June 3, 2011
The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk
Robert Doyle READ TIME: 7 MIN.
Montreal - From June 17 to October 2, 2011, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) will present "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk," the first exhibition devoted to the celebrated French couturier who launched his first pr�t?�?porter collection in 1976 and founded his own couture house in 1997.
Dubbed fashion's enfant terrible from the time of his first runway shows in the 1970s, Jean Paul Gaultier is indisputably one of the most important fashion designers of recent decades. Very early on, his avant?garde fashions reflected an understanding of a multicultural society's issues and preoccupations, shaking up - with invariable good humour - established societal and aesthetic codes.
Initiated, developed, produced and circulated by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to mark the thirty?fifth anniversary of the designer's own label, this exploration of Jean Paul Gaultier's creative world has been organized in collaboration with the Maison Jean Paul Gaultier.
Following its presentation in Montreal, the exhibition will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art (November 9, 2011?February 12, 2012) and then to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young (March 24?August 19, 2012).
The exhibition - which the couturier considers to be not only a retrospective but a creation in its own right - will feature approximately 120 ensembles, mainly from the designer's couture collections, but also from his pr�t?�?porter line, along with their accessories.
Created between 1976 and 2010, for the most part these pieces have never been exhibited. Many other exhibits are also being presented for the first time. Sketches, stage costumes, excerpts from films, runway shows, concerts, videos, dance performances and even television programmes will illustrate the artistic collaborations that have characterized Gaultier's world: in film (Pedro Almod�var, Peter Greenaway, Luc Besson, Marc Caro and Jean?Pierre Jeunet) and contemporary dance (Angelin Preljocaj, R�gine Chopinot and Maurice B�jart), not to mention the world of popular music, in France (Yvette Horner and Myl�ne Farmer...) and on the international scene (Madonna and Kylie Minogue...).
Fashion photography will also be a major focus of attention, thanks to loans of, in many cases, never?before?seen prints from renowned photographers and contemporary artists (Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Erwin Wurm, David LaChapelle, Richard Avedon, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, Steven Klein, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Pierre et Gilles, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Paolo Roversi and Robert Doisneau...).
Under the leadership of Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition is curated by the MMFA's Thierry?Maxime Loriot. Celebrating the daring inventiveness of his cutting?edge designs, as well as exploring the audaciously eclectic sources of
his ideas, the exhibition will be organized along six different thematic sections tracing the influences, from the streets of Paris to the world of science fiction, that have marked the couturier's creative development:
Innovative exhibition design, provided by the Paris-based architectural and stage design company Projectiles, will showcase the couturier's designs along with prints and video clips that will illustrate many of his most fruitful artistic collaborations.
Thirty mannequins with faces animated by ingenious audiovisual projections will be placed throughout the galleries, surprising visitors with their lifelike presence. Denis Marleau and St�phanie Jasmin of the Montreal theatre company UBU are responsible for the design and staging of this poetic and playful audiovisual creation. Several celebrities, including Jean Paul Gaultier, models �ve Salvail and Francisco Randez, singer and filmmaker Melissa Auf der Maur, soprano Suzie Leblanc, and Canadian television host Virginie Coosa, have agreed to lend their faces and their voices at times to this unique project.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will publish, in French and in English, a major monograph on the occasion of this exhibition. This large volume (424 pages and over 500 illustrations) will include many interviews with Gaultier's mentors, muses and colleagues, as well as the artists he has worked with, including: Pedro Almod�var, Catherine Deneuve, Madonna, Helen Mirren, Martin Margiela, Pierre Cardin, Dita Von Teese, Marion Cotillard, Kylie Minogue, Polly Mellen, and Tom Ford, among others. It will feature many previously unpublished illustrations from renowned fashion photographers and the Maison Gaultier archives.
An essay written by Suzy Menkes, journalist at The New York Times and fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, will examine Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion shows as visionary reflections of society's evolution. The work will include two interviews with the designer himself, in addition to an interview with Valerie Steele, fashion historian and director of New York's The Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology), as well as a timeline of Gaultier's career and a complete bibliography. The catalogue's graphic design has been entrusted to the Montreal agency Paprika.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is the only art museum in Canada with a nationally acclaimed collection representing all cultures and over 5,000 years of human creativity. Every year, an average of 600,000 visitors enjoy its encyclopedic collection, unique in Canada and free to all, and its original temporary exhibitions, which combine artistic disciplines (fine arts, music, film, fashion, design) and feature innovative exhibition design.
The Museum designs, produces and circulates many of its exhibitions in Europe and North America. In 2009, they attracted 900,000 visitors abroad and 575,000 in Montreal, one of the highest attendances rates in Canada. It is also one of Canada's leading publishers of bilingual art books that are distributed worldwide. More than 100,000 families and school children take part in its educational, cultural and community programs every year.
In 2011, the Museum will be opening a fourth pavilion dedicated to Canadian and Quebec art, and a concert hall that houses a rare collection of Tiffany stained glass. At the same time, the Museum's rich collections will be reinstalled in the three other pavilions dedicated to ancient cultures, European and contemporary art, as well as decorative arts and design.
Music is now an integral part of the Museum, providing another perspective on the visual arts, through musical audio guides and other innovative activities, organized in co?operation with the new Arte Musica Foundation. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a private, non?profit institution that must generate nearly 50 per cent of annual operating budget and nearly 100 per cent of the funds for the acquisition of works for its collection.
LINK: "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk"
Long-term New Yorkers, Mark and Robert have also lived in San Francisco, Boston, Provincetown, D.C., Miami Beach and the south of France. The recipient of fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Blue Mountain Center, Mark is a PhD in American history and literature, as well as the author of the novels Wolfchild and My Hawaiian Penthouse. Robert is the producer of the documentary We Are All Children of God. Their work has appeared in numerous publications, as well as at : www.mrny.com.
