“Non-conforming designer seeks atypical models – broken faces do not abstain.”
From June 17 to October 2, 2011, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) will present Jean Paul Gaultier’s La planète mode: de la rue aux étoiles, the first major exhibition devoted to the famous French couturier, who started out in ready-to-wear in 1976 before founding his own haute couture house in 1997.
The exhibition was initiated, produced and circulated by the MBAM on the occasion of Jean Paul Gaultier’s 35 years of fashion.
In recent weeks, two of Jean Paul Gaultier’s closest collaborators have come to Montreal to work non-stop on the designer’s exhibition, including another muse, model Tanel Bedrossiantz.
Jean Paul Gaultier arrived in Montreal a few days ago to put the finishing touches to his exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. The big adventure began on Tuesday June 14 with a prestigious red carpet opening party to which Luxsure was invited.
The invitation card itself is a chronicle of elegance for the 2,000 guests!
Guests included Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, filmmaker Denys Arcand and producer Denise Robert, Isabelle Boulay, Virginie Coossa, Évelyne Rompré, Quebec designer Denis Gagnon, director Denis Marleau, Canadian model Coco Rocha, singer Luz Casal, model Ève Salvail, former Quebec model Francisco Randez, who was the face of Jean Paul Gaultier perfume Le Mâle, famous fashion photographers Max Abadian and Steven Klein, Gaultier muse Farida Khelfa, and American plus-size model Stella Ellis.
Despite invitations to Madonna, who lent her precious stage corsets to the museum
Lady Gaga and Julia Roberts, who will be filming in Montreal in the movie Snow White, didn’t show up. Only Arielle Dombasle confirmed her glamour. She was splendid!
A press conference was held at the MBAM in the morning, attended by Jean Paul Gaultier, Nathalie Bondil, director and chief curator of the museum, and Thierry-Maxime Loriot, curator of the exhibition and responsible for the catalog (a former Giorgio Armani model).
Nathalie Bondil Jean Paul Gaultier Thierry-Maxime Loriot – source : William Mazzoleni
“More than any other couturier, I wanted to do an exhibition on Jean Paul Gaultier for his humanity,” explains Nathalie Bondil, the Museum’s Director and Chief Curator. “Beyond the technical virtuosity resulting from the exceptional know-how of the various haute couture trades, an unbridled imagination and historic artistic collaborations, he offers an open vision of society, a world of madness, sensitivity, fun and impertinence where everyone can assert themselves as they are, a world without discrimination, a unique “couture fusion”. Under the guise of humor and lightness, this designer has a real generosity and a very strong social message.”
Thierry-Maxime Loriot, curator of the exhibition, worked with Jean Paul Gaultier to explore his personal and professional ties with Quebec, which led him to agree to revisit his thirty-five years of fashion in an exhibition initiated and organized by the Museum.
The interview:
You’ve always refused to let a museum produce an exhibition of all your work, so why did you agree to do it with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts?
Jean Paul Gaultier. I was both surprised and flattered when Nathalie Bondil asked me to do this exhibition. I thought it was a bit early to have a retrospective, because I’m not that old! I take it as a compliment. I was already familiar with some of the exhibitions produced by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, but it was really when I met the team two years ago that I threw myself into this new adventure. I also preferred the idea of a thematic rather than chronological presentation, a playful experience that wouldn’t be compartmentalized, which fits in with my universe. A classic chronological approach would have evoked a kind of end, but that’s not the case, because my fashion house is still very much alive and kicking.
What will the general public and those less familiar with your work discover in this exhibition?
J. P. G. My life is my work, so with this exhibition, I think you’ll know everything about me! It’s a new adventure, because my designs will be presented in a new way. In a way, this will be the biggest show I’ve ever done, but also my biggest collection in a certain sense, because the exhibition will be divided into six themes that recur frequently in my work. It won’t be a catwalk show, but an installation; that’s how we worked together with the Museum team. It’s a new way of presenting my creations and, above all, of giving access to haute couture, which unfortunately is never shown to the general public. You’ll see my main “obsessions”, which have emerged from my collections over the last thirty-five years – even more, forty, as my first dress from my days at Chez Cardin, before I launched my own ready-to-wear label, will be on show! Corsets, sexuality; masculine-feminine and feminine-masculine, but also the métissages that bring the world’s cultures closer together. It’s really exciting to be able to present this project all over the world: my clothes become my passport to visit all the cities where it will be presented!
Did you have any ties with Quebec before working with the MBAM team?
J. P. G. I’ve always been drawn to Quebec culture, music and cinema – ah, and cuisine too! The first time I came to Quebec in the 1980s, I fell in love with the place and the people. Montreal is a bit like coming home, because there’s a bit of Paris, but also the big North American city feel of New York. I’ve worked with many Quebec models, including Ève Salvail for several of my fashion shows and the first ad for my perfume Classique, Francisco Randez for my Le Male perfume ads, and many other models for my fashion shows, such as Marc Parent and Yasmeen Ghauri in the 1980s, but also Emmanuel Rosado and Judith Bédard.
Parcours d’Exposition Par Luxsure
As you walk up the steps, you pass a number of mannequins whose faces are animated by video. Surprising presences, all dressed in Gaultier, soliloquizing, silently observing, sometimes even singing… This very special technique of video projection onto a three-dimensional face combines technological know-how with the craft of mask projection.
In fact, the actor’s own video image is projected onto his or her molded head: it’s the image of a face that regains its shape.
Denis Marleau has been developing this work on the video character for over fifteen years with UBU, his Montreal-based theater company. He is also the creator of Les aveugles, which has been touring the world since 2002, without live actors on stage, but with the twelve video masks of two duplicated actors. It was through this landmark creation, and then a second time with Une fête pour Boris in 2010, that Jean Paul Gaultier was introduced to the work of the Quebec director at the Festival d’Avignon.
For this project, Denis Marleau conceived mannequins whose offbeat, poetic or joyful living presence is close to the spirit of installation art, with the participation of several performers including Ève Salvail, Francisco Randez, Melissa Auf der Maur, Virginie Coosa and Suzie Leblanc, among others, bringing a little of their artistic research in connivance and at the service of Jean Paul Gaultier’s fascinating universe.
The sections of this multimedia exhibition offer a thematic approach to Jean Paul Gaultier’s creative universe, tracing the couturier’s imaginary itinerary as he seeks inspiration from the Parisian pavement to the world of science fiction in 6 stages
A societal mirror that marks several eras, this journey, which Gaultier calls “his greatest fashion show”, is punctuated by numerous video excerpts, some never before shown, as well as numerous prints, most of them never before exhibited, from the greatest names in fashion and art photography, including Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Robert Doisneau, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts, Pierre et Gilles, Mario Testino, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Ellen Von Unwerth and Bettina Rheims, to name but a few.
1. The odyssey of Jean Paul Gaultier
Jean Paul Gaultier’s “Marinière à épaulettes” is thrilling. Jean Paul Gaultier’s maternal grandmother owned a television set, which was uncommon in France at the time, and let him watch whatever he liked. Fascinated by singular Parisian women, Jean Paul Gaultier created a new silhouette and favored atypical beauties: “As a child, my eye was always drawn to those who were not like the others…”.
2. Le boudoir
I learned that his maternal grandmother, Marie, introduced him to women’s fashion at an early age and introduced him to Falbalas, a Jacques Becker film about the rise of a young couturier, which had a profound effect on him. Gaultier unearthed turn-of-the-century corsets and 1940s guêpières from his grandmother’s closets, creating new classics such as top-worn lingerie and obus bras. Up close, I feel that her corset dresses are a symbol of power and sensuality in the modern woman’s wardrobe.
3. À fleur de peau
I loved how skin and the body are Jean Paul Gaultier’s inexhaustible sources of inspiration. In his hands, materials become “second skins”. He explores the possibilities of trompe-l’oeil with prints of skinned or tattooed bodies. His fascination with skin feeds his imagination and guides his creations, which combine romance and fetishism.
To the dictatorship of slimness, he opposes the sensuality of the XXL size and launches a formidable message: be yourself, whatever the particularities with which nature has endowed you! Instead of the diaphanous blond Scandinavian, he imposes the model with character. For his runway shows, he organized his first wild castings and recruited via classified ads: “Non-conforming designer seeks atypical models – broken faces please.”
That’s where I met Rick Genest, the all-tattooed model from Montreal, muse of Nicola Formichetti (Mugler’s DA and Lady Gaga’s Fashion-in-Chief). What a surprise! We make eye contact. I smile. I whisper: ‘What do you think of the exhibition? Jean-Paul is a Gaultier! Chic and tasteful!
Rick Genest & Alessandro |@thecaprissimo
4. Punk cancan
Couturier has a punk soul, and embraces the idea of the quirky and the recycled, as destitution forces him to be inventive. Total rebellion, trash and destruction appeal to him: “…the raw side of punk, with its Mohican hairstyles, almost tribal make-up, its sexual touch, torn fishnet stockings, black, kilts, straps, the mix of genres, materials… all this spoke to me and suited me better than certain fixed couture codes.” and Manu Militari sometimes ….
5. Urban jungle
Fascinated by differences, Jean Paul Gaultier sees worlds untouched by fashion standardization as grounds for stylistic exploration. Through transpositions, detour and assemblages, he gives shape to cross-border interbreeding. Worlds and individuals separated by the barriers of language, custom and geography mingle in a universe where passports are stamped “Planet Gaultier”. Through his clothes, the couturier orchestrates a dialogue between cultures.
He imagines a cocktail society, mixed, stirred, spiced, variegated, decompartmentalized. The result of a melting pot in the singular, it’s no longer groups that rub shoulders in indifference, but individuals who each tell the story of our diversity. Montreal is a daily testimony to this embraced diversity!
6. Métropolis
As a child, Jean Paul Gaultier was already fascinated by cinema and music-hall, and it was through the small screen that he nurtured his self-taught culture. Fashion interested him because it could be turned into a show. He imagines the fashion show as a happening, an invitation to travel, with its original soundtrack, sets and singular cast. By co-hosting the program Eurotrash, he became television’s first star designer. This new media status coincides with the rise of fashion as a key expression of the image society. In fact, tonight on TF6, you can’t miss his interview with Lady Gaga! The designer interviews the creature!
Lady gaga: Interviewed by Jean-Paul Gaultier (video)
video Lady gaga selected in People
Autobiographical creations, intimate creations, professional creations, statement creations, cultural creations, this exhibition is a dictionary of taste. A very personal dictionary from Jean-Paul Gaultier.
The creations of his life, it’s also his life with the creations…
Alessandro | @thecaprissimo from Montreal for Luxsure
Postscript
The exhibition book is a magnificent 4.5 kg brick that I paid CAN$84.95 (59 euros) for.
On July 16, the world’s largest Jean-Paul Gaultier tribute fashion show will be held on rue Sainte-Catherine.
To be continued on Luxsure…
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
