Serious collectors would have already descended on the Grand Palais to make their eye-wateringly expensive purchases. Everyone else would be attending to see, be seen, and post their own ‘curated’ selection. There would be giant installations erected throughout the city, temporarily attracting more attention than historic monuments. At night, were there not a 9 pm curfew, the art scene would be toggling between private dinners and parties, many sponsored by luxury brands.
Think what you will of such showing off (several years ago, I jokingly dubbed the fair a “fiacalypse”), the cancelation of this edition marks another blow to the city’s cultural and economic rhythms. But in typical Parisian resiliency, many of the city’s gallerists and institutions have carried on with their Fiac-related programming. The curfew did not prevent an abbreviated art crawl on Thursday evening, for instance. Several galleries have gone as far as recreating their stands within their own spaces. Independent satellite fairs such as Asia Now, the Outsider Art Fair, Paris Internationale, and Salon de Normandy are welcoming visitors. And this weekend, the Grand Palais will be put to use, after all; Perrotin has hidden 20 works by its artists—including Takashi Murakami, Daniel Arsham, and JR—throughout the space like a treasure hunt, with thousands of people booking time slots once word got out.
As for new museum exhibitions, it just so happens that several are themed to satisfy a two-for-one fix for fashion and art. Some, such as Man Ray and Fashion were initially programmed for earlier this year only to be postponed until la rentrée (September). Others, such as Gabrielle Chanel, Fashion Manifesto, and the reopening of the Palais Galliera, had always been scheduled to overlap with PFW—except, of course, organizers had probably hoped for a more international turnout.
At a moment when everything fashion-related feels loaded with existential questions, these seven exhibitions stand like beacons of inspiration, creation, and context. To some extent, they offer a brief escape from reality. Yet speaking personally, walking through them over the past few weeks has also been reassuring. For all their variety, each show demonstrates an appreciation for fashion that feels true and long-lasting.
“Sarah Moon, Past Present”
Shortly before the show bowed, Augustin Trapenard, the radio host known for his eloquent questioning, asked Sarah Moon what makes an image perfect, to which she replied, “It’s not about the technique—whether the image is blurry or clear; it’s about whether it expresses something.” Paradoxically, this non-chronological retrospective of the 79-year-old photographer throws her characteristically blurry style into sharp relief. Curated by Fanny Schulmann, it comprises hundreds of nuanced stolen moments, black-and-white melancholic landscapes, and distinctive soft-focus fashion images.
Fashion highlight: While Moon is largely associated with her work for Cacharel, her eye for Yohji Yamamoto’s poetic silhouettes and the sober elegance of Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel designs through the ’90s are what stand out here.
September 18th through January 19th, 2021 at the Musée de l’Art Moderne de Paris.
Cindy Sherman Retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton
Not to trivialize her extraordinary body of work, but it’s impossible to walk through this show (overseen by Suzanne Pagé and co-curators Marie-Laure Bernadac and Olivier Michelon) without wondering how and where Cindy Sherman has kept her wardrobe over the 45 years that she has been taking self-portraits. Spaced perfectly through the vast galleries of the FLV, her photos reveal her endless character range, talent for expression, and stylistic flourish, while perhaps never revealing the real Cindy Sherman. Glamorous suburban housewife, high Renaissance maiden, nightmarish clown, 1930s screen star—she embodies them all and more.
Fashion highlight: If every image speaks to her understanding of fashion as a powerful extension of the self, the show singles out many of her fashion series, starting with a portfolio for Interview magazine in 1983 with designs from Jean Paul Gaultier and Comme des Garçons, to her latest androgynous male portraits dressed in Stella McCartney men’s looks. Just past the halfway mark is a stunning series originally destined for Pop magazine in which she is surrounded by the sweeping seascapes of Iceland and Capri wearing Chanel tweeds. A slightly disturbing image from 1995 of two masked figures is on loan from Raf Simons.
September 23rd through January 1st, 2021 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
“Man Ray and Fashion”
First presented in Marseille last year, this exhibition curated by Xavier Rey introduces a few of Man Ray’s surrealist works (his iron embellished spikes; the mobile constructed from clothes) before presenting his work for fashion glossies on both sides of the Atlantic, advertisements (the famous glassy tears image), and his urbane society portraits. As a mostly-chronological presentation of original photographs, modern reproductions, archive fashions, and magazines, it recounts how the artist’s meeting with Paul Poiret was the first of many designer collaborations, namely Gabrielle Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet, and Elsa Schiaparelli.
Fashion highlight: Some of the dresses that he photographed are showcased alongside their two-dimensional likenesses (two Chanel evening silhouettes in gold and champagne, a statuesque black number from Vionnet).
September 23rd through January 17th, 2021 at the Musée du Luxembourg.
“Gabrielle Chanel, Fashion Manifesto” at the Palais Galliera
As Palais Galliera director Miren Arzallaz told Tina Isaac, my fellow Parisian contributor, last month, “No one has ever seen so much Chanel in one place.” As she reported, this is a resolutely ambitious exhibition that underscores how Gabrielle Chanel innovated over and over again, from sporty daywear to timeless evening creations, with detours through fragrance, accessories, and costume jewelry. As for the ‘manifesto’ aspect, Chanel told Elle magazine in 1957, having relaunched her couture house a few years earlier: “We always begin by making dresses of dreams. Then we have to cut, trim, remove, never add.”
Fashion highlight: For all the purity of design that comes through in such an expansive range of silhouettes, there is something indescribably profound in the framed ink print of her hand at the start of the exhibition. Also worth noting: the new lower-level galleries considerably expand the exhibition space for fashion exhibitions.
October 1st through March 14th, 2020, at the Palais Galliera.
“From One M/Museum to Another, M/M (Paris)”
Select works from graphic design practice and artistic studio M/M (Paris) are currently on view at the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. While these ‘interventions’ barely scratch the surface of Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak’s prolific partnership creating typography, logos, and visual identity for luxury brands, they act as striking displays that coincide with the release of their new tome M to M of M/M (Paris) Volume II.
Fashion highlight: At the Musée d’Orsay, The New Alphabet, their elaborate letters integrating portraits of contemporary stars (Katy Perry, Naomi Campbell, and Xavier Dolan plus, evidently, 23 others) are on view for the first time as poster-sized prints, suspended within a sleek frame system surrounded by Art Nouveau objects and furniture. “Their work is both minimalist and maximalist,” explained co-curator, Donatien Grau. “In a way, the key to understanding what they do is that they are both those things, and the 19th century is both those things.”
October 13th through January 10th, 2021 at the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
“Luxes”
Fashion highlight: A three-way toss-up between the beautifully restrained room titled, “The strange luxury of nothing” (attributed to writer Francois Mauriac) composed of furniture by Jean-Michel Franck and radically modern dresses (for the 1930s) by Chanel and Vionnet; a swatch of Calais linen lace dating back to roughly 1690, and a small recreation of a Tiffany’s window display of a dock adorned with jewels conceived by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg from 1957. “The word is everywhere but luxury is not just a handbag; it is a fundamental question regarding civilization and it’s important to show this through different time periods,” said Gabet. On that note, the Céline tote sculpted in bronze and platinum by Sylvie Fleury is pretty awesome.
October 15th through May 2nd, 2021 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
Matisse, Like a Novel
If this week’s debut of a major Matisse exhibition at the Centre Pompidou would have coincided with the opening of Fiac, it will most certainly draw throngs of admirers for months to come. The retrospective is somewhat erudite in concept: nine chapters or sequences that take cue from a writer’s interpretation of his work (Louis Aragon and Clement Greenberg among others). But it’s entirely possible to visit the show under a completely different guise: the way Matisse collected, studied, and rendered textiles, clothing, and decorative motifs. “He was very knowledgeable about fashion and textiles and he dressed with extreme care,” confirmed curator Aurélie Verdier.
Fashion highlight: They are everywhere, really—from the artist’s pencil sketches of jabots and pleats to La Blouse Roumaine, a woman wearing an embroidered shirt that is said to have inspired Yves Saint Laurent in 1981. One of the show’s main attractions, the loan of Intérieur aux aubergines, features no fashion, yet the arrangement of patterns and colors conjures the inspired textile mixing you would expect from Dries Van Noten only with eggplants. “You could do an exhibition that would be very serious but also very joyful on the question of Matisse and fashion; you have given me an idea,” Verdier mused in our brief exchange. Should it happen, the inspiration started here!
October 21st through to Feb 22nd, 2021, at the Centre Pompidou.
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