A Dynamic Throwback to ’80s Fashion at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs

October in Paris marks a shift in focus from fashion to art. This is when the city’s major institutions unveil their heavyweight exhibitions, while independent galleries often present their rising stars. Usually, October is also when dealers, collectors and adjacent art people arrive for Fiac, among the world’s leading contemporary art fairs, which has been replaced this year by Paris+ par Art Basel—a coup that, specifics aside, seems not unlike a shakeup of fashion designers and houses.

For all the fair-hopping, installations, and parties that will ensure the next few days are as over-scheduled as any fashion week, there are several new museum exhibitions exploring style, society, and visual culture. There’s a dynamic throwback to ’80s fashion, design, and graphic art at Musée des Arts Décoratifs. There’s escapism and luster at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent, which is presenting the designer’s obsession with gold. There’s timeless beauty mixed with existentialism at the Louvre, which has mounted a vast survey of the still life genre and how objects communicate. There are Alice Neel’s portraits of everyday people—and the social commentary they embody—at the Centre Pompidou. And at the Musée de l’Orangerie, there’s Mickalene Thomas’s scintillating impressions from Giverny that complement the juxtaposition of Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell over at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

At least two of these shows were originally slated for 2020, but extended Covid closures and the uncertainty of re-openings complicated the coordinating of calendar slots and loans. Now, just as this season’s Paris Fashion Week felt like a true return to the energy of the Before Times, the scale of the exhibitions—and crowds attending them—is palpable.

“Paris is having such a great moment. It feels very refreshing to just be in the context of others through art again,” observed Thomas during a spontaneous chat in the street after I recognized her at the pharmacy and introduced myself. We spoke about her latest series (more below) and how there are endless things to take in this week.

In many ways, museum shows are the anti-art fair experience: they run for longer; nothing can be purchased; and when done well, they put forth a perspective that gives the works included greater depth. With this non-exhaustive selection, familiar ideas and themes emerge anew, either owing to greater distance and reflection, or because the evolution of how we live prompts a revised, more relevant reading. They are worthy detours from the art fair circuit—and for anyone else visiting Paris through the coming months.

“Années 80, Mode, design et graphisme en France”

Within the museum’s soaring nave and surrounding galleries, layers of clashing color, radical shapes, and cultural exuberance are grounded by the national and historic events that made the ’80s such a defining creative decade in France: the presidency of François Mitterrand, the AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the bicentenary of the French Revolution. Spanning fashion, design, and graphic arts, the exhibition reveals how inspiration was flowing in all directions, which the curators convey as carambolages or a pile-up of objects. Independence contributed to the diversity of stylistic expression, whether from the flamboyant couturiers Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix, the avant-garde masterminds Azzedine Alaïa and Rei Kawakubo, or everyday designers such as Agnès B. “This independence allowed them to create with complete freedom,” said fashion curator Mathilde Le Corre. At the same time, mainstream brands such as Kookai and Naf Naf became the antecedents to fast fashion, while Fiorucci set the stage for collaboration. In the realm of design, the arrival of Philippe Starck and the birth of Memphis were two sides of the same eccentric coin. Campaigns by Jean-Paul Goude and graphic posters for Act Up-Paris, an organization that raised awareness and support for AIDS, were gutsy, impactful, and brought a stigmatized subject to the forefront. There is a poignant layer, too: While many of us have salient memories from the pre-Internet ’80s, some of the iconic talents on display—Thierry Mugler, William Klein, and Issey Miyake, among them—are no longer alive. All the more reason to celebrate this collective legacy.

“GOLD Les Ors d’Yves Saint Laurent”

Curated by Elsa Jannsen, this exhibition starts small with Yves Saint Laurent’s proclivity for gold buttons. Nearby, a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ by Valérie Weill boasts an array of his gold objets d’art, such as a partial bust by Claude Lalanne, who created wearable pieces for Saint Laurent’s fall-winter 1969 collection. And then come the tableaux vivantes, staged with his dazzling creations across three decades. The embroideries glint, the lamé shimmers. In other contexts, the effect would be OTT; but Saint Laurent gave equal weight to attitude as surface treatment. On the upper level in a darkened space, a grouping of nightlife attire—including a single sober Le Smoking for contrast—appears across from a wall collaged with photos of the YSL muses who shone in these golden looks. Just as illuminating: the display of fabric swatches from his artisan suppliers who seemed to embrace the challenge of contemporary opulence. While some might linger over two floor-to-ceiling displays of jewelry—one chronological, one chromatic—arranged by Anna Klossowski, the indisputable pièce de résistance is a gleaming gown from the fall-winter 1966 collection covered in sequins with a neckline of colored stones that gives the impression of liquid gold. Before visitors exit, they pass Saint Laurent’s words: “One day, my name will be inscribed in gold letters of the Champs-Élysées.”

“Alice Neel: An Engaged Eye”

After Saint Laurent’s rarefied life in Paris, Alice Neel’s portraits offer multi-dimensional realness. In truth, the statement that opens the show—“In politics and in life, I have always liked the losers, the underdogs. It was the smell of success I didn’t like”—puts an extreme spin on her general attraction to ordinary people. Curated by Angela Lampe, this enthralling retrospective features families, same-sex couples, activists, and marginalized figures whom she renders sensitively with no trace of exploitation. By the same token, it is loosely divided into two themes: the struggle against class and the struggle against genre. If all had gone according to plan, this exhibition would have debuted in June, 2020, ahead of the retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. But you could look at Neel’s work repeatedly and always observe something different: how she outlines her figures; how she creates different skin tones with tints of blue or purple; how she captures light reflecting off black patent leather shoes. Her faces are pure character: vulnerability, weariness, occasionally a certain pride. Her sitters’ body language speaks volumes. Their clothes crease in such a way to suggest they are relaxed. This is not an exhibition about style—Neel would likely shudder at the thought—yet every person has made a choice to wear something that betrays an intrinsic aspect of their individuality.

“Les Choses. A History of Still Life”

From an ancient Egyptian funerary stele that suggests a composition of foodstuffs and objects to Nan Goldin’s vases of springtime flowers photographed during the first months of Covid quarantine, this is an epic exhibition worthy of the Louvre’s imprimatur. Curator Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, working with Thibault Boulvain et Dimitri Salmon, have essentially assembled a definitive journey into the genre. There are 15 themes including the objects we leave behind, the tradition of floral and fruit compositions, the fascination with meat carcasses, the vanitas (a symbol of death that has progressed from 1st century mosaics to tattoos), and human replicas. It is rare that the world’s most-visited museum mounts a show featuring such a large proportion of modern and contemporary works. But here a masterpiece by Jan Davidsz de Heem is paired with Henri Matisse’s appropriation, or a haunting painting of a skull by Gerhardt Richter is followed by a far more gruesome version by Jake and Dinos Chapman. Also noteworthy is the higher representation of women artists than what is found in the Louvre’s collections. Historically, women gravitated towards the still life—such safe and domestic-leaning subject matter. Yet from Louise Moillon’s realistic array of summer fruit from 1633 to Sam Taylor-Wood’s video of a decomposing fruit plate, or Meret Oppenheim’s readymade squirrel tail, we see how women have developed a non-conformist approach to the genre.

“Mickalene Thomas With Monet”

Anyone who has visited Claude Monet’s Grandes Décorations, the monumental water lily paintings that curve along the museum’s walls as though anticipating virtual reality, knows there is an anteroom to buffer the bustle of visitors in the main space. This is where we find the first of five works from Mickalene Thomas, who spent 2011 in residence at Giverny. Here, she applies her signature flourish—photos and matte paper collaged into fragmented compositions embellished with paint and traced with Swarovski crystals—to interior scenes of his home, exterior scenes of his garden, and, most strikingly, a reimagining of Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe in which three Black women are dressed and gaze directly at the viewer (Thomas made a first version of this historic painting in 2010). Their beauty is luscious and cool, reclaimed from the male gaze yet no less seductive. On the lower level, is a large-format view of the house from the outside and a video installation where artificial flowers surround stacked screens that show Thomas as an Odalisque-type model set to an interview of Eartha Kitt with chirping birds recorded from the garden. Given our unplanned conversation, I asked her about the decision that these women would be clothed whereas she appears nude.

“One of the reasons I wanted to have them clothed in the Manet is because it is more about them occupying the space and not about them being nude. It’s also about them being very present. It’s very seldom that you see Black women in the context of relaxation or lounging. Where you see me as muse, in the nude in the form of an Odalisque, even this is equated to a form of leisure. To recline is to relax, to recline is to lounge, which is not necessarily associated to the Black body, since Black bodies are usually looked at through trauma, through abuse or discrimination. Me, I’m coming from a place of celebration and joy. So I wanted to bring that to the forefront. We, too, can occupy these [spaces] and emote these feelings.Read more at:formal dresses melbourne | formal dresses online