In tribute to the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Maison Yves Saint Laurent, which took place on December 4, 1961, an exhibition is inaugurated with an unprecedented series of installations in six of the most prestigious fine arts museums in Paris. Works that will pay homage to the extraordinary creative talent of the late French couturier Yves Saint Laurent.
On January 29, 1962, the 26-year-old designer presented his inaugural collection under his own name. From that day after, Yves Saint Laurent he grasped a vision and a style that became his staple throughout his career and until 2002, forty years in which he broke down barriers and introduced bold new forms. The garments designed by Yves Saint Laurent speak to an entire culture; embody a far-reaching artistic universe. His never-ending fascination with the visual arts, both contemporary and historical, profoundly informed and energized his work.
This new (May 29 – 15, 2022) expansive exhibition seeks to trace the myriad of cultures and art movements Saint Laurent has drawn inspiration from. Conceived and made possible by the Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, YVES SAINT LAURENT AUX MUSÉES will promote a dialogue between a selection of garments, including some of the couturier's most iconic designs, and the permanent collections of six major Parisian museums. The exhibition celebrates both Santo's craftsmanship and Laurent's art in general. The sprawling scale of the project connects the world of Yves Saint Laurent with other artistic realms.
The exhibition YVES SAINT LAURENT AUX MUSÉES takes visitors on a journey through the permanent collections of six Parisian museums, in order to bring to light Yves Saint Laurent's permanent dialogue with art and literature. The selection is not exhaustive: it could have included other names and other works. Firstly, it highlights the inventiveness of Yves Saint Laurent's pluralistic and multifaceted gaze. Each pairing has been conceived in close collaboration with the various directors and curators of the partner museums, as the way they look at Yves Saint Laurent's work echoes the way they look at their own collections. Jasmin Oezcebi's installation opts for a minimalist presentation style which pays particular attention to the lines and figures drawn by Yves Saint Laurent, giving the imaginary dialogues greater intensity and power. This dynamic favors a real exchange of ideas on the work of the stylist in each museum. The approach continues at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, with a tribute to the expertise and people of the maison who have participated and contributed to the creations of couturier Yves Saint Laurent. The exhibition shows the objects that contribute to the creation of a design in a new light: drawings, motifs, fabrics, stocks for hats, blocks of fabric, prints… this sensory journey explains the different phases of the creative process by highlighting the memories of the movements and intrinsic beauty of these objects. Different stories take shape from one museum to another, allowing us to question the ideas and myths around the couturier and artist Yves Saint Laurent: myths that touch the hidden depths of his being, but also his quest for perfection. Yves Saint Laurent Museum Paris
The YVES SAINT LAURENT AUX MUSÉES exhibition was conceived and made possible by the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent and involves six partner institutions: Pompidou Center Museum of Modern Art in Paris Louvre Museum Orsay National Museum Picasso-Paris Yves Saint Laurent Museum Paris.
Yves Saint Laurent and art.
Yves Saint Laurent is the first designer to have established a real dialogue with the artists and the arts of the past. In his Autumn-Winter 1965 collection he presents a series of dresses in homage to Piet Mondrian. Invoking the aesthetic world of Mondrian, and then that of Serge Poliakoff and Tom Wesselmann, Yves Saint Laurent has been able to "translate" two-dimensional paintings into new three-dimensional works of art. He set their art in motion. This creative dialogue with artists continued throughout his career, with tributes to Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Pierre Bonnard, Fernand Léger, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. The couturier has also cultivated an aesthetic conversation with works from the past. Yves Saint Laurent's creative impulse was intimately linked to the works he encountered and the artists who inspired him. It was Yves Saint Laurent who opened the doors of the museum to the world of fashion. He was the first living fashion designer to have been the subject of a major retrospective, mounted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1983. This landmark exhibition established fashion as a cultural heritage worthy of being exhibited in the context of a museum, and has paved the way for several other comprehensive exhibitions since then devoted to fashion designers
