LMI Magazine N°1

Mots
Rouge, résonnances, lieux
words
Red, Resonance, setting
© Jean Ber
editorial
“It was a wonderful time to be alive – what a pity nobody
thought to tell us so back then!” Thus writes Frédéric F. Fajardie
of the 1960s and ’70s in his Chronique d’une liquidation politique
(“Chronicle of a political liquidation”, published by La Table
Ronde, 1993).
What if, in spite of the current crisis, with its disenchantment
and anxiety, the present time too was also wonderful and
nobody thought to tell us?
Our work here at La Mode en Images is surprisingly revealing
of the current climate. We “dream makers” are at the crossroads
of so many intuitions, sensations and vibrations that help
decipher our era.
“Creating around creating” as we do, even though the events
we design, organize and produce may be fleeting, we are
in permanent contact with creations and designers. Everybody
knows that creation, whatever form it may take, is a wonderful
indicator of an era’s trends and behavior. Yet creation has never
been as many-sided, as engaged, as flamboyant as today.
Furthermore, our work, which was long considered as strange
as that of travelling performers, is now viewed as sound
work with a solid future, as can be seen, among others, by
the ever-growing number of young people interested in joining
the profession.
Our work may be transient, but so is our time. Its products
may be short-lived, but today everything goes faster and is
more fleeting, as renewal, progress and inventions emerge at
a breakneck pace, replacing still-current plans and scenarios.
And then again, our work allows us the exceptional privilege
of meeting, rubbing shoulders and collaborating with all those,
whether designers or managers, who make things move, who
invent, who build and who define our era’s identity and image.
3
Olivier Massart
A
Alexander McQueen
“…Terrible. The word suits you. Enfant terrible. You
make me think of Rilke too when he says of beauty:
the first degree of the Terrible. A terrifying beauty,
indeed, stupefying, nearly unbearable. You even
knew how to find beauty where others saw only
ugliness, I know. The beauty you offered was terrible, indeed, a beauty where the invisible takes over
from the visible, when what is produced inside us
goes far beyond what we have seen. You couldn’t
help but share this feeling of dread, moreover, like
all those who seek to express what cannot be said,
to unveil what can be revealed, to penetrate the
invisible face of the world. Defiance, commitment,
abandonment, nearly beyond human strength…”
writes Anne Deniau, his semi-official photographer
for thirteen years, in a blog post dated Saturday
October 23, 2010.
This comes close to saying all of this giant, born in
London on March 17, 1969, and who passed away in
London in the night of February 10 to 11 2010, the
day before his beloved mother's funeral.
He completed his studies at Central Saint Martins
College of Art and Design. On the day he graduated, in 1992, an eagle-eyed, eccentric and broke
aristocrat with contacts at Vogue and Tatler, Isabella Blow, noticed him in the crowd. In Libération
dated July 17/18 2010, Clément Ghys remembers:
“…She convinced him to change his name and simplify it to Alexander, like the Greek emperor.
Isabella Blow became his patron and offered to buy
up his collection in weekly payments. She invited
everyone she knew to see the designs of her protégé. She wore his clothes, promoted them in
various magazines and made him buckle down…
Issie was in turn his nurse, godmother and muse…”
Alexander McQueen was launched. In 1996 he
replaced John Galliano who had left Givenchy for
Dior. And in 2001, finally, he was a free and independent man under the wing of PPR.
The shows that followed were astonishing to
behold. In SS2003-Irere, he recreated an encounter
between shipwrecked pirates and natives in an
homage to Robert Louis Stevenson and Daniel
Defoe.
In SS 2004-Deliverance, he transformed Paris’s
Salle Wagram into an exhausting dance floor, in
a vibrant homage to Horace McCoy, the author of
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
In SS 2005-The Man Who Knew too Much, he paid
tribute Alfred Hitchcock in passing.
“He had,” confides Olivier Massart, “an incredible
sense of rhythm, of movement. Each of the shows
Gainsbury and I organized for him had its own
logic, amazing accuracy and a willingness to blend
all art forms, from art to video to music. He was
without a doubt the freest, most inventive, most
talented designer I’ve ever met. The purest, most
demanding, most generous. His death leaves a void
that will not easily be filled.”
Many other talents highlighted his career, including artist Damien Hirst, prima ballerina Sylvie
Guilhem, and Lady Gaga, whose dress and shoes he
designed for her Bad Romance video. And Björk
especially, his “soul sister” of an exacerbated
romanticism and controlled baroque. McQueen
directed the Icelandic singer’s video for Alarm Call
and produced the cover for her album Homogenic,
as well as dazzling dresses, like the pearl-studded
wedding gown for Pagan Poetry or a red creation
punctuated with ostrich feathers and glass slides,
which she wore on her Vespertine tour…
Whether here or elsewhere, yesterday, today or
tomorrow, Alexander McQueen will continue to
haunt the dreams and visions of the world of design.
Lee Alexander McQueen “Love looks not with the eyes but the wind” (Shakespeare) • 2000 © Anne Deniau
par Gilles de Bure
1
Carmine, vermilion, cinnabar, madder, blush, crimson,
burgundy, cadmium, scarlet, brick, cardinal, magenta,
ruby… Turkish red, Congo red, Prussian red, Indian red,
Venetian red…
What color, aside from red, has produced so many
variations and inspired so many lexical variants?
Intriguing, ambiguous, enigmatic. Red is in.
Lucio Fontana • Concetto spaziale, Attese (Concept spatial, Attente) • 1968 © Tornabuoni Art, Paris
Red
6
In the beginning, there was red. Fundamental,
essential, eternal. The Bible tells us that Adam, the
first man, was made from clay and yet in Hebrew,
adom means red earth…
If man is supreme in nature then red is supreme in
the corridors of power, be it royal or religious. Olivier Massart likes to work in red.
“For me,” he says, “red is the point of departure. It
is life, movement, energy.”
At a Vuitton runway show, when he hung an
immense red curtain from the greenhouse at Parc
André Citröen, he was in a way paying homage to
the opera, where the fundamental color is red.
When he planned the fashion event at the World's
Fair in Sevilla, he extended it from Cartuja Island
(the site of the French Pavilion) all the way to Maestranza’s magnificent bullrings, and weaved it
together in red like a bullfighter’s muleta, as if
to evoke the symbols of war (the ammunition
factory), death, blood, confrontation, combat
(la corrida).
First and foremost, Massart is black and white. A
man in black and white, who frequently surrenders,
sacrifices himself to red.
Alexander McQueen
for Gainsbury and Whitin
Palais Omnisport
de Paris Bercy, 2008.
Louis Vuitton
Grand Serre (Great Greenhouse)
Parc André Citroën
Paris, 2005/06.
Guy Laroche
Petit Palais
Paris, 2002/03.
right page: Yves Saint Laurent • Haute Couture Collection, Autumn-Winter 1990 • Pheasant and rhea multicolored feather coat. © Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent / Guy Marineau
left page: Jeff Koons • Balloon Dog (Magenta) • 1994-2000 © Jeff Koons. Photo : Laurent Lecas © Editions Xavier Barral • 2008.
Michel-Ange • David • 1503 • Galleria dell’Accademia • Florence © D.R.
10
It’s an endless story of blending, confronting,
defying red, black and white.
Many have cleverly taken advantage of red's symbolism, which combines love, passion, hunger,
eroticism and life force with the devil, fire, violence,
blood, death. A mix of desire, pleasure, wealth,
power, royalty, aristocracy, the need to conquer…
An unmistakably extreme color. The color of
flames, adventure, control, luxury, creation.
“Man is the only animal that blushes…or needs
to,” notes George Bernard Shaw. In echo, Michel
de Montaigne teases, “Women blush at hearing
mentioned things they aren’t at all afraid to do.”
So, let’s dream, like Rimbaud in Bal des pendus: “On
the horizon, the sky is hell-red”.
Édouard Michel
Alexander McQueen
for Gainsbury and Whiting
Paris, 2004/05.
par Gilles de Bure
Quicksilver! The expression is antiquated, and it’s a
shame, because it perfectly describes Jean-Jacques
Picart. Especially when, as in this case, we’re talking
about fashion and Picart knows a lot about it.
Quicksilver that, according to the Académie Française dictionary, is synonymous with vivacity,
free-spiritedness and malleability. Quicksilver is
also another name for the metal mercury, which, in
turn, owes its name to the god Mercury (Hermes
for the Greeks!). Son of Zeus and Maia (who is the
daughter of the Titan Atlas), Mercury with his winged sandals and helmet, symbols of his swiftness, is
the messenger to the gods, acting on dreams. He is
the god of luck and fortune linked with the Egyptian deity Thoth, considered to be the god of magic.
All of these qualities are combined in this quickfooted man, fashion magician and creative
messenger who harbors dreams of beauty and elegance better than anyone else.
His eyes are in perpetual motion. His smile is quick.
Jean-Jacques Picart is watchful, constantly attentive. He has an eagle-eye, razor-sharp intuition and
piercing lucidity. His wry humor betrays a scholar,
with equal measures of tenderness and ferocity.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Jean-Jacques Picart
streaked across the fashion world like a meteor,
advising, guiding, bringing to light designers such
as Thierry Mugler, Emmanuel Ungaro, Jean-Charles
de Castelbajac, Kenzo, Helmut Lang, Salvatore Ferragamo, Jill Sanders, et alii, and such brands as
Cacharel, Chloé, Hermès (surprise!) Shiseido, La
Redoute etc.
And Jean Patou, who was vital to his trajectory. In
1981, he discovered a young man who dreamed of
being a museum curator, but whom he convinced
Patou to hire. The young man was none other than
Christian Lacroix. The two became associates in
1987 and created the brand bearing the designer’s
name within the LVMH group. Twelve years later, in
1999, Jean-Jacques Picart decided to fly solo again,
and created his own luxury and fashion consulting
agency. Business directors, managers and designers
came to him with their strategy, development,
image and communication dilemmas. A man of the
shadows who only likes black, white, grey, beige,
dove, etc. So what on earth was he to do in the
frantic whirlwind of color that is the world of Christian Lacroix? We would imagine him more at ease
with Hedi Slimane, another of his revelations and
who was also his assistant, like Lacroix.
Yes, the king of color and the champion of subtle
monochrome, what an odd partnership!
And yet for Jean-Jacques Picart, the discovery of
color was born from this union.
“I forced myself to include it, to understand which
emotions and feelings color or colors evoked. They
say that blind people see colors with their brain. I
tried to do the same, to elaborate on an intellectual
process of reconciliation with color. But I always
maintained this feeling that color burned my eyes
from their sockets.”
Evidently, Picart finds this game of color denial
amusing. And suddenly, he seriously exclaims: “In
reality, the only color Christian got me to accept
was red. But a dark red, a Chinese red, an oxblood
red. Now that I think about it, my house in Provence has red cladding. Very dark red, obviously!”
So what does he make of catwalk shows; events
and parties organized by La Mode en Images in
which all manner of colors frolic riotously?
“Sure, the colors are dazzling, but it only lasts for
an instant, like a sunset. And with Olivier Massart,
it’s never just for the fun of it. For him, it’s about
highlighting, incorporating identity, anticipating
the reality of those who he puts on the stage. This
is actually a sign of a rare knowledge of situation,
of being open to the message and of the unparallelled capacity to be completely see things from
different points of view. Creating upon creations is
his golden rule, and he manages it magnificently.”
A man of the shadows, Jean-Jacques Picart is one
of those to whom e owe the opening up of fashion
to everyone. Going beyond the narrow thinking of
many “professionals of the profession”, he sees
fashion like a written masterpiece; an aspect of culture, of civilization, of behavior.
“You have to have a sense of storytelling,” he says.
“Tell a story every time.”
Jean-Jacques Picart © Paolo Roversi
J
Jean-Jacques Picart
Resonance
There are places which are sources of inspiration. Not
templates, but echo chambers where sensations and
emotions intermingle. And so it goes, among other things,
for monument installations by the sculptor Richard Serra,
for Dominique Perrault’s women’s university in Ewha,
Seoul, for Frank O.Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in
Los Angeles, or the Conques Abbey whose stained-glass
windows were designed by the painter Pierre Soulages.
Richard Serra • Double torsion elliptique IV (Torqued Ellypse) • 1998 © Musée Guggenheim, Bilbao
2
Asphalt black, racetrack red, nature green are followed by the white of a fault. A fault, a crack, a furrow
which dives in a gentle slope down to a depth of
sixty feet, coming up on the other side with wide
walkways—irrepressively evoking Courbet’s The
Origin of the World.
The first optical sensation doesn’t reveal this fault’s
dimensions, a fault which will only show it’s true dimensions once we’ve reached its heart: gigantic, disproportionate, and yet still only brushing the
ground. From each side, an immense glass wall
whose ridgeline, though perfectly orthogonal,
seems to curve inwards: it is a striking effect. The
metalwork framing these glass panels invoke a musical scale whose rhythms remind us of strange
scansions, while the bolts that hold them in place
appear to be appoggiatura with endless vibratos.
At nightfall, the fault suddenly lights up and transforms itself into a gigantic trail of light and colors.
Manifesting “non-architecture” in a sense, a perfect
example of a strategy for recycling land, the Ewha
women’s university, designed and built by Dominique Perrault in Seoul, is perhaps geography’s revenge on history.
This architecture of disappearance is succeeded
by another, this one claiming apparition in the
strongest way possible. We know the vocabulary of
Nina Ricci
Jardin des Tuileries
Paris, 2005.
Dominique Perrault • Ewha Womans University, Seoul • 2008 © André Morin / DPA / Adagp
16
Frank O.Gehry’s shapes, his technique which breeds
organic and joyful monsters, from the Walt Disney
Concert Hall in Los Angeles to the Guggenheim in
Bilbao, fragmented contrasts of objects with regular contours and curved and violent forms. This way
that he has of making the folded, pleated and crumpled coexist in his models and sketches, and using
the most sophisticated software, a way of permanently subjugating computation to imagination,
technique to art.
An architecture, an often tormented hybrid architecture, with tangent and diagonal lines, with
blocks printed in a faux-random way. This is architecture which multiplies directions, vanishing lines,
refusing classical symmetry, rejecting the orthogonal and experimenting with structural performance.
So many elements of convergence and divergence,
which mean that with Gehry, architecture and
sculpture collide. It is not always possible to determine which of the two arts is dominant.
Then there is silence. The silence of the Sainte Foy
de Conques Abby, the absolute masterpiece of Roman art, founded in the eighth century by Dadon,
under the protection of Charlemagne and which
saw its stylistic apogee in the 11th century.
But time goes by and everything crumbles…the
stained glasses were long gone when, in 1994, the
ones designed by the painter Pierre Soulages appeared. In other words, 104 openings clad in deep
black glass, but known as “colorless”, a glass invented by Soulages himself and going against the tradition of the colored stained-glass windows of our
churches and cathedrals.
Yves Saint Laurent
Grand Palais
Paris, 2008/09.
Frank O. Gehry • Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles • 1989 © Collection Artedia
18
“From morning to night, seen from the inside, the
windows take on different colors which change as
time passes. The colors that we see aren’t mine,
but those of the day, which change with the passing
hours,” confides Pierre Soulages. He adds: “This
‘transmuted’ light with an emotional quality possesses the interiority I was seeking, a metaphysical
quality which matches the sacred nature of this
architecture.” There is an incredible musicality in
these windows whose silhouette illustrates rhythm
of rupture sought by the artist.
What should we retain about this architecture, of
these installations and interventions which make
up a network of resonance across events designed
and scenographed by Olivier Massart and La Mode
en Images? Undoubtedly the feeling of deployment
in space which Richard Serra holds so dear, or Dominique Perrault’s sense of shattering scale and
spatial multiplication, that of variations and extremes – so close to fashion – which is Frank O.
Gehry’s trademark…
And more importantly, maybe above all, the ability
to blend with, to understand and to integrate, to
make creations upon creations, just as Pierre Soulages set out to do in Conques.
Cédric d’Houry
Kenzo
Palais Omnisport
de Paris Bercy, 2005.
Pierre Soulages • Stained-glass windows at the Conques Abbey • 1987/94 © Vincent Cunillère
20
par Gilles de Bure
Charles Garnier and Dominique Perrault—two
peas in a pod? Well, not really, even if they have
something in common. In 1861, Charles Garnier
won the competition to design the Opéra de Paris
even though he was only 35 years old (artistic
infancy for an architect), had built next to nothing
and was completely unheard of. In 1989, Dominique Perrault won the competition for the “Very
Grand Library” even though he was only 36 years
old, that he’d built very little and that he was very
little known.
The comparison ends here. For Garnier, the Opéra
de Paris would kick start and accelerate his career.
The Bibliothèque Nationale de France (French
National Library) would win Perrault the Mies Van
Der Rohe prize (he was, incidentally, the first
Frenchman to receive it), but this would have unlikely and catastrophic collateral effects on his
fledgling career.
He remained an “outcast” in France during a long
decade, as though society couldn’t forgive him for
having built the last of President Mitterrand’s great
projects at such a young age. This ostracism would
perhaps—even surely—be a stroke of luck for him,
for his international career flourished. Practically
banned from France, he exported his concepts, his
talent and savoir faire, which resulted in a series of
architectural feats which, over time, would establish his reputation.
Let’s take a look for ourselves: Berlin’s cycle stadium
and Olympic swimming pool, Innsbruck town hall,
Nigata’s Nô theatre, Barcelona’s Me hotel, the
Court of Justice of the European Communities in
Luxemburg, the Ewha women’s university in Seoul,
the Olympic tennis center in Madrid, the Fukoku
tower in Osaka, the Donau Center towers in Vienna,
and still yet to come, a hotel in Milan, the San Pelligrino thermal baths in Italy, the French Quarter in
Brisbane, the national museum in Andorra, etc.
Then his time in purgatory ended and Perrault
came back to France with projects in Boulogne, Per-
pignan, Lille, Rouen, Nantes, Albi, Paris…whether it
be housing, offices, a sports complex, a museum or
a cultural center.
From one project to the next, Dominique Perrault
demonstrates an extremely specific style: a conceptual architecture with masterful and inventive
signature, and plays artfully with presence and
absence, apparition and disappearance, combining
history and geography, placing equal importance
on feeling, symbolism and efficiency. At the heart
of a unique architectural vocabulary, we find the
ever-present metal mesh, which Perrault has transformed into a structural and defining element in
his buildings. We know that the vocabularies of
fashion and architecture are extremely close.
Faced with a the mesh masterpieces produced by
Perrault, we are forced to admit the truth: pleated,
wedding veil, ball gown, formal tunic, evening
sheath, Harlequin coat, silk smock, Donkey Skin’s
outfit, a frock the color of the seasons, cross linked
armor, a garment of shadows and light, etc. these
are the expressions that automatically spring to
mind to describe Perrault’s architecture.
“Fashion? Yes. I feel very close to designers such as
Azzedine Alia and Issey Miyake. I also really like
Alexander McQueen who, for me, is London’spirit
personified. John Galliano and Christian Lacroix
too, for their playfulness, humor and excess,”
confides Dominique Perrault.
But what does an architect whose work is sustainable in its essence make of fleeting objects such
as those Olivier Massart imagines, designs and
produces? “Sustainable architecture? Sure, but to
be alive, architecture must necessarily contain
something unfinished and fleeting, just as we keep
a part of our childhood. Architecture has to fit with
the present even more than the long-term. To be
neither finished nor unfinished. It must be able to
evolve, to be enriched and expand. The great
beauty of the ephemeral is precisely its unfinished
aspect. It’s not only a question of status, but of perception. Also, there is evidently a real architectural
conscience at ‘La Mode en Images’ events; a real
sense of filling space, a science of rhythm and scansion, all combining joyfully.”
His eye crinkles, his smile becomes more malevolent, and Dominique Perrault concludes: “Incidentally, didn’t Cocteau say: ‘You have to forgive
fashion many things; it dies so young.’”
Dominique Perrault © Jean Ber
D
Dominique Perrault
Grande salle • Opéra Garnier © Jean-Pierre Delagarde
Opéra Garnier
3
"The Opera is not only ‘the Temple of Pleasure’,
it is above all else, the Temple of Art. A
special kind of art made for eyes, ears, hearts
and passions”, declared Charles Garnier,
the architect, in 1878. A paragon of eclectic
styles blended together, the Opéra de Paris,
is the very essence of entertainment.
It is a gradual initiation, a sort of ascent to paradise.
First, the few steps outside that begin the break
away from the rest of the city. Then, the vaulted
Grand vestibule, followed by the Vestibule du
Contrôle (the first lobby), and the two rotundas, the
Rotonde des Abonnés (literally, the Subscibers’
Lobby) and the Salon du Glacier. Then, the grand
staircase spreads out before you, impossibly large:
“The stairs of the Opera should be a vast frame, a
broad dress-circle, an immense jewel box where an
enchanted world of butterflies, flowers and precious gems, flutter around, bloom and sparkle,”
according to Garnier. And he kept his word; his
grand staircase displays a world of celebration and
splendor beyond compare.
The avant-foyer, known as “the Mosaics”, is at the
top of the stairs. It is framed by the Salon de la
Lune and the Salon du Soleil and opens onto the
five bays of the Grand Foyer, whose scale and grandeur inevitably evoke the image of the Louvre’s
Apollo Gallery or even the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. So many celebrations and events have been
held here, some of which were organized by La
Mode en Images, featuring events for Stella MacCartney and John Galliano... “The space is so grand,
so expressive, so present, that you can't even imagine being able to dominate it. The challenge is is
all the more stimulating and the performance even
more subtle,” confides Olivier Massart.
Charles Garnier, who had built very little until then,
was only 35 years old when he won the competition for the Opera’s construction. On May 30, 1861,
he deployed an army of marble masons, plasterers,
stuccoists, mosaic-makers, wood-workers, cabinetmakers, iron crafters, gilders, and upholsterers
supported by fourteen painters and seventy-three
sculptors who would work for the next 15 years.
At the inauguration, the empress Eugénie exclaimed, “Whatever is this style? It is not even one
style! It is neither Greek, nor Louis XV, nor Louis
XVI.” Cheeky but clever, Garnier replied, “No, those
styles are outdated. This is Napoleon III! And
you’re complaining!”...
Perfume Launch
Midnight Poison,
Dior, Opéra Garnier,
Paris, may 2007.
The Emporer’s Staircase • Opéra Garnier © Jean-Pierre Delagarde
28
It’s true that everything is mixed together here,
Pompeii and late Renaissance, Greek and Baroque
columns, Orientalism and Modernism (Garnier
worked with iron and had the prescience to designed cable conduits to bring electricity to the
entire building).
The Grand Salle with its orchestra, aisles, box seats,
balcony boxes, amphitheatre, top gallery and
endless shine is decidedly classical, but the stage
and backstage are a mix of periods and dimensions.
There are many tales worth telling about the
Opera... In the cellar, an immense tank holds a
reservoir of water ideal for firefighters; it is so large
that you can even cross it in a boat. This was Gas-
ton Leroux’s inspiration for his legendary Phantom
of the Opera. Of course, there are no phantoms, but
there are carp raised and fed by the Opera's technical staff. While up above, on the roof where
Thierry Mugler loves to do photography, the stagehands maintain a collection of beehives…
But who could leave the Opera without stopping
by the Foyer de la Danse where up until 1930s,
wealthy patrons were admitted and came to “treat
themselves to a dancer” amidst the bawdy décor
and dubious illustrations, which certain critics have
called “bordello style”. Another time, another taste,
but as Gaston Leroux wrote, the Opera “has lost
none of its charm or its sparkle.” Émile Colonne
Y
Yoyo Maeght
Anyone who hasn’t spent a musical evening at the
Maeght Foundation at least one in his life doesn’t
know just how sweet life is.
Yes, a haven which justifies the good life. Charles
Baudelaire’s famous “luxe, calme et volupté” come
to a climax here. Nestled amidst fragrant, undulating vegetation, the Foundation Maeght, which
was dreamed up by Aimé and Marguerite Maeght
and designed by Josep Lluis Sert, an eminent Mediterranean architect, is an absolute masterpiece.
Seemingly placed on a giant chessboard, the
entrance building, art and exhibition center, library,
chapel and house reserved for artist and writer
friends stand one behind the other. A harmonious
collection of patios, from the Giacometti Court to
Mirò’s labyrinth, Braque’s Green Basin, Bury’s fountain and even the majestic stone pines…
“Some time before, long ago, my grandfather led
me to discover the Foundation Maeght just after it
had opened. We came as neighbours, with our deep
Provencal roots in the Luberon, where our family
originates. The journey wasn’t too long and was
very beautiful. On arriving in Saint Paul de Vence,
the heady smells, the melodious racket of crickets
and the symphony of the vegetation’s different
greens didn’t surprise me; I was familiar with them,
typical as they are from where I come from. Then,
once we’d crossed the Foundation’s threshold, we
were suddenly dazzled. By discovery; a double discovery, even, of the architecture created by Sert’s
genius, of art, and, more specifically, of Giacometti,
whose long silhouettes fascinated me. The very
young man that I was at the time would have had
trouble expressing the intertwined feelings and
emotions that this double discovery aroused in
him, but which would nevertheless stay with him
for the rest of his life…” reminisces Olivier Massart.
The same Massart didn’t meet the little five-yearold girl who, several days earlier, on the 28th of July
1964, gave the keys of the Foundation (which was
having its opening ceremony on that very day) to
André Malraux, the minister of Cultural Affairs.
The little girl’s name was Yoyo Maeght, who thirteen years later, at just eighteen years of age,
became a part of the Maeght artistic empire, starting at the Automobiliste, her father Adrien’s
astounding shop, and then managing Maeght’s
publications where she published numerous catalogues raisonnés, artist’s monographies , collectors’
works, lithographs, etchings etc. She became more
and more involved in the gallery’s and Foundation’s
life and activities, organising exhibitions dedicated
to important figures in Maeght’s history, such as
Braque, Giacometti, Mirò, Tapiès, and became
increasingly interested in young artists such as
Nicolas Alquin, Hélène Delprat, Jan Voss, etc. But it
was above all Aki Kuroda, for whom she presented
an exhibition in Peking’s Forbidden City, and Gérard
Gasiorowski, a major artist who became her mentor but who, sadly, died young, to whom she felt
closest. Married for ten years to designer/interior
designer Olivier Ganère, she explored the worlds of
André Arbus, Jean-Michel Frank, Diego Giacommetti and Shiro Kuramata with equal intensity. As
an author, she was determined to bring to light and
put into perspective her family history (collaborating with her sister Isabelle and Frank Maubert)
from the book Maeght: La Passion de l’Art Vivant 1
(Maeght: Living Art Passion) and of the film
Maeght: Une Histoire de Famille2 (Maeght: a Family
Story).
Olivier Massart, speaking to us again: “A few years
later, in summer 2010, after so many voyages and
discoveries, a return to the Foundation was underway. This is when Yoyo and Isabelle Maeght invited
me to take part and share the project. This brought
me back to the roots of where it all began, because
it is being part of installing the major exhibition
that they are dedicating to Giacometti.”
The scenography will therefore be both inventive
and respectful and of the great Giacometti and
Maeght, 1946-1966 exhibition. Yoyo Maeght emphasises the focus on “intuition, elegance and
showcaseing” of their collaborative effort, which
she compares, in quality and subtlety, to Maeght
Publishing’s flagship publication: A Travers le Miroir
(Through the Looking Glass).
After 33 years spent in her family, Yoyo Maeght has
recently decided to spread her wings, exploring
other territories and to set off on new adventures.
(1) La Martinière Publishing (2) Dock and Stock Productions – Arte Broadcasting
Yoyo Maeght © Jean Ber
par Gilles de Bure
Editor in Chief: Gilles de Bure
Artistic Director: Zoé Vayssières
Photos: all rights reserved
Special Thanks
Jean Ber, photographer
Pierre Bergé and the Pierre Bergé Foundation
Benoît Decron, Chief Curator, Musée Soulages
Anne Deniau, photographer
Xavier Barral Publishing
Samantha Gainsbury, for Gainsbury and Whiting
Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris
Galerie Tornabuoni Art, Paris
Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, DPA
Françoise Morin, Artedia
Opéra de Paris
Paolo Roversi, photographer
The Entire La Mode en Images Team:
Olivier Massart
Romuald Leblond
Patrizia Pilotti
Morgane Denis
Sébastien Nidelat
Alice Rodier
Carine Sionko
Florence Duret
Catherine Frontiere
Oriane Morat
Lucie Catherine
Yossef Ettahri
Mikaël-Khan Panni
Véronique Launay
Kaled Moghraoui
Alexandre Appy
Mathieu Massart
La Mode en Images International
Beijing:
Adrian Bratfanof, Yan Yue, Vanessa Heussaff
Istanbul:
Nuri Tiglioglu, Elvan Tiglioglu
• 11 rue des Lions St Paul • 75004 Paris • France • +33 1 48 04 97 55 • www.lamodeenimages.com