from mbam.qc.ca
Montreal, March 30, 2011 – 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 by the press 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, 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 12, 2012).
“I wanted to create an exhibition on Jean Paul Gaultier more than any other couturier because of his great humanity,” explained Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. “Beyond the technical virtuosity resulting from exceptional expertise in the various skills involved in haute couture, an unbridled imagination and ground?breaking artistic collaborations, he offers an open?minded vision of society, a crazy, sensitive, funny, sassy world in which everyone can assert his or her own identity, a world without discrimination, a unique ‘fusion couture.’ Beneath Jean Paul Gaultier’s wit and irreverence lie a true generosity of spirit and a very powerful message for society. His humanist aesthetic touches me deeply.”
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…).
Keenly interested in all the world’s cultures and countercultures, Gaultier has picked up on the current trends and proclaimed the right to be different, and in the process conceived a new kind of fashion in both the way it is made and worn. Through twists, transformations, transgressions and reinterpretations, he not only erases the boundaries between cultures but also the sexes, creating a new androgyny or playing with subverting hypersexualized fashion codes.
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: The Odyssey of Jean Paul Gaultier; The Boudoir; Skin Deep; Eurostar; Urban Jungle; and Metropolis.
Under the leadership of Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk is curated by the MMFA’s Thierry?Maxime Loriot.
Conceived by Projectiles, a Paris?based architecture firm, the sophisticated exhibition design will showcase the couturier’s designs, as well as prints and video clips that illustrate Gaultier’s many fruitful artistic collaborations. Thirty mannequins with animated faces provided by ingenious audiovisual projections will be placed throughout the galleries, surprising visitors with their lifelike presence. The design and staging of this poetic and playful audiovisual creation has been entrusted to Denis Marleau and St?phanie Jasmin of the Montreal theatre company UBU. Several celebrities, including Jean Paul Gaultier, models ?ve Salvail and Francisco Randez, singer and filmmaker Melissa Auf der Maur, soprano Suzie Leblanc, and TV host Virginie Coosa, have agreed to lend their faces – and sometimes even their voices – to this unique project, which is being presented in a museum for the first time.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will publish a major monograph on the occasion of this exhibition in collaboration with Abrams for the English edition and the ?ditions de La Martini?re for the French edition. Produced under the general editorship of Thierry?Maxime Loriot, this magnificent 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: Pedro Almod?var, Catherine Deneuve, Madonna, Helen Mirren, Martin Margiela, Pierre Cardin, Dita Von Teese, Marion Cotillard, Kylie Minogue, Polly Mellen and Tom Ford, to name just a few. 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 look at Jean Paul Gaultier’s fashion shows and examine their visionary reflection of society’s evolution over the past thirty?five years. 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.
La planète mode de Jean Paul Gaultier. De la rue aux étoiles.
Pavillon Michal et Renata Hornstein
1379, rue Sherbrooke Ouest
Montréal (Québec) Canada
H3G 1J5
General information:
514-285-2000
http://www.mbam.qc.ca/jpg/en/index.html
http://www.mbam.qc.ca/jpg/fr/index.html
http://www.mbam.qc.ca
All images courtesy of Photo Jerry Pigeon (Studio JPG) and MBAM.QC.CA
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from royalacademy.org.uk
The Royal Academy of Arts will present GSK Contemporary 2010, the third season of contemporary art at 6 Burlington Gardens. GSK Contemporary – Aware: Art Fashion Identity will focus on how artists and a number of designers examine clothing as a mechanism to communicate and reveal elements of our identity. The exhibition will contain work by 30 emerging as well as established international contemporary practitioners including Marina Abramovi?, Acconci Studio, Azra Ak?amija, Maja Bajevic, Handan Börüteçene, Hussein Chalayan, Alicia Framis, Meschac Gaba, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Andreas Gursky, Mella Jaarsma, Kimsooja, Claudia Losi, Susie MacMurray, Marcello Maloberti, La Maison Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Yoko Ono, Maria Papadimitriou, Grayson Perry, Dai Rees, Katerina ?edá, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Helen Storey, Rosemarie Trockel, Sharif Waked, Gillian Wearing RA, Yohji Yamamoto and Andrea Zittel.
New work by Yinka Shonibare and Hussein Chalayan, commissioned especially for Aware by London College of Fashion and the Royal Academy of Arts, will be on display. Hussein Chalayan will present a new dress inspired by the 300 year old Japanese tradition of Bunraku puppet theatre while Yinka Shonibare is working with bespoke tailor Chris Stevens on creating 18 designs based on 19th-century children’s dress which will be assembled to form a wall mural.
Occupying the main galleries of the Royal Academy’s 6 Burlington Gardens building, Aware will be divided into four sections. Storytelling will acknowledge the role of clothing in the representation of personal and cultural history. Grayson Perry’s Artist’s Robe, 2004, an elaborate, appliquéd coat made of a patchwork of luxurious fabrics, comments on the figure and status of the artist in the world today.
Building will cover the concept of clothing being used as a form of protection and the notion of carrying one’s own shelter, referencing the nomadic, portable nature of modern life. On display will be Shelter Me 1, 2005 by Mella Jaarsma who in her work parallels garment and architectural constructions. Jaarsma defines shelter as the minimal construction needed for protection, not yet the shape of a house, but directly related to the proportions of the human body. Belonging and Confronting will examine ideas of nationality as well as displacement and political and social confrontation, recognizing the tensions associated with the assimilation of new cultures and traditions. In Palestinian artist Sharif Waked’s video installation, Chic Point, 2003, the contradictory interpretations of revealing flesh as a fashion prerogative or as a humiliation juxtapose two worlds, one of high fashion and the other of semi-imprisonment. The importance of Performance in the presentation of fashion and clothing, and in highlighting the roles that we play in our daily life, will be explored in the final section. It will feature film footage of Yoko Ono’s performance of Cut Piece at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York in 1965, for which the artist invited the public to cut strips from her clothing. While the scraps of fabric fall to the floor, the unveiling of the female body suggests the total destruction of the barriers imposed by convention. Aware will reflect upon the relationship between our physical covering and constructed personal environments, our individual and social identities and the contexts in which we live. As a mechanism of expression, the exploration of the role of clothing has been at the heart of the artistic practice of a number of contemporary artists, and has particular resonance for those attuned to the social situations of their times. Whilst frequently fulfilling a practical and occasionally protective function, clothing can be effective in celebrating or suppressing identity and in indicating allegiances. It has the ability to express our way of life and even our unconscious, communicating our positions, aspirations and desires.
London College of Fashion is a partner in the development of the project, supporting two commissions, a symposium and a series of Salon Talks which will take place in the Sketch on-site café and include speakers such as Yinka Shonibare and Helen Storey. The talks programme will explore themes provoked by Aware and is supported by Bastyan.
The concept for the exhibition was developed by the independent curator Gabi Scardi with artist Lucy Orta, and the exhibition is co-curated by Kathleen Soriano and Edith Devaney, from the Royal Academy.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated paperback catalogue, published by Damiani.
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Fashion Brand(s):
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VARIOUS
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Fashion Designer(s):
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VARIOUS
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Season(s):
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2010
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When:
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2 December 2010 > 30 January 2011
(Closed 24, 25 and 26 December 2010 )
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Where:
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Royal Academy of Arts
6 Burlington Gardens
London W1S 3ET
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Web site(s):
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E-mail:
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groupbookings[at]royalacademy[dot]org[dot]uk
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All photographs / images courtesy of
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ROYALACADEMY.ORG.UK
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