Yves Saint Laurent: Guided tour in six museums

This bouquet of exhibitions crosses six Parisian institutions of its precise punctuations.This is an almost musical demonstration of Yves Saint Laurent's talent.Parisian museums immediately entered this game of looks that ranges from art to haute couture, even if many of them - Louvre, Center Pompidou, Orsay, Picasso Museum - changed director during the project."His sources of inspiration have been multiple, modern art, art that was contemporary to him, ancient art, different civilizations, different periods.He looked at everything, looked at a lot, "insists the historian of art Mouna Mekouar, who shares the general police station with Madison Cox, president of the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, and Stephan Janson, fashion designer."Saint Laurent was a big collector, a great lover of art and museums.This is the first time that these institutions have all been gathered around one and the same artist, moreover, a designer.Each museum, by the intimate knowledge of its conservatives, brought what makes its identity.Exhibitions are independent and interdependent.We can see one, we can see them all. L’idée est de montrer, par exemple au Centre Pompidou, que Saint Laurent appartient au XX^e siècle et annonce le XXI^e.»»»»»»»»

À lire aussiYves Saint Laurent: d’une toile à l’autre

• Louvre Museum

In the museum palace, the emphasis is on the decorative arts, the taste for the big decor and the ceremonial.Some of the Saint Laurent jackets are ornaments, works of art in its own right (jacket mirror broken in black velvet and gold, silver and rhodoïd, fall-winter 1978) embroidery).Rather than highlighting her love for Goya, Vélasquez, Boucher, Watteau, the ancient Greek vases or Sumerians, the Apollo gallery was chosen to install four jewelry jackets under window in order to respect the scenography of the Louvre -It is the only museum of the course where the Saint Laurent pieces are thus shown.Here is a tribute to my house, entirely made of rock crystal, embroidered and bordered with gold, which recalls Versailles, the Galerie des Glaces and of course the gallery of Apollo, which is the prefiguration of the Galerie des Glaces.Not far beats the black and red heart that the designer ritually brought to one of his muses in the end of the parades.A favorite object in simple rhinestones and crystal cabochons, which he himself drew in 1962."The Louvre accepted that it is put not far from the jewelry of the crown. Ce cœur montre comment Saint Laurent célèbre la joaillerie française»»»»»»»», souligne Mouna Mekouar, «très émue de pouvoir exposer Saint Laurent dans cet écrin»»»»»»»».

• Centre Pompidou

The bias is that of the note, just, unique, which hits.Some pieces, so fine, so strong, recompose with their original masters an instant dialogue of shapes, lines, colors, which surprises with its evidence and its harmony (refined black dress, stunned at the 1965 size, next doorLarge oil on canvas by Ellsworth Kelly, Black White, 1988).The Modern Art Collections of the Center Pompidou welcomed the models of Yves Saint Laurent reduced to the purity, without accessories - neither shoes, nor hats and jewelry.Just drawings in space and the shimmer of the material (coat in fox green fox next to Martial Raysse and his Made in Japan.La Grande Odalisque, 1964, in the blink of an eye to Ingres).

We follow the way in which Saint Laurent was inspired by the meaning of the color of Matisse such as the Romanian blouse (1940), reinterpreted directly from the painting by Saint Laurent in 1981.From the importance of drawing specific to Picasso to the image of the woolen cloth cable embroidered with glitter (fall-winter 1988), facing the masterpiece, the violin (1914).Stylized patterns of Fernand Léger and the chromatic energy of Delaunay, visible in this evening dress in Moirée Tribute to Pablo Picasso (1979) facing rhythm, joie de vivre by Robert Delaunay (1930) and Simultaneous Sonia CostumeDelaunay (1916).The couturier participated in making Mondrian known, he said himself, with his iconic dress from 1965.The first retrospective in France of Mondrian dates from 1969, and the acquisition by the Center Pompidou, from 1975.The confrontation of this linear woolen jersey dress next to the famous composition in red, blue and white II, from 1927, is eloquent ... The coat in orange raffia with Macramé-Spring-summer 1967, sits alone near the fabulousWall of the workshop of André Breton, full of African and Oceanian art, evoking the apartment on rue Fontaine in Paris, occupied by the poet until his death in 1966.

• Picasso museum

Picasso was for Saint Laurent genius in its pure state.He dedicated two collections to her."It is therefore a monographic, literal and direct dialogue. Les vestes Hommage à Picasso sont présentées en regard des tableaux qui les ont inspirées»»»»»»»», explique l’historienne de l’art marocaine (on lui doit la belle exposition «Luogo e Segni»»»»»»»» à la Pointe de la Douane, à Venise, en 2019).Like this painting where picasso painted naked elected, dressed as a small corsair.Saint Laurent was inspired by it to reconstruct the painted jacket to his idea (fall-winter 1979), paying an indirect tribute to Elsa SchiaParelli."At Saint Laurent, there are sometimes two or three sources of inspiration for the same garment.There is never a single level of reading.»»»»In 1988, Saint Laurent still praised Cubism and Picasso through, among other things, a jacket whose association of forms and fabrics tends towards a fairly soft but revealing cubism."Couture, at the bottom, is only structure and construction.To draw inspiration from cubism is to dare to aim for decomposed forms.Like the Cubists, Saint Laurent deconstructed sewing to reinvent it.»»»»»»»»

• Museum of Modern Art in Paris

«On s’appuie sur l’esprit des lieux avec ses grandes installations monumentales autour de Dufy, Matisse, la salle Art déco que le musée a réaccrochée pour nous!»»»»»»»», dévoile Mouna Mekouar.The two Anny Duperey cinema costumes produced by Saint Laurent for Stavisky by Alain Resnais (1973), a black and a white, therefore find their right place and their time.In MAM, the accent is put on color like the delicate, purple, blue, orange-spring organzas blouses of spring-summer 2001, in line with Bonnard, lunch, around 1932, and the garden, 1936.But also on the quest of Saint Laurent to put the color in motion.Correspondence game between sewing and painting with the fae domino of the Taroni weaver and its organza bustier of the silky bianchini, brossin of Méré embroidery (fall-winter 1984), which refers to the blue waves of unfinished dance, of Matisse,1931 masterpiece.Also with painting walls, Daniel Buren (20 canvases from 1966 to 1977 forming one all in 1995), which responds to the three dance panels, another Matisse from 1931, where pink appears.Playful touches with the dear frame to Alain Jacquet and his lunch on the grass, 1964, impregnating this tricolor jacket, spring-summer 1966.

• Pierre Bergé-Saint Laurent Foundation

At 5, avenue Marceau, just a step back to tell the creative process, from drawing to the canvas and the boss.And greet his workshops.The objects shown have a very didactic power: they explain to the public how a sewing piece is born like the canvas of the dress tribute to Georges Braque from spring-summer 1988.They are also full -fledged works of art.Like shoe shapes and wooden hats, pure sculptures - the equivalent of a negative plaster - which have never been shown.A boss refers to a drawing. Un clin d’œil à 3 stoppages-étalon, de Marcel Duchamp, «expérience faite en 1913 pour emprisonner et conserver des formes obtenues par le hasard, par mon hasard»»»»»»»», selon les mots mêmes de l’artiste."Never shown, these canvas patterns are of incredible beauty, no one works like that.They reflect the devotion and love of those who made them, even if these bosses were then hidden in envelopes, specifies Mouna Mekouar.The immense layers are too fragile to be exposed.But the fingerprints of scarves on scale 1, equivalent to a bat for a book, which were sent to the silky, will be presented.These are magnificent paintings of colors and work on the pattern.»»»»»»»»

• Orsay Museum

Les possibilités étaient multiples, dialogues avec Van Gogh, Renoir, Manet, Burne-Jones, car Saint Laurent a beaucoup regardé le XIX^e siècle.It was Proust who was selected as the writer was dear to him - he was constantly rereading him, to the point of identifying himself with Swann.He quoted Proust in his latest speech, copied extracts from research, hung in his studio.His castle in Normandy was dedicated to the author, each of the rooms decorated according to a character.The ground floor was entirely painted like the Nymphéas, from Monet, inspiration of Elstir, figure of the ideal artist for the narrator."There is also a dialogue with the clock of the Musée d'Orsay referring to the Proust ball given by the Baron and the Baroness of Rothschild in 1971, for which Saint Laurent made several dresses. Cela nous permet aussi de poser la question du genre chez lui, pas au XX^e siècle, ce qui est tellement évident, mais au XIX^e siècle, à travers ses smokings. Et Proust s’y prête parfaitement»»»»»»»», commente la commissaire.The photographs of Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, the Countess of Ribes, Hélène Rochas and Jane Birkin by Cecil Beaton, in 1971, look at the famous portraits of Sarah Bernhardt by Félix Nadar in 1859 and in 1900.In this same graphic arts cabinet, the Proustian theme continues."In 1957, when he was at Dior, Saint Laurent had already made the sketches of headdresses for the head ball given by the Baron de Rédé in Paris.»»»»»»»"As in Proust's last chapter, it's really the time found.

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