While a last homage was being paid to Yves Saint Laurent, on Thursday June 5th in Paris, a big exhibition that has been planned for a long time was opening on the other side of the Atlantic. The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal in tandem with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and in partnership with the Fondation Pierre Bergé – has put together Yves Saint Laurent, the first retrospective to cover forty years of design from the maison de Haute Couture Yves Saint Laurent. The Yves Saint Laurent exhibition that takes place from May 29th to September 28th 2008 gives an overview of the work of the virtuoso of haute couture, whose unique style combines references from the arts with those of popular culture and social revolution.

The exhibition is divided into three main themes: La pointe du crayon (The pencil tip), where we follow the idea of the designer from a sketch ; La révolution Yves Saint Laurent (The Yves Saint Laurent revolution), where the male-female outfits go hand in hand with the seductress; La palette(The palette)which shows how the traditional rules of color harmony were overturned by the new contrasts inspired by métissage; Les sources lyriques (The lyrical sources), where historical and literary influences (Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Louis Aragon, Jean Cocteau…) as well as artistic influences (Mondrian, Poliakoff, « Pop Art », Picasso, Braque...).are interpreted and translated by the genius of the designer.

The exhibition includes 145 accessorized outfits that belong to the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, as well as sketches and videos. It is the first coproduction between the two museums, and after Montréal, will be presented in San Francisco in the new Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (de Young Museum), from November 1st 2008 to March 1st 2009.

The curator of the exhibition Florence Müller is a lecturer at the Institut français de la mode. The associate curators are Diane Charbonneau, curator of contemporary decorative arts at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and Jill D'Alessandro, assistant curator of the Caroline and H. McCoy Jones Collection of Textile Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

The catalogue of the exhibition is published by the Éditions de La Martinière. The text is written by Florence Müller and Hamish Bowles.

"Love". Yves Saint Laurent. From May 29th to September 28th 2008.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal : http://www.mmfa.qc.ca/fr/index.html
Fine Arts Museum de San Francisco, de Young Museum : http://www.famsf.org/deyoung/index.asp
Florence Müller’s blog : http://www.fashion-eye.net