Interview with Curator Thierry-Maxime Lori

by Ingrid Mida

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (Photo courtesy of the MMFA)

Thierry-Maxime Loriot curated the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier which opened recently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.   Loriot joined the Museum in 2008 as a research assistant and in 2009 assisted Guest Curator Emma Lavigne with the exhibition Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko. Prior to joining the museum, Loriot was a fashion model who walked pret-a-porter fashion shows in New York, Milan and Paris and worked with leading photographers like Mario Testino. His extensive knowledge of the international fashion scene led Nathalie Bondil, the MMFA Director and Chief Curator to invite him to curate the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier. Loriot also edited the exhibition catalogue.

Ingrid Mida: Gaultier has been quoted as saying that “Fashion is not art.” How does this reconcile with the fact that his work is being presented as art within the Musee des Beaux Art?  Do you see fashion as art?

Thierry-Maxime Loriot: Fashion can be art if we speak about a corpus like the one of Jean Paul Gaultier. As Andy Warhol said ; "With Yves Saint Laurent, Gaultier is the only one to really make art with clothes, to see clothes as a whole, by the way they assemble them". I think coming from Warhol, it is a very strong statement. When you see the craftsmanship and all the work and how imaginative Gaultier is, I consider him a real artist. He designed more than 150 collections forhimself, 15 for Hermès, countless collaborations with movie directors from Peter Greenaway to Luc Besson, dance choreographers, pop stars and all the videos he collaborated on, no other designer has ever achieved that much, but what is most fascinating is that it is always innovative, always new, never boring, which is exceptional. He iniates the trends rather than following them, which explains why he is still here after 35 years and dressing the new generation of Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Rihanna…He has also influenced some very important contemporary artists like Cindy Sherman, David LaChapelle, Erwin Wurm and Pierre & Gilles to name a few.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (Photo courtesy of the MMFA)

Ingrid:  Gaultier has been acknowledged for celebrating alternative beauty and incorporating models of larger sizes into his runway shows. Although there were models of different ethnicities and genders included in the show, I did not see any plus size mannequins or mannequins that appeared to be older. Was this a conscious decision based on cost?

Thierry: We are very lucky to have the collaboration of Jolicoeur International who created all the mannequins in the exhibition. Gaultier wanted to show different skin tones and recreate them. As for plus size models, Gaultier often offered the clothes to the models after the show because they were made to measure for them like Stella Ellis and Velvet d’Amour. We can see the fashion shows they were in at the exhibition. We have translated this inclusion of everyone, of mixing genders, cultures and sizes through video clips when the clothes were not available. Also, to show underwear on a plus-size mannequin would not have been the best display, because it always looks better on a real human. You can understand Gaultier’s strong social message when you see that he gave power to women by giving them the choice to wear a corset, and by giving the skirt and haute couture to men, all the while mixing cultures and paying tribute to different religions, which shows how generous and open minded his fashion is.

Ingrid: In choosing items to display from 35 years of work, was there something that you wished you could have included but had to leave out?

Thierry: Luckily no! It was a challenge to choose from all the archives and of course, to make a selection and a final choice. The final selection was donewith Gaultier, because it was very important to have feedback from him as the exhibiton is not a retrospective rather more of a contemporary installation. I had the unique chance to work with a living artist who shared with me his intentions behind his work, thus avoiding misinterpretation. He was very generous with spending days and days working with me. Though quite busy with other projects, he always approached the exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with a smile, answering my millions of questions about his work, techniques, andinfluences. As he said, it is the biggest fashion show and collection he ever did! The exhibition had to reflect his personality, and from the comments we have heard since the opening, I think we succeeded !

Ingrid: I understand that you have worked as a model yourself. Do you think that this influences your work as a curator?

Thierry: Probably. Coming from the fashion world was a very positive experience that gave me the opportunity to refect this world from the inside and to meet so many incredible people. I included some prints from great photographers that I have worked with when I was a model and who I admired a lot like Mario Testino, Peter Lindbergh, Ellen Von Unwerth, Nathaniel Goldberg and MaxAbadian, but also other great masters like Richard Avedon, Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Steven Klein, Steven Meisel... Fashion is about image, and some of the most iconic images on view are by Paolo Roversi. Fashion photography translates very well what the clothes are about yet, it is rarely shown to the general public, and I wanted to show also how fashion photographers from different generations, from Helmut Newton to Miles Aldridge, have been influenced by Gaultier’s work.

Ingrid:  What is your favourite garment or aspect of the display?

Thierry: I love all the galleries for different reasons. This exhibition is not a classic fashion exhibition. It had to reflect the sense of humour of Gaultier, but also his creative genius. I love the Boudoir with the corset in the padded satin box, which contains all the different corsets but also the two iconic ones on view worn by Madonna for the Blond Ambition Tour in 1990. One piece also that is spectacular is the leopard « skin » dress from the haute couture collection Russia (FW 97-98), which is a trompe-l’œil, made of glassbeads with the claws made of strass, which took more than 1060 hours to create. Extraordinary pieces like this can create the same emotion as seeing a sculpture or a painting. This exhibition presents a very unique chance to view each piece up close, especially with regard to haute couture dresses that for most have never been exhibited and shown to the public, thus providing premier backstage access to the virtuosity and savoir-faire of Paris haute couture.

Ingrid: After hearing you, Nathalie, and Jean Paul Gaultier speak at the press conference, I had a deeper appreciation for the underlying humanist message that there was no singular standard of beauty. However, I'm not sure that this important message will be evident to visitors because they are entranced by the beauty of the gowns, the animated mannequins and the cacophony of sounds, lights and action. How do you see think this message is conveyed within the exhibition?

Thierry: When you discover Gaultier's universe, you realize how open and generous his fashion is. He invented and surely broke taboos and barriers through gender-bending as reflected in the images of Tanel and the men’s skirt, but also empowered and gave freedom to a liberated contemporary womanin control of her life and her sexuality. This is shown of course through Jean Paul Gaultier's collaborations with Madonna, but is also quite evident when you see Helen Mirren in "The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover" or in his shows that feature women wearing corsets or revealing clothes. Of particular note are the animated mannequins by UBU, because the casting shows real people of different origins, and ages spanning 18 to 65, thus reflecting a very diverse crowd, a mirror of society, the society in which we live. Old, young, along with different beauties from different countries are all part of the fashion world of Jean Paul Gaultier.

Ingrid Mida is an artist, writer and researcher based in Toronto who is inspired by the intersection of fashion and art. She lectures about fashion and art and will be the keynote speaker at the Costume Society of America mid-west conference in the fall.

Interview with Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Nathalie Bondil, JP Gaultier, Thierry Maxime Loriot at the MMFA

by Ingrid Mida

For the past ten years, art historian Nathalie Bondil has been Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where she has curated many art exhibitions featuring the work of Picasso, Van Dongen and other artists. Ms. Bondil launched new programming by inviting fashion into the MMFA, with first ever retrospectives of the work of Yves Saint Laurent and Denis Gagnon. In 2007, Nathalie Bondil was appointed Director of the Museum. In 2008, she received the insignia of the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic and on June 15, 2011, she received the title of Chevaliere of the Ordre National du Quebec.

Nathalie Bondil initiated the exhibition of The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk which recently opened at the MMFA. The following is an excerpt of my interview with Ms. Bondil at the museum on June 13, 2011.

Ingrid: The MMFA seems to be the only museum in Canada to initiate and curate exhibitions of fashion designers. In 2008, you exhibited Yves Saint Laurent’s work and today, you are presenting Jean Paul Gaultier’s work. How is it that your mandate includes fashion?

Nathalie: We can do whatever we want to do and from my point of view that includes presenting the work of artists with a strong message. The fashions that Jean Paul Gaultier creates really says so much about the world, the society in which we live and I think that is very relevant for us. What Gaultier says about beauty and about taste is something that is very healthy, very relevant and very necessary.

Ingrid: I found it so refreshing this morning when Gaultier talked about beauty having no specific shape or look. Is that what attracted you to his work?

Nathalie: Completely. It is his humanist side and in fact, it is much more the sociological aspect of his work that I think is very important. It is so fresh as you say to say that everybody is welcome to wear his clothes: big, fat, old, whatever.

I think that it is our duty at the museum to open other doors.  If you don’t have this critical look, if you don’t give people the tools to understand another way to consider the aesthetic of fashion, I think that you haven’t done your job.

This exhibition is not about branding, it is not about La Maison Jean Paul Gaultier. It is about Jean Paul Gaultier’s humanist vision of the society. And it is about very high values, about universal values beyond fashion.

What is interesting with him is that he is not just a fashion couturier, but he also collaborates with cinema, for theatre, for the avant garde, for the very popular rock stars. He is very curious and his mind is open and he has kept this child eye. He is always sincerely enchanted by people. I can say this is not a posture. It is not an attitude.

He is very humble. He has no flag, but in fact, when you consider his couture from the beginning until now, it is very coherent and consistent, and beyond humour, beyond provocation, there is also a very deep message.

Ingrid: Is that what defines JPG as an artist for you – that his pieces have a message?

Nathalie: Yes, absolutely. He has a very strong imagination that can reach us beyond fashion. You are not obliged to be a fashionista to be attracted to Gaultier because he has so many diverse interests in terms of multi-media and inspirations. He is not a stylist trapped within the discourse of fashion.

One proof is that he first said no to an exhibition. He did not want to make a kind of cemetery exhibition. He wanted to have an adventure, a new creation, to invent a new collaboration. This is what excites him, to make something different. He has so much imagination. He does not want to repeat himself.  He does not have this narcissism towards the past. In fact, now he is still completely projected towards the future. And for him, this event is an installation, more a creation, something new.

Jean Paul Gaultier Couture Collection (Courtesy of the MMFA)

Ingrid: I read that he once said “I don’t make works of art” and that “Fashion is not art”. Nevertheless, you have defined him as a contemporary artist.

Nathalie: He can have his own ideas. I have no problem with that. We worked with him as a contemporary artist. I told you he is always in the process of creation, never any repetition. And in my point of view, it is art.

It is art because haute couture has a sophistication of the milieu. As someone from outside, I was really, really impressed by the fact that all these couturiers have so much pressure. They must create on a very regular basis these new collections in a fierce competition atmosphere. At the same time they must also meet a commercial viability. There are no other artists who can support such pressure. It is so demanding in terms of excellence and so fascinating in terms of realization that I don’t understand why people say it is not art.

Ingrid: Is there a favourite part of the exhibition? Is there something that really resonates with you?

Nathalie: My favourite part of the exhibition is the man himself - Jean Paul Gaultier, the artist.

Ingrid: After I saw the McQueen show, I was wondering how you were going to live up to that standard, because it was quite unusual.

Nathalie: I very much admired what McQueen did. I did not see the exhibition yet and I will go next week. McQueen is very dark and Jean Paul Gaultier is like joy, optimism. They have very different sensibilities of what is a human being. One is like dark and one is like light.

For Gaultier, fashion is for real people. McQueen is not for real people. His work is fabulous - like sculpture, but you cannot live in it. There is a corset is in wood, but you cannot move in wood.  And with that dress painted by spray guns projections, it is like the woman is attacked. Gaultier said he would have done it with real painters - like a dance, like an interaction with human people.

Ingrid: Some people say that McQueen’s work was misogynist, whereas it is the opposite for Jean Paul Gaultier. He seems to love women.

Nathalie: Completely. Yes, he loves not just women, but everyone.

Ingrid Mida is an artist, writer and researcher based in Toronto. She also lectures about the intersection of art and fashion.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk

by Ingrid Mida

When Jean Paul Gaultier was first approached by Nathalie Bondil, the director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, about doing an exhibition of his work, he said no. “For me, it would be a funeral,” said Gaultier. But Ms. Bondil persisted, because she considered Gaultier to be a contemporary artist with a subtle but important message about beauty having no singular shape, age or sexual orientation. “He offers an open-minded vision of society, a crazy, sensitive, funny, sassy world in which everyone can assert his or her own identity, a world without discrimination, a unique 'fusion couture'”. The result of her vision and the collaborative efforts of her creative team is the exhibition “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk”.

“Fashion exhibitions can be really dead,” said Ms. Bondil and “Jean Paul Gaultier said it should be really alive”. To this end, exhibition curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot collaborated with a Quebec theatre producers Denis Marleau and Stephanie Jasmin to create a new type of mannequin with animated faces. Bought to life by video projection onto a three-dimensional sculpted mask, these mannequins stare into space, blink, look away, sing, and speak in both French and English. In scripts that evoke the sentiments of Gaultier, they say things like:  “ I am what I am;” “Je suis que je suis”;  “I am the woman I want to be”.

Animated Mannequin from The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

This innovative presentation of clothing highlights Gaultier’s belief that “there is not only one type of beauty.” The models are based on real people, including one of Gaultier that greets visitors at the top of the stairs. Their subtle but real flaws, such as moles and not so perfect teeth, are replicated exactly and their life-like presence adds a sense of surreal whimsy to the installation.

Instead of a chronological survey of Gaultier’s thirty-five year career, the exhibition is presented thematically. The six parts include The Odyssey (the world of sailors, mermaids and virgins); The Boudoir (the influence of the corset); Skin Deep (Gaultier’s fascination with sex and skin), Eurostar (elegant women surrounded by fashionable punks), Urban Jungle (the blending of ethnic influences and global inspiration), and Metropolis (collaborations with artists of film, theatre, music and dance and futuristic designs).

There are about 120 ensembles for both men and women mainly from the couture collections and also from the pret-a-porter line. There also are photographs, sketches, runway videos and film clips that add up to a bold and vibrant presentation of the designer’s work. This is not an elegant refined presentation like the MMFA’s 2008 Yves Saint Laurent exhibition; rather, it is a colorful, lively and, at times, chaotic trip through thirty-five years of Gaultier’s work. It is fun, fresh and filled with joie de vivre – like Jean Paul Gaultier himself.

Urban Jungle Gallery at The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

Considerable effort has gone into often over-looked details like labeling, which is bilingual and comprehensive. The gallery labels clearly explain the thematic precepts of each section.  As well, some labels for garments include information on how many hours the ensemble took to create. For example, in the first gallery, called Odyssey, there is a chiffon and lame lace gown with matching top with appliques. This particular gown (shown in the photo below), which was from Gaultier’s haute couture spring summer collection of 2007, took 315 hours to create. Such information adds another dimension of appreciation for the artistry and dedication demanded of couture.

Virgins Collection from The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

Although a few items are behind glass (including Madonna’s Blonde Ambition corsets which are on loan), most are not and it is possible to get close enough to see the level of craftsmanship involved. Curator Nathalie Bondlin said “It is not possible to understand the excellence of haute couture unless you can see it up close. As a museum, we should show objects that are not otherwise accessible.”

An enormous 424 page exhibition catalogue was compiled by curator Thierry Maxime Loriot and includes over 500 illustrations and many interviews with Gaultier’s mentors, muses and colleagues. Essays by Suzie Menkes and Valerie Steele as well as a timeline of Gaultier’s career and a complete bibliography are included in this weighty tome.

Cage Collection from The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

As groundbreaking as this installation is, it wasn’t until I heard Jean Paul Gaultier speak about his vision of beauty that I really appreciated what drives this designer.  To Gaultier, beauty has no singular standard and is not defined by size, age, gender or sexual orientation. His passionate commitment to be inclusive, to find the beauty within each person and not be limited by the seemingly skeletal standard of a tall, blonde clothes hanger was refreshing to my ears. “Fashion is for everybody”.

And yet, I am not confident that this important premise will reveal itself to most visitors to the exhibition. The title of the installation “From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk” does not reference beauty or inclusion, nor does it suggest any deeper level of meaning. Because the exhibition itself is so whimsical and fun with its cacophony of sounds and visual delights, I suspect only a few will understand the subtle conceptual premise.  That is a shame because everyone could benefit from hearing Jean Paul Gaultier say: “Be yourself. Have confidence in yourself. Live your dream.”

This exhibition continues at the MMFA in Montreal until October 2, 2011. Thereafter it will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art (November 13, 2011 - February 12, 2012), The  Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, de Young (March 24 - August 19, 2012), Fundacion Mapfre in Madrid (September 26 - November 18, 2012) and Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands (February 9 - May 12, 2013).

Photo credits: Ingrid Mida, copyright 2011

Ingrid Mida is an artist, writer and researcher based in Toronto. She is represented by Loop Gallery in Toronto and also  lectures about the intersection of art and fashion.

Alexander McQueen: Art, Beauty, and the Unique Body

Gallery View. Cabinet of Curiosities, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Speaking Sunday June 19 at 3pm at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is model and athlete Aimee Mullins in conversation with Harold Koda, curator in charge at the Costume Institute. Mullins, who is a double-amputee, has collaborated with a range of artists and designers, including Alexander McQueen as well as Nick Knight and Matthew Barney—who cast her in Cremaster 3 wearing fantastical prosthesis perhaps most notably a pair of non-functional “glass” prosthesis. In 1998, she walked the runway for Givenchy (then designed by McQueen) wearing specially designed hand-carved boots/prosthesis, which are included in the Met exhibition “Savage Beauty.” Much has been written about her collaborations with McQueen, Knight and Barney—and while many, including Mullins herself, interpret as a mean towards greater visibility, others see it as spectacularizing "the disabled body." (These debates are evident in academic writings on the topic, which includes Vivian Sobchack’s and Marquard Smith’s articles in "TheProsthetic Impulse and Caroline Evans’s Fashion at the Edge.)

What has perhaps remained unaddressed and what I think is brought to the fore specifically by her collaboration with McQueen is the way it blurs the lines between medical prosthesis and fashion. This blurring is evident if we think of the history of Western undergarments, such as the corsets (some of which were orthopedic in kind), bustles, or cage crinolines, or more simply extreme high-heels or eyeglasses.

Francesca

Aimee Mullins, McQueen for Givenchy Show, AW 1998

ARRRGH! Monsters in Fashion: An Exhibition at the Benaki Museum in Athens

by Francesca Granata

Currently on view at the Benaki Museum in Athens is the exhibition "ARRRGH! Monsters in Fashion." The exhibition includes the work of contemporary experimental designers and visual artists, including Martin Margiela, Walter Van Beirendonck, Bernhard Willhelm, Henrik Vibskov and Charles Le Mindu. "Monsters in Fashion" is curated by Vassilis Zidianakis, Creative Director of ATOPOS CVC, a non-profit cultural organization for the promotion of visual culture, which is also based in Athens and was founded in 2003 by Stamos Fafalios and Vassilis Zidianakis.

ATOPOS is unique in its function as an independent curatorial platform which promotes scholarship and organizes exhibitions on fashion and greater visual culture. It fills an important gap for independent curatorial voices and non-profit organizations in the field of fashion curation—a vital and established practice in the field of contemporary art, where organizations, such as Independent Curators International began as early as the 1970s. ATOPOS's touring exhibition "RRRIPP!!! Paper Fashion (currently on view in Melbourne) and the accompanying catalogue greatly advanced the scholarship on the use of paper in the history of fashion, as well as bringing forth novel exhibition practices.

The current exhibition "Monsters in Fashion" promises to do the same, as it was developed with the accompanying book "NOT A TOY: Fashioning Radical Characters," (Pictoplasma Publishing, Berlin, 2011) edited by Vassilis Zidianakis and featuring essays by Valerie Steele (Director and Chief Curator of the Museum at FIT) Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox (founders of the international curatorial partnership C2), Jose Teunissen (professor at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, Arnhem), the anthropologist Ted Polhemus, as well as myself. Hopefully, the exhibition will travel as extensively as the previous one did, and both eventually will be shown on this side of the Atlantic.

I am really thrilled, as I was invited to Athens to speak at the Benaki Museum on the topic of the grotesque in contemporary fashion in conjunction with the exhibition, so a more complete report on the exhibition is forthcoming!

For now I will leave you with some images of the exhibition and the curator's evocative words:

"Characters are abstract and reduced figures with a strong anthropomorphic appeal and bold graphical silhouette. Over the last decade, they have humorously sampled and remixed their way through visual codes and media, confronting the viewer head-on, regardless of cultural background. This aesthetic approach has a strong influence on contemporary fashion and costume design. International artists create playful dresses, avant-garde costumes and hairstyles, re-inventing the human body and sending their monstrous, enigmatic, radical and grotesque new Characters onto the catwalk and beyond. They redefine the relation between body and costume by mixing visual communication codes and questioning the established aesthetic norms."