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Too many exhibitions, too little time. With just two days left of shows, most of the fashion circus will be packing up and heading out by mid-week. Yet the city’s museums and galleries abound with excellent art. The once-in-a-lifetime Rothko retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton is nearing the end of its blockbuster run (to be followed in May by Ellsworth Kelly and Matisse) while Madame Grès, Richard Avedon and Iris Van Herpen continue to captivate visitors at the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, Gagosian Paris and the Musee des Arts Décoratifs respectively.
But for those who have limited opportunities to squeeze in art (or for locals and people with visits on the horizon), these three exhibitions stand out as worthy detours: Sheer: The Diaphanous Creations of Yves Saint Laurent at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent, and a double-bill at the MEP (Maison Européene de la Photographie), Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Fashion Icon, and Exteriors—Annie Ernaux and Photography. Each provides a unique bridge between past and present, whether through heritage fashion, archival images or observations of society in the realest terms.
Here, the highlights.
The sheer statement couldn’t have been clearer in Anthony Vaccarello’s vision for Saint Laurent last week, and an exhibition at the Musée Saint Laurent Paris takes us back to where this radical fabric fascination began. Overseen by the museum’s director, Elsa Janssen, with curation by Anne Dressen as artistic advisor, the five sections establish how the couturier used transparency to suggest nudity while exploring light, movement and shape.
Defining designs include the sheer evening dress with strategically placed sequin zigzags and a sheer bow blouse worn with a tuxedo-style jacket and Bermuda shorts (both from the spring 1968 haute couture collection) along with later creations where cut-outs of openwork tulle and lace reveal parts of the body. Where one theme highlights the fluidity of sheer, another illustrates how it can be worked for structure. Throughout, the rooms are enchantingly staged and juxtaposed with artistic references; one features dresses spanning soft and vivid hues that are weightlessly suspended, while the famous video of dancer Loïe Fuller by the Lumière brothers captures the unbridled possibilities of billowing fabric. Photographs by Man Ray and artwork by Francis Picabia enrich this timely—or timeless—premise that reveals how Saint Laurent found endless ways to rethink elegant and erotic, daring women to experience this as a kind of empowerment.
Mainly recognized for a flawless face and figure that graced the covers of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Time, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn boasted a lifelong range of talents, from her early career years as a dancer and photographer to eventually sculpting and launching a fashion label. Tom Penn, son of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn and Irving Penn, has entrusted the museum with a substantial selection of his family’s vintage photos spanning two decades.
Several taken by her first husband, Fernand Fonssagrives, show her both in studio and also active exuding an athletic elan. “She was a photographer as well and was very involved in the shoots with Fernand,” said co-curator Frédérique Dolivet. “She considered photography like static dance and [when modeling] interacted with her photographers.”
Further on are exquisite images by Horst. P. Horst and Louise Dahl-Wolfe, plus the outstanding series by Erwin Blumenfeld within the Eiffel Tower, and a whimsical Schiaparelli collage. Then there are the photos by Irving Penn that conjure a palpable closeness, which perhaps explains why her son opted to keep these in his collection
In 2022, Lou Stoppard, a London-based fashion journalist, author and curator, began a residency at the MEP in which she created encounters between the institution’s collection of photography and fragmented diary entries from Exteriors by the revered French writer Annie Ernaux. As chance would have it, Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature once the project was already underway. This cogent link between photography and writing presents pages from the book (published in 1993 as Journal du Dehors) alongside myriad works that are not limited by time or place, with Gary Winogrand, Daido Moriyama, Bernard Pierre Wolff, Marie-Paule Nègre and William Klein among the mix. Where Ernaux frequently writes about her commute between Paris and the suburb of Cergy, Stoppard has grouped together images that depict people taking the subway (the elongated print by Hiro of Shinjuku Station, Tokyo, 1962) or descending into a station (Dolorès Marat’s La Femme aux Gants, 1967). But her juxtapositions also play out like a prism refracting myriad social scenes that Ernaux was able to describe with nuanced observation.
“Annie has a really complex and interesting and fruitful relationship with photography,” says Stoppard, who regularly communicated with the 83-year-old writer and had her blessing at each stage. “She writes this book as if making photographs; and in other books, photos are like prompts. She also writes about her own memories as though they were photographs. I think it’s an under-analyzed part of her.” Did Ernaux have a favorite? Stoppard singled out a photo by Janine Niépce of a mother and infant from what seems to be a housing development outside of Paris. As the child looks to her mother, the mother looks out to the bleak landscape of similar buildings. “I think to her [it suggested] personal emancipation, from being a mother to someone who can be present and open observing the world,” says Stoppard. Visitors need not have read Exteriors to perceive how memory, identity and urban life remain eternally resonant—but those who haven’t will likely be compelled to do so upon emerging from this moving show that is not to be missed.
The MEP exhibitions both run through May 26, 2024; the Musée Saint Laurent exhibition until August 25, 2024.