves Saint Laurent aux Musées delves into the cultures and artistic movements in which the Algerian designer was inspired and offers us a tour of the museums of Paris and a selection of wonderful pieces that includes some of his most iconic designs, engaging in a fascinating visual dialogue with the permanent collections of six important cultural institutions of the French capital.
Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
POMPIDOU CENTER
On January 22, 2002, Yves Saint Laurent definitively retired from haute couture after one last retrospective parade in the Pompidou Center - National Museum of Modern Art.
In this retrospective we see Yves Saint Laurent as an artist rooted in his time and deeply in tune with art movements of the 20th century.
Dress ‘Hommage à Piet Mondrian’ (Autumn-winter 1965).
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The color sense of Henri Matisse , the importance of drawing with Pablo Picasso , the reasons for Fernand Leger or the color energy of Sonia Delunay were some of Saint Laurent's incentives to reinvent fashion, its lines and its colors.
The proposed dialogues and games of confrontation are thought to be inspired by the designer's own words: “I like other painters, but the ones I chose were close to my work, that's why I asked for them. Mondrian, of course, was the first I dared to approach in 1965 and whose rigor could not but seduce me, but also Matisse, Braque, Picasso, Bonnard, Leger. How can I resist pop art , the expression of all my youth?
Hours: every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. except Tuesday and 1. Tickets available here (general price: €14).
Pompidou Center.
PICASSO-PARIS NATIONAL MUSEUM
Pablo Picasso occupies a fundamental place in the work of Yves Saint Laurent, as evidenced in the vis a vis exposed in the Picasso-Paris National Museum.
Fascinated by the painter, the couturier paid him homage on several occasions throughout his life, known as Picasso's periods.
In 1979, Yves Saint Laurent dedicated his autumn-winter collection to Picasso, after visiting an exhibition dedicated to the Ballets Russes at the French National Library: “From that moment on, my collection was built like a ballet. I embroidered on Picasso [...], about the harlequins, the blue era, the rose era, the Tricorn period”, stated the designer.
Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (9:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m. during school holidays and weekends). Open every day except December 25, January 1 and May 1. The ticket is priced at €14 and you can reserve it here.
Musée national Picasso-Paris.
LOUVRE MUSEUM
The Louvre Museum shows the couturier's fascination with light and his passion for gold, the color of the sun, reflected in the decorative arts but also, and especially, in the Apollo Gallery, designed by the architect Charles Le Brun.
The museum will present in said gallery a series of extraordinary pieces that underline the richness of Yves Saint Laurent's sources of inspiration and that also extol the know-how of French craftsmen.
Apollo Gallery, Louvre Museum.
Yves Saint Laurent's creations reveal his concerns regarding decoration, art objects and haute couture jewelry. Thus, enamels, mirrors and cameos were boldly transformed into pieces where we can appreciate various styles, eras and continents.
“The mixture is total, the permanent eclecticism, the indescribable harmony” , affirm from the organization of the sample. Among the most representative creations of his reinterpretation of the decorative arts, stands out a gorgeous heart-shaped brooch that "symbolizes faith, attachment, love, and crosses the borders of the true and the false to become part of the tradition of French jewelry".
The result of his relationship with the decorative arts could not be any other: authentic works of art worthy of being exhibited in a museum, although he modestly affirmed that "My purpose was not to measure myself against the teachers, at most to get closer to them, to learn from their genius."
Hours: from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (except Tuesday). The ticket is priced at €17 (if you book it online) and you can buy it here.
'Coeur', designed in 1962 and reissued in 1979.
ORSAY'S MUSEUM
The Orsay's Museum presents us, in his Salon de l'Horloge , Yves Saint Laurent's link with Marcel Proust, in whose work the couturier immersed himself from a very young age: “When I was eighteen I started In Search of Lost Time. I often pick up the book without finishing it, I need to have this extraordinary work in front of me,” the creator once said.
His proustian fondness is revealed in his work in different ways: “Like Proust, I am most fascinated by my own perceptions of a world in transition” , he stressed.
In this museum we can inquire about the Proust Ball, given by the Baron and Baroness Guy de Rothschild at the Château de Ferrières in 1971. For this important occasion, Yves Saint Laurent designed several dresses for Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, Hélène Rochas and Jane Birkin, among others, all of them inspired by the characters of La Recherche.
Likewise, we will witness how the creator defied gender codes when mixing women's and men's clothing: "For me, nothing is more beautiful than a woman dressed as a man!" he sentenced him. It was from the fall-winter 1966 collection that he chose to create a feminine version of the tuxedo, which he did not stop reinterpreting throughout his career.
Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. The ticket has a general price of €16 and you can buy it here.
Orsay's Museum.
PARIS MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Yves Saint Laurent said that when he worked, he thought all the time about art, about painting. and in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris , about twenty of his models, iconic and also lesser known, thus coexist with the works of the collection route, redesigned for this occasion.
The dialogues proposed here underline his inspiration in the works of important 20th century artists such as Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard and his approximations to Raoul Dufy, Giorgio de Chirico or Lucio Fontana.
Saint Laurent put art in motion, making it jump from the canvas to the body and bringing it to life. A spirit of emulation rather than imitation animates the couturier's investigations: “I haven't copied them, who would dare to do that? I wanted to establish links between painting and clothing, convinced that a painter is always from our time and can accompany everyone's life” , he stated.
The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm. More information here.
Outfit inspired by Pierre Bonnard (Spring-Summer 2001).
YVES SAINT LAURENT MUSEUM IN PARIS
The most intimate and personal approach to the Yves Saint Laurent aux Musées exhibition is found in the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris with Yves Saint Laurent at 5, avenue Marceau , which exhibits valuable archives of the firm –carefully preserved over the years by Pierre Bergé and the designer himself– that constitute an extension of the masterpieces exhibited in the permanent galleries of the partner museums of the project in Paris.
“These mostly unpublished archival materials will help to understand how haute couture garments arise, They will illustrate the daily work carried out inside the house, they will provide information on Saint Laurent's creative process and they will pay tribute to their numerous and valuable collaborators”, they comment from the organization.
In contrast to the associated museums, which put Yves Saint Laurent pieces into perspective with works from their permanent collections, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum honors all savoir faire, to all the people who have contributed, within the fashion house, to its creations.
Drawings, canvases, patterns, shapes of hats, esparto grass, prints, embroidery, polaroids... All these objects come together to tell us the genesis and spirit of each collection in a captivating journey that explains the main stages of the creative process, while emphasizing the memory of gestures and the intrinsic beauty of these objects.
The exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris can be visited until September 18. Individual visits: every day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (except Monday). Groups: Tuesday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. The ticket has a general price of €10 and you can buy it here.
Single layer canvas 'Hommage à George Braque' (Spring-Summer 1988).
The haute couture, Yves Saint Laurent said, it is “a whisper that is transmitted and repeated, we whisper our secrets to each other: refinement and knowledge of the cut. This is where haute couture can become an art form."
Yves Saint Laurent aux Musées looking to go beyond the traditional framework of an exhibition, opening it up to elements that would otherwise go unnoticed, playing with multiple affinities and unsuspected connections, and offering as a result a new perspective on the work of Yves Saint Laurent.