PARIS.- To celebrates the 60th anniversary of the first Yves Saint Laurent runway show; Yves Saint Laurent aux musées will convene six Parisian museums: the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée national Picasso-Paris and the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, and delve into the profound inspirational bond the couturier had with art in general.

Conceived and made possible by the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, the exhibition will foster a dialogue between a selection of garments, including some of the couturier’s most iconic designs, and the permanent collections of the Parisian museums.

Important archive materials from the fashion house, carefully preserved over the years by Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, will be presented at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Largely unknown, these archive materials will illustrate the daily work developed within the couture house, provide insight into Saint Laurent’s creative process and pay tribute to his numerous invaluable collaborators.

AT THE CENTRE POMPIDOU

At the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition will approach the work of Yves Saint Laurent as that of an artist deeply rooted in his time: a witness to the evolution of artistic creation in the 20th century. For Yves Saint Laurent, modern art, the decategorisation and fluidity of form appeared as an essential source of inspiration for reinventing fashion, its lines and its colours. The exhibition’s dialogues and juxtapositions are thus conceived in the light of Yves Saint Laurent’s words: “Mondrian, of course, who was the first that I dared approach in 1965, and whose rigor could not fail to charm me, but also Matisse, Braque, Picasso, Bonnard and Léger. How could I have resisted Pop Art, which was the expression of my youth?”

AT THE MUSÉE D'ART MODERNE DE PARIS

Yves Saint Laurent was well aware of the interplay between the arts. He never stopped juggling between different rhythms and colours, lighting and materials, just like the dialogues on view at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, which alternate between landmark galleries and more intimate displays. The route traced through the permanent collections reveals – while paying due homage to Matisse, Bonnard and other major artists – how Yves Saint Laurent had the genius to move from two to three dimensions, from a surface aesthetic to the aesthetic of the body in motion. He does not copy. He does not transpose a painting onto a dress. But it somehow finds its way into the garment, and nevertheless integrated: it provides structure. It is not illustration, but construction.

AT THE MUSÉE DU LOUVRE

In the Galerie d’Apollon, one of the most prestigious rooms in the palace designed by Charles Le Brun for Louis XIV, a selection of exceptional clothes is displayed, highlighting the richness of Yves Saint Laurent’s sources of inspiration and showcasing the skill of French artisans. Yves Saint Laurent was besotted with embroidery and dared to translate the grand stucco decorations onto jackets, transforming each one of them into objets d’art. Hommage à ma Maison (tribute to my house) a jacket cut like a piece of jewellery, is entirely covered in rock crystals. He also manages to invest these designs with cultural, symbolic and historical values by borrowing widely to evoke the beliefs and shapes of the past.

AT THE MUSÉE D'ORSAY

Yves Saint Laurent loved literature and was captivated by Proust at a very young age. He read and reread La Recherche without managing to finish it. He was preoccupied by the author, by his work, and by his writing. “Like Proust I am fascinated most of all by my own perceptions of a world in transition,” he said. This passion is showcased at the Musée d’Orsay in the reminiscence of the Bal Proust (Proust Ball) hosted by the Baron and Baroness Guy de Rothschild in 1971 at the Château de Ferrières.

This Proustian universe, so significant in his work – but also in his life – also announces changes in clothing, seen through the prism of gender. This fascination found recognition in the back-and-forth dialectic between male and female, and day and evening, which was translated into the statement of dinner jackets and trouser suits for women. “For me, nothing is more beautiful than a woman in men’s clothes! Because all her femininity comes into play.”

AT THE MUSÉE NATIONAL PICASSO-PARIS

Yves Saint Laurent was fascinated by Picasso’s work and paid tribute to him at various moments of his career. “I saw the exhibition of maquettes of Diaghilev ballets at the National (…) From that moment on, my collection was constructed like a ballet. I embroidered on to Picasso (…) on to the Blue Period harlequins, the Rose Period, the Three-cornered hat period…” The so-called Tribute to Picasso and Diaghilev collection was designed by Yves Saint Laurent in 1979, three months before the extraordinary exhibition which celebrated Picasso’s donation and which was the source of the eponymous museum.