Yves Saint Laurent and contemporary art | Five standout dialogues

On the occasion of the celebration of 60 years of the house of Saint Laurent, which began last week simultaneously in six museums in Paris, here are the five most striking confrontations between the creations of the great couturier Yves Saint Laurent and the works of contemporary art at the Center Pompidou.

Mondrian dress

“Revolutionary”, copied many times around the world and inspiring other works of art, it was the Mondrian dress, designed in 1965 by Yves Saint Laurent, which popularized the Dutch painter, one of the pioneers of the ‘abstraction. “It was almost at this time that fashion changed status and began to become an art in itself,” said Aurélie Samuel, director of collections at the Yves Saint Laurent museum in Paris.

kinetic art

An orange dress with a full skirt with gyratory patterns is installed in the middle of paintings by Sonia Delauney, a French artist of Ukrainian origin. Saint Laurent is interested in the work of the couple Sonia and Robert Delauney: he has books by artists in his studio, who have above all worked together on the search for pure color and the movement of simultaneous colours.

Vasarely patterns

“You’ll find it hard to believe the dresses were made in the 1970s,” says Madison Cox, president of the Pierre Bergé-Saint Laurent Foundation. Long or mid-length, clean cut, geometric patterns: the dresses exhibited at the Center Pompidou against the panels of Victor Vasarely “are in the fashion showcase today”, underlines Madison Cox. Victor Vasarely, a Franco-Hungarian visual artist, distinguished himself during his lifetime by creating a new trend: optical art.

nude pop

In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent made jersey – the “only modern material”, according to him – dresses inspired by the Great American Nudes by American pop painter Tom Wesselmann. It is also from the latter’s work that Gary Hume, a member of the group of Young British Artists, regularly draws inspiration. Gary Hume isolates anatomical details, like a cheerleader’s arm holding a thick yellow pom-pom.

Green fox or assumed kitsch

In 1964, Martial Raysse inaugurated the series Made in Japanwhich hijacks the icons of art history, including The great Odalisque d’Ingres which is photographed, cropped, painted with an airbrush then set with trinkets and a plastic fly. In 1971, Yves Saint Laurent presented the collection inspired by fashion under the Occupation. The same process of appropriation and desacralization animates it. Centerpiece of the collection: a green fox coat.