Gagosian Continues Its Avedon Centennial Celebration With an Exhibition in Paris

Last night, the final haute couture show of the day presented only a single look: a floor-length black velvet sheath topped with a wide belted sash of ivory satin. It was the very first dress that a 19-year-old Yves Saint Laurent made for the house of Dior in 1955 and which Dovima famously wore while posing with her elephants for Richard Avedon in a Paris studio not far away. And at the opening of “Iconic Avedon: A Centennial Celebration of Richard Avedon,” Gagosian Gallery’s centennial celebration of the singularly influential photographer, following up the smash success of last year’s “Avedon 100” in New York, the dress was an unexpected centerpiece.

The exhibition, curated by Derek Blasberg in collaboration with Josh Chuang and Laura Avedon, is laid across two floors at Gagosian’s 8th Arrondissement gallery. A deeply saturated Marilyn Monroe collage, in which the star gives a full-tilt performance, dominates the ground floor, accompanied by the nearby “Sad Marilyn,” a simple portrait from the same sitting, capturing the star in a moment of humanity. (Worth noting that the collage is 1/1, making it the rarest work in the show, and, as a fellow editor pointed out, foreshadowed Avedon’s Versace advertising campaign.) Directly across the room is Dovima herself, in the YSL for Dior creation. “Dovima and Marilyn are staring each other down,” said Blasberg, as if they were both in the room last night.

“Iconic” is perhaps the most overused adjective in the fashion industry—it’s neck-and-neck with “chic,” which has been all-but-obliterated—but here it is warranted. The show presents three different types of Avedonian icons: the kind he captured (like Monroe), the kind he created (like Dovima), and the icon he made of himself. Considering that Dovima’s exotic moniker was a portmanteau of her more pedestrian given names—Dorothy Virginia Margaret—the model and Norma Jeane Mortenson seem to have similar stories in different worlds.

Upstairs, a melange of less glamorous, equally iconic works are presented. The grizzly aftermath of Valerie Solanas’ assassination attempt on Andy Warhol. The beekeeper from Avedon’s haunting series In the American West. The collective portrait project The Family, which presents U.S. power brokers in the most turbulent stretch of the mid-1970s.

Punctuating the parade of famous famous are unshowy reminders that Avedon pushed the envelope, not only in the medium of photography, but also in the fight for progress. Underscoring his work with China Machado is the story that Harper’s Bazaar initially refused to run pictures of her, so shocking would it be for readers to see a non-white model in their pages—until Avedon refused to renew his contract. (Bazaar promptly published Machado’s pictures in their February 1959 issue.) Elsewhere is Donyale Luna, the first Black model of color to appear on the cover of Vogue. The portrait of William Casby, who was born a slave and was 106 years old when Avedon memorialized him in 1963, is unforgettable.

And to think, Avedon was almost never a photographer. As a teenager, he co-founded a literary magazine called The Magpie with classmate James Baldwin and dreamed of being a poet (he was named the Poet Laureate of New York City High Schools in 1941). It wasn’t until WWII that Avedon discovered the vocation he’d go on to help elevate to the status of art. In the military, as Photographer’s Mate Second Class, he took standard-issue photographs for the ID cards of reportedly more than 100,000 servicemen—easily surpassing Malcolm Gladwell’s ten-thousand-hour rule—developing his signature style in the process. “Black-and-white headshots in front of stark, bare backgrounds,” according to Blasberg. “Sound familiar?”

Following the opening was a private dinner at Le Boeuf sur le Toit, the favorite haunt of Christian Dior, Pablo Picasso, and Gabrielle Chanel—three icons who all just so happened to be photographed by Mr. Avedon.