Yves Saint Laurent and Art

An unforgettable journey through art history with Yves Saint Laurent as a guide. January 1962 saw the launch of the very first collection by Yves Saint Laurent. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of his couture house, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris is organizing a unique retrospective of the couturier’s work that juxtaposes his creations with art works from the collections of four major Paris institutions: the Musée d’Orsay, the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée Picasso, as well as presenting a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the secrets of couture at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent. From the ancient world to pop art, Yves Saint Laurent regularly took inspiration from art history as he combined colours, carved out new forms and rethought the structure of garments in order to create his own masterpieces. Here, androgynous silhouettes and Proustian gowns stand alongside Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, feather patterns respond to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, flowing silhouettes merge with a mural by Raoul Dufy, Lucio Fontana’s neon lights make metallic fabrics sparkle and the motifs on a coat echo The Dance by Henri Matisse. Exploring the couturier’s deliberate homages to the masters of art and his never-ending quest for new means of aesthetic expression, this book takes readers on an unforgettable journey through art history with Yves Saint Laurent as a guide.

Mouna Mekouar is an art critic and independent curator based in Paris, France. She was associate curator of Simple Shapes at Centre Pompidou-Metz (2014), and was curator at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, from 2012 to 2014. Stefan Janson is a fashion designer and co-curator of Yves Saint Laurent at the Museums. Madison Cox is director of the Saint Laurent Museums in Paris and in Marrakech, and president of the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation.

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