Jean Paul Gaultier, whose early work in the 1970s
 earned him the nickname “enfant terrible of fashion,” is
 unquestionably one of the most important fashion designers 
in recent decades. The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier:
From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk is the first retrospective 
ever devoted to this couturier, who designed his first
ready-to-wear collection in 1976 and founded his haute
couture firm in 1997. The exhibition will celebrate the bold-
ness and refinement of a multicultural, avant-garde style
 that obliterates boundaries while demanding the right 
to be different.

Initiated, produced and circulated by our Museum for the 35th
anniversary of Jean Paul Gaultier fashion, this major
 exhibition benefits from the cooperation of the maison 
Jean Paul Gaultier, Paris. It will explore this generous, 
uninhibited creator’s close ties with dance (Maurice Béjart,
Régine Chopinot, Angelin Preljocaj), pop-rock music 
(Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga), cinema (Peter
Greenaway, Luc Besson, Pedro Almodóvar), television –
Gaultier co-hosted the BBC program Eurotrash from 1993
to 1997 – and many photographers.

The exhibition will highlight Gaultier’s eclectic and impertinent 
sources of inspiration through a selection of 120 haute 
couture dresses and ready-to-wear pieces (women’s and
 men’s) made between 1976 and 2011. In addition, there
 will be sketches including for costumes for the theatre and 
the movies, and abundant audiovisual clips of films, concerts, 
ballets, fashion shows and stage shows. Contemporary art
 photography and fashion photography will also be well 
featured, with original and, in some cases, never-before-
published prints by such renowned artists as Andy Warhol,
 Cindy Sherman, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Bettina Rheims, 
Paolo Roversi, Mario Testino, Pierre & Gilles, David LaChapelle, 
Steven Klein, Ellen Von Unwerth and Robert Doisneau.

The sophisticated, innovative exhibition design will reflect
 Jean Paul Gaultier’s tremendous visual culture, boundless
 curiosity, energy and sense of humour. The latest technology
 will be employed to create audiovisual animations 
of mannequins. A soundtrack put together by a music
producer and sound illustrator will add another dimension
to the exhibition.

Mannequins With Animated Faces

Visitors to the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul
Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk will encounter 
mannequins whose faces are brought to life by video. These surprising figures, all of them dressed by Gaultier, 
soliloquize, observe in silence and sometimes even break 
into song. This very special technique of projecting video
 onto a three-dimensional mask combines technology and
craft, with the actor’s own video image projected onto his
or her sculpted head. The technique was developed more
than fifteen years ago by Denis Marleau with UBU, his
Montreal theatre company. Marleau also created Les aveugles,
which has been touring the world since 2002. In this show,
 there are no live actors on scene; instead, there are twelve 
video masks depicting the same two actors. It was through
 this influential production and a second show, Une fête
pour Boris at the Avignon Festival in 2010, that Jean Paul
 Gaultier discovered the Quebec director’s work. For this project,
 initiated by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Marleau,
 Stéphanie Jasmin and their team created the mannequins,
whose quirky, poetic or joyful presence captures the spirit
of installation art. Participants include performers Ève Salvail,
Francisco Randez, Melissa Auf der Maur, Virginie Coosa
and Suzie Leblanc, who contribute something of their own 
artistic process to the fascinating world of Jean Paul Gaultier.

Following its presentation in Montreal, the exhibition will embark on an international tour, with presentations at the Dallas Museum of Art (November 13, 2011 - February 12, 2012), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young (March 24 - August 19, 2012), the Fundación Mapfre – Instituto de Cultura, Madrid (September 26 – November 18, 2012), and the Kunsthal Rotterdam, the Netherlands (February 9 – May 12, 2013).

Publication : March 16, 2012

ISBN : 978-2-9539327-0-6

464 pages

Size : 20x25 cm

Price : 69 €

"Experiencing love  - what is it? – how do you say it? – how do you paint it? – how do you represent it? Between the cliché of love with its stereotype images of fluffy pink candy or vivid red passion, and all the other various amorous clichés, there’s a whole jumble of ideas rather like our own lives and personal histories, foreign to everyone except ourselves . What aspects of love do we all share?
The hypothesis at BIP2012 is that we share forms and figures. Short of sharing love itself, it is the image of love which moves us, jolts our memory and inspires us with its warmth as well as causing us grief and pain. 

Here, images of love, moving, perplexing, captured in the endless flow of looks and bodies, are what the artist has done, one day, to focus the eye, onto this strange attraction of one person for another, whether by looking straight at it or casting sidelong glances towards it. These looks or glances, taken as a day-to-day occurrence, are found, reworked, invented, placed in a particular setting; they give shape to this agitation, this enthusiasm, this intoxication, this rapture, this melancholy, this abandon, this search ... The struggle against disappearance. Love of the image to keep an image of love, before…” (Anne-Françoise Lesuisse)

The Exhibition bearing the name of BIP2012 will be held in the MAMAC/CDE. It will bring together the work of nearly forty artists not only at ground floor level but also in the basement , which has been cleared of the pictures in the collection and completely dedicated to videos. For the first time, visitors will thus be able to discover the cellars of the MAMAC converted for BIP2012 into a exhibition area – a unique opportunity to discover this usually inaccessible space, before the Museum closes for renovation work to be carried out.