Yves Saint Laurent - Designer to Collector; Or, ‘The Funeral of My Collection’
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2016 Collectors & Collections: classical to contemporary Yves Saint Laurent - designer to collector; Or, ‘the funeral of my collection’ Professor Peter McNeil, Imagining Fashion Futures Lab at UTS Please follow us on instagram: imaginingfashionfutures 2-3 November 2016 Lecture summary: Taste isn’t what you buy, it’s what you eliminate. Pierre Bergé Yves Saint Laurent (Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, 1936-2008) was a celebrated twentieth-century fashion designer - perhaps less well known as a collector by the general public - until the great auction of his personal effects and collections by Christie’s Paris in February 2009. The result was a staggering 340 million Euro (486 million AUD). Saint Laurent was born in Algeria to a comfortable family and moved to Paris aged 17 (1953). In 1954 he was one of three young men (along with Karl Lagerfeld) to win prizes in the International Wool Secretariat prize, with its strong Australian connections. He was talent spotted by Christian Dior and worked with him as head designer before Dior died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1957. Saint Laurent was permitted to take over the house. In 1958 he created the trapeze line and began to design for celebrities such as Farah Diba. In 1960 he was ‘drafted’ into the military - after lobbying not to have him conscripted that went on for some years - a devastating event for this young homosexual man who had led a sheltered home life. He was admitted to a military hospital and at the same time also fired by Dior, as his line had been struggling. The young man was subjected to the drug and other regimes of the time, leaving permanent damage. He sued Dior for breach of contract but left nonetheless, and started a business with Pierre Bergé, that they named ‘Yves Saint Laurent’. Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé were an inseparable business and creative couple, Bergé having been the promoter of artist Bernard Buffet before meeting Yves Saint Laurent. They were also in a domestic relationship until at least 1976 or later. The 1960s and 1970s marked the period of the YSL revolution, the man who introduced ‘le smoking’ (1965), safari jackets for women, the 1965 Mondrian line, ready to wear (‘Rive Gauche’ 1966) and retrospective fashions reworking the silhouettes of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. YSL represented a fusion of modern luxury, glamour and new female sexual power, changing the way society thought about women and their clothes. The most fascinating women of the day including Catherine Deneuve, Bianca Jagger and Loulou de la Falaise wore his clothes. Proudly sponsored by In the 1980s Saint Laurent was known for his luxurious retake on inter-war fashion which frequently fused fashion with references from high art. It was is this period that he became extremely wealthy due to financial transactions regarding the company; he and Bergé became known as the ‘two anarchist millionaires’. He was also criticised by many as out of touch and lacking in contemporary relevance. His evident drug and alcohol addiction created the aura of a damaged but brilliant individual in a Proustian manner, and the domestic environment became more important to him than going to Studio 54 or glamorous parties. Yves Saint Laurent began to assemble and create a series of extraordinary interiors filled with what some might call eclectic collections of fine and decorative arts. ‘Eclectic’ is too simple a term for the brilliant effect he and Bergé achieved with their interior designers and art dealers. I would go so far as to say they were almost painterly with objects and interiors and they also did a great deal to recreate interest in periods that people had virtually forgotten. In June 2008 Saint Laurent died of cancer after had been married to Berge a few days before. Bergé stated: But I also know that I will never forget what I owe you and that one day I will join you under the Moroccan palms. The following year Bergé appeared in an astonishingly beautiful documentary about their relationship called L’amour fou [literally the mad or crazed love]. The auction of the YSL estate took place in 2009 over two periods of time. It was a global sensation, with record priced paid for 20th century furniture (Eileen Gray chair, ‘fauteuil aux dragons’, 1917-19, 28 million USD), a painting by Matisse (32 million euro) and great controversy around sculptures that had been looted from the Summer Palace, China. In this lecture we will look at this collaborative relationship and its relationship to taste past and present. Much of the taste was retrospective but it certainly was not conventional at the time. It was also related to great French taste-makers between the wars, including many women and also other designer. But the couple of course used contemporary designers as well, from Jacques Grange to the garden designer Madison Cox. A few of the names that are relevant: Patron Marie Laure de Noailles Interior designer Madeleine Castaing, Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe) and Jean-Michel Frank Illustrator-decorator Christan ‘Bébé’ Berard Fashion designers Elsa Schiaparelli, Coco Chanel and the cosmetics queen Helena Rubinstein, who was a major collector in her own right. Collectors of tribal art such as André Breton Designer Andrée Putman (1925-2013) – her work for L’Oeil magazine etc Looking at the collections of paintings, sculpture, furniture, silver, porcelain and collections of houses themselves helps us see how YSL’s fashion, although always very modern, paid attention to predecessors. He was a major collector of the best French art deco, collecting around the same time as Andy Warhol, when the works were unfashionable and considered even kitsch by some. He also collected Second Empire furnishings and art works (appropriate to evoke the era of Proust that he greatly loved), Pre-Raphaelite paintings and tapestries, the historicising furniture of the 1860s and 1870s, Chinese and other porcelains, and major paintings by artists from Goya to Gris. For access to all past lecture notes visit: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/members/current-members/member-events/collectors/ Slide list: YSL = Yves Saint Laurent Pierre Boulat, photographs for LIFE of YSL studio being assembled and commencement, a two room apartment, rue la Boétie, then rue Spontini, Winter 1961 [published April 1962 LIFE as “The Comeback of YSL’] Pierre Boulat, photographs for LIFE of YSL’s small apartment, Winter 1961: visitors include Françoise Sagan; note the African bird from Senufo to the right. Adolphe Mouron Cassandre (1901-1968) The Yves Saint Laurent ‘YSL’ logo, 1962 Cassandre was the famous art deco poster designer of the 1930s and this is one of the few ‘marques’ (brands) that has never been modified. List of YSL dwellings – in order of viewing in this lecture: Paris: various apartments include a bachelor apartment from 1961 near the Invalides, Place Vauban Paris, 55 Rue de Babylone, Left Bank, YSL’s duplex apartment home from 1970 inspired by the 1926 design of Jean-Michel Frank for the apartment of Count and Countess (Charles and Marie-Laure) de Noailles (Places des Etaz-Unis): quintessential French art-deco, in the manner of (but not by) Jean-Michel Frank, done for an American in 1927; Claude Lalanne bronze mirrors, Jean Dunand lacquer; Eileen Gray, Jacques Ruhlmann and Rateau furniture; art by Brancusi, Géricault, Ingres, Léger, Gainsborough, Gris, Munch, Matisse, Goya, Cézanne, Picasso, the African stool by Pierre Legrain; Burne Jones tapestry; Renaissance bronzes in a vignette after one assembled by M-L de Noailles Paris, Avenue de Breteuil, YSL bachelor studio; design by Jacques Grange after 1974 – African art, photographs of black boxers by Martine Barrat Paris, Rue Bonaparte, Pierre Bergé’s home – from 1992, the building where Manet was born – grand luxe with a twist and a sense of melancholy - sculpture from Marseilles of the Four Continents, important James Ensor Le Désespoir de Pierrot, 1892, painting, 18th-c Chinese wallpaper from Mona Bismark collection, Work by an Unknown c17 painter, Summer palace heads – Emperor Qianlong, Peking (had been owner by the great theatrical painter Sert); Toulouse-Lautrec skull – strong sense of memento-mori in this residence, paintings of the saints Paris – Ave Marceau YSL – Salon de couture and YSL’s office, Jacques Grange (now the Foundation) Château Gabriel in Benerville-sur-Mer, near Deauville, Normandy, France; had been visited by Marcel Proust, redecorated from 1983 – collections of c19 furniture, majolica etc, a winter-garden in the c19 manner. A Jacques Grange interior – all rooms named for characters in Proust – Proust had met his publisher Gillamard there – note the wall murals based on Monet’s Water lilies, but more an evocation than a copy. New York – Hotel Pierre, Pierre Bergé’s pied-a-terre by Peter Marino and Jed Johnson (the latter from Warhol’s The Factory) – American furniture from the 1870s – Aesthetic movement Tangier, Villa Mabrouka – from 1992 - Jacques Grange interior, gardens by Madison Cox, interesting sculpture of enslaved African man c1900, Claude Lalanne bronze mirrors, armillary spheres Marrakech, Villa Oasis and Dar es Saada – garden by Jacques Majorelle, refreshed by Madison Cox, the blue tones upped and selected by YSL - Orientalist painting by Maurice Boutet de Monvel YSL’s ashes are scattered in the garden there with the inscription: Yves Saint Laurent, Couturier Français References: Benaïm, Laurence, Début. Yves Saint Laurent, 1962, Harry N Abrams, 1992. Bergé, Pierre, Yves Saint Laurent, Thames and Hudson, 1997. McNeil, Peter and Giorgio Riello, ‘The 'Fashion Arts': Jean Michel Frank, Elsa Schiaparelli and the interwar aesthetic project. In S. Bruzzi, & P. Church Gibson (eds.), Fashion Cultures Revisited (2nd ed.), Routledge, 2013, 217-233. Murphy, Robert, The Private world of Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé, Vendome Press, 2009.