Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition: A model curator takes on Gaultier

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Curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot shows off his catalogue for the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, opening Friday, June 17.

Photograph by: Marie-France Coallier, The Gazette




Read more on the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition here
Thierry-Maxime Loriot's first professional fashion job was modelling for Burberry, with Kate Moss at his side and Mario Testino behind the lens.
Now, more than a dozen years later, Loriot is putting his best Prada-clad foot forward as curator of his first solo show: The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, opening Friday at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
He brings the perspective and contacts from 10 years inside the fashion world to the show, bound to be a summer blockbuster in Montreal before travelling to Dallas and San Francisco. It features almost 130 ensembles from the Gaultier oeuvre dating from 1976, both haute couture and prêt-a-porter, augmented by animated mannequins, fashion photographs (Testino, Lindbergh and others who captured Loriot in campaigns for Armani, Lanvin, Gap and Banana Republic), sketches, film excerpts from Almodovar, Greenaway and others, concert clips from Madonna and Kylie Minogue and more.
Loriot, 34, who joined the museum three years ago after studying art history at the Université de Montréal, also produced a glorious, weighty (10 pounds!) catalogue for the exhibition, with more than 550 photos as well as essays with fashion commentators Suzy Menkes and Valerie Steele. There are also more than 50 interviews with muses and artists, including Madonna, Catherine Deneuve, Marion Cotillard, Pierre Cardin and Dita Von Teese.
This week, as workers were installing the exhibition - former model and longtime Gaultier collaborator Tanel Bedrossiantz walked by in overalls - Loriot, tall and lean in a navy Lanvin suit with burnished Prada boots, posed for photos with ease and a winsome smile.
The object of the show, he said in the café of the museum, is to allow the public an up-close view of haute couture, which only those invited to the shows in Paris or the very few clients of haute couture in the world can see. Some pieces, like a garment in leopard skin pattern, are entirely beaded in pearls, and took hundreds of hours to make. And the savoir faire for the craftsmanship is disappearing, he said, saying there is a piece of Irish crochet lace that only one person can still do.
On the question of fashion as art, there is no doubt in Loriot's mind. "When you look at corsets, the way they are made, it is like sculpture.''
He wanted to show that fashion influences art. "I come from the fashion world, so image is important to me," he said, adding that the great names in fashion photography are represented in the show.
So is contemporary art, with an image of Cindy Sherman in a corset from 1983, quite a spectacular and memorable image, he said.
Gaultier's collaborations in cinema and dance are also represented. "Fashion is part of the art,'' he said.
Many museum shows are brand funded, like the Dior show at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow on until July, Loriot pointed out. "It's more like an advertising campaign than a celebration of creativity."
The Montreal Gaultier show is 100 per cent funded by the museum.
Gaultier collaborated, allowing access to his archives. Loriot went through about 150 collections, with perhaps 60 pieces each, as well as more than 5,000 images to curate the show and choose the 550 photos in the catalogue.
There is something for every interest in the show, Loriot said. In each of the six themes - the Odyssey of JPG, Boudoir, Skin Deep, Punk Cancan, Urban Jungle and Metropolis - there are garments, but also sketches, photos and stage costumes.
Madonna lent her entire collection of Gaultier costumes, to be seen together for the first time. "It's a big coup,'' he said.
A gold lamé corset of 1930s fabric worn by Madonna is among his favourite items in the show. "It shows how stage costumes are alive. She sweats a lot on stage because of the choreographies. Now it's a bit greenish because of the sweat and mix of metal fabrics."
He also recommends a close look at the leopard print dress, entirely beaded in pearls, with claws of crystal, from the 1997-98 fall haute couture collection. It took hundreds of hours to craft.
The show is very much a portrait of society, he said. Gaultier took his first influences from the street, particularly the punk movement of London. He would visit Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's shop on the King's Road, Loriot recounted, taking cues from there from the bondage and vinyl, which always had a couture aspect.
"His fashion was very inclusive,'' Loriot said. "There is a very strong social message in Gaultier's world. He mixes and matches cultures.
"It was a prophetic vision of modern society.''
Gaultier also defied norms of beauty, using street girls with attitude rather than stereotypes, and welcomed gender-bending. "He showed his skirts on masculine men with muscular legs, because he thought it was sexy."
What the show tells us about Gaultier is "everything - all his obsessions through the years."
"It's a very generous message through fashion,'' Loriot said. "Everybody can wear Gaultier, everybody can have access to Gaultier. You can try to recreate your own Gaultier look."

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier runs June 17 to Oct. 2 at the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1379 Sherbrooke St. W. $15 for adults 26 to 64, with reduced rates Wednesday evening and for students and seniors.



www.montrealgazette.com

 

[Spiral1532]

Oh, how I would love to see this exhibition.

 

[CommanderTMugler]

I've herd about it so much, I'd love to go! It's in Montreal right now and going to go to Madrid afterwards.

 

[softgrey]

well...
the article says it's coming to the US next...

in Montreal before travelling to Dallas and San Francisco.

 

[CommanderTMugler]

I just saw someone on twitter say it was going to Madrid next... is JPG's twitter real?

But if it's going to Dallas then I'm hopping on a plane to go!

 

[eugenius]

saying there is a piece of Irish crochet lace that only one person can still do.

That would be this wonderful piece from his FW09 HC collection...probably one of the most brilliant pieces I've seen in his couture..
(style.com)

 

[agee]

Sounds exciting, kudos. The catalog / book sounds interesting.

 

[Spiral1532]

 

[agee]

Great video!

 

[TheeMigs]

I can't wait till this comes to Dallas...so excited!

 

[KKnardi]

^it won't. I don't think it will even come to Paris...

 

[TheeMigs]

^it won't. I don't think it will even come to Paris...

actually...Dallas Museum of Art is getting a Gaultier exhibit in November...I don't know if it's this specific one...but its a Gaultier exhibit nonetheless...

 

[Spiral1532]

actually...Dallas Museum of Art is getting a Gaultier exhibit in November...I don't know if it's this specific one...but its a Gaultier exhibit nonetheless...

Yes, it's the same one.
"The exhibition will travel to Dallas, San Francisco, Madrid and Rotterdam." (as according to the JPG website).

 

[Spiral1532]

Here's an article from last month:

Taming a Provocateur
A Jean Paul Gaultier retrospective spans cone bras, corsets—and feminist politics.

Fashion designers find inspiration in a variety of places: classical paintings, the beats of an audacious musician, or the eccentricities of a friend-cum-muse. Almost all designers, however, claim to have been inspired by the streets. But only Jean Paul Gaultier, who debuts his fall haute couture collection July 6 in Paris, regularly gives the messy realities of daily life unfettered access to his runway. Tattoo body art, Hasidic Jewish traditions, the noble turbans of African immigrants, and the retro-cool of Harlem have all moved the French designer.

He championed nontraditional beauties—with Modigliani faces, Cyrano de Bergerac noses, Rubenesque bodies—long before Dove’s “Real Beauty” ad campaign. He put plus-size ladies on his runway before the Internet’s self-proclaimed “fat-shionistas” voiced righteous indignation at being marginalized by the frock trade.

The unique and far-reaching cultural resonance of his work is on display in The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, an exhibition that opened June 17 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and runs through Oct. 2. (It later travels to the Dallas Museum of Art and San Francisco’s de Young Museum.) The Gaultier exhibition follows the well-received Alexander McQueen retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And while comparison is inevitable between these two highly skilled designers, each of whom delighted in leaving an audience agitated and unnerved, it would be unfair. McQueen looked inward—guided by his own dark thoughts, painful insecurities, and obsessions. Gaultier looks outward at the swirl of life that engulfs him. And he is fully and optimistically engaged with it.

Gaultier “shows us a society in which we’d like to live—one that’s tolerant in ways that go beyond fashion,” said museum director Nathalie Bondil at the exhibition’s opening.

Through his work, we learn less about Gaultier and more about the times and circumstances in which we all live. He delineates the place religious fervor occupies within modern cities but holds fast to the belief that religious attire, while a symbol of devotion, is ultimately just so much cotton and wool—no more and no less sacred than any other garment. Is he right? At a time when a head wrap, a robe, a veil have taken on such weighted meaning, Gaultier’s Hasidic collection from 1993 is another entry point for asking difficult questions about faith, propriety, and modern life.

The most casual pop-culture observer will recognize his collaborative efforts with Madonna through the 1990s, when he transformed cone bras into an aesthetic expression, a feminist protest, and a sexual provocation. Gaultier’s interest in the transformative powers of lingerie reaches back to his childhood. As evidence, the exhibition includes a matted teddy bear onto which the young Gaultier had stitched a rudimentary little brassiere. (As a boy, he was either a design savant or quite an odd duck—perhaps both.) His exquisitely constructed and shape-shifting corsets on exhibit continue to be relevant as we struggle with our definitions of female beauty.

Gaultier’s multicultural inspiration, which spans the entire breadth of his career, beginning in 1976, reminds us of the beauty of cultural diversity. But his kitschy love affair with French cultural icons—from the cancan and the Eiffel Tower to his famous patron, Catherine Deneuve—mark him as a nationalist. In the frothy realm of fashion, no other designer is so devoted to exploring the links between aesthetics, populations, and politics.

Gaultier’s career has spanned three decades, during which he has been a rebel as well as a member of the establishment, spending seven years as creative director of Hermès—a position he left in 2010. He has created costumes for film and stage, but his work rarely makes an appearance on the red carpet. Perhaps it’s just too fraught with meaning.

At 59, Gaultier has been adamant that this exhibition is not a retrospective, not a final bow. But it’s hard not to look at the more than 100 ensembles, along with photographs and film clips, and not wonder if Gaultier’s most volatile, most searing, work is behind him. In recent seasons, he has mocked the industry’s fat phobia and the foibles of the bourgeoisie—lightweight topics from a man who once challenged the veracity of gender roles.

But perhaps age brings a certain calm. The designer’s work no longer shouts and shocks. At this career midpoint, Gaultier only asks for our thoughtful consideration. And suggests that everyone—from the immigrant to the religiously devout to the middle-class striver—deserves the same.

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/26/jean-paul-gaultier-retrospective.html

 

[chloesaab]

gorgeous gown on Alek

 

[vickywithered]

Gorgeous

 

[Not Plain Jane]

Ah, I wish I could go! San Fran is actually closer than Montreal for me, but I doubt I can make the trip. Perhaps I will have someone snag a catalogue of the exhibit for me. Sigh.

 

[Fuuma]

^it won't. I don't think it will even come to Paris...

Go see it in Madrid or Rotterdam, definitely worth it. More alive than the YSL or Rykiel exhibits.

Vaut mieux voir ce truc que les bagnoles de ce gros con de Ralph Lauren/Lipschitz.

 

[La bordélique]

I just saw someone on twitter say it was going to Madrid next... is JPG's twitter real?

But if it's going to Dallas then I'm hopping on a plane to go!

The JPG twitter account is most definitely real!

Catherine Deneuve came to Montreal to visit the museum yesterday!
Probably because she wanted to see what footage there was of her at the exhibition...


I agree with you Fuuma, this one felt much more alive and dynamic than the YSL one- I didn't see the Rykiel one, but it goes in hand with Gaultier's humor and overall personality. Also, the timing of the YSL one just wasn't right for something as cheerful and crazy (his passing)...

I'm quite partial to Ralph Lauren but that was funny.

 

[lucy92]

(excerpt from the new yorker - written by susan orlean)

n the summer of 2009, Nathalie Bondil, the director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, approached Gaultier with a proposal to mount an exhibition of his work. Before settling on Gaultier, Bondil had considered doing an Alexander McQueen exhibition. “He also had a very strong visual world,” Bondil said. “But Jean Paul Gaultier is like smiling sunshine. McQueen is the dark moon.” Gaultier says that he was reluctant but Bondil convinced him that the exhibition could really reflect his way of looking at the world. “I wanted something very, very alive,” he said. “I didn’t want something dead—a museum can seem dead, the clothes are very old, it’s like a funeral.” He thought that if the exhibition could show his obsessions—“flesh, ethnicity, different kinds of global beauty, cinema, my interest with Madonna, tattoos, the Parisienne, the male as object, all that kind of thing”—he would consent. Thierry Loriot, who is in charge of fashion and design projects at the museum and was the chief curator for the exhibition, interviewed almost everyone who has been instrumental to Gaultier’s career, and began looking through some eight thousand pieces that he had designed over the years. Loriot selected a hundred and forty for the show, along with accessories, photographs, archival materials, and seventy videos. So far, more than a hundred and twenty-five thousand people have seen the exhibition. Gaultier’s favorite thing—besides sugar and couture—is film, and the exhibition ended up echoing his beloved “Falbalas.” He said, “At the end of ‘Falbalas,’ there is a beautiful scene—it’s the presentation of the couturier’s collection.” Then he described how the couturier, who is starting to go mad, stares at a mannequin, which suddenly becomes an apparition of the woman he loves. The way the mannequin came to life gave Gaultier the idea of making mannequins for the show that would also somehow come alive. “Why not?” he said, shrugging. He had seen a theatre performance in Avignon that used video projections and blank mannequin faces to create a similar illusion, so he approached Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin, the directors of the experimental theatre company Ubu, and together they created thirty-two animated mannequins that talk, wink, smile, and sigh. The effect is startlingly realistic, but slightly unnerving. The first mannequin you see in the show is one of Gaultier, chatting and laughing and exclaiming, as he often does.
The show itself is mind-boggling; there is a gown made to look like the skin of a leopard, fashioned entirely from beads; thigh-high tights made of Chinese-print satin; mermaid dresses that drape into swirls of liquidy fabric; long skirts with mariner stripes, made entirely of tiny feathers. While I walked around the exhibition, most of what I heard people saying was: “It’s amazing.” The visitors that day were the kind of mixed bag that would have made Gaultier happy—a lot of fashionable young women, some gay couples, a few families with children, and a number of elderly people, who tilted their bifocals so that they could examine the fabrics more closely. One of the older couples was paused in front of the section that showcased the first of Gaultier’s men’s skirts. I asked them what they thought of the clothes. “It’s a little, you know, ‘out there’ for me,” the woman replied. She and her husband moved on to the next section, most of which consisted of variations on bondage costumes. “Everything these days is mix and match,” the woman went on. “Soon we won’t know who is who.” Gaultier is thrilled with the way the exhibition has turned out. “It’s like a dream come true, in reality, for me,” he said. “It’s alive, it’s a story, it’s a movie. It is like a dream!”

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