What does the artist wear? The exhibition at the Louvre Lens in France provides answers.

Fashion and art have long danced Path des Düe, artists evoke dresses in their works, and designers refer to the art of their works.

But there are rarely two that are considered together by major art institutions, said Annabelle Tenaise, director of the famous Meucet du Louvre Lens, the satellite of the famous Meucet du Louvre Lens. “The intersection of art and fashion speaks to everyone. We all wear clothes every day, an act of artistic expression. “Why not look at the history of this relationship and show how it fits into our lives today?”

Shortly after being appointed to the museum in 2022, Tenes proposed a long-standing subject to Olivier Gabbett, a colleague who leads the decorative arts department of the Louvre in Paris, and proposed curating it together. “I thought it was a fierce and strong idea,” Gabel said in an interview last week, “Because it can be read in so many different groups.”

The result is “The Art of Dressing: The Art of Dressing Like an Artist”, an exhibition of 200 artwork and fashion items that explore how these two creative worlds are surrounded, inspire each other and sometimes blend into one. It will open in Louvre on Wednesday and will run until July 21st.

“The Art of Drasing” is the second exhibition at the Louvre Museum, a mix of fashion and art after “Louvre Couture,” curated by Gabet, which opened in January in Paris. In that show, Gabett set contemporary fashion and accessories within the museum's art and furniture collection, revealing the dialogue between the Metier and the era.

The Tenaise and Gabett show at the Louvre lens is deeper and deals with everything from the ancient Greek influence on modern outfits to the expression of gender identity through clothing. “It's a great change to have a fashion perspective from a museum that isn't a fashion museum,” Gabett said. “The perspective is different.”

“The Art of Dress” is a large photo of five models from 1998, and is a London National Gallery space dedicated to Rubens, restored in the mid-1990s with a £1 million donation from the fashion designer and his partner Pierre Berguet. In the photo, each woman wears an artist-inspired St. Laurent outfit, such as a 1965 Mondrian dress and a 1988 Van Gogh “Sunflower” jacket.

It also features three looks from St. Laurent, inspired by Georges Black, a famous Cubist artist who painted the ceiling at the Louvre in the 1950s. “We wanted to show that couturiers and visual artists are on the same level,” Tenes said on tours last week at the exhibition. “What is a better way to get started than Yves St. Laurent?”

The exhibition also considers the clothing that artists wore and their fashion choices reveal their place in society.

“The 19th century artist decided to paint in a black suit. This was an absolute bourgeois outfit of that era,” Gabett said, pointing to the self-portraits of Eugène Delacroix in 1837 and Edgar Degas in 1855. Previously, as the exhibitions show, artists often portrayed themselves as Saint Luke, the painter's guardian, wearing a collarless tunic.

But in contrast, it's the way artists actually wear clothes when they work on cobalts scattered with paint and clay, as in the royal blue that 20th century Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tingly likes. His fortune still had one of those clothes 34 years after his death and loaned it to the curators for the show. (Back to the fashion world, Tinguely's coveralls are on display near the 1984 St. Laurent's jumpsuit, inspired by the classic French jacket Bleu de Travail.)

In the 19th century, it was shocking when some female artists wore pants in studios. He paints the landscape while wearing brown pants and blue smocks, as evidenced by the portrait of Rosa Bon Howl, the 1893 leader of George Aquil Fold. “Women wearing pants were a banned act at the time,” Tenaise explained. And much later, in the 1960s, St. Laurent sparked social protests in tuxedos for women since 1995. “These artists fought against social norms, so today they can be more free to dress,” Tenaise said.

Thinking about Androgyny, we led Ténèze and Gabet to investigate gender identity and mutual dressings of art and fashion. The show features several expected icons that wanted to wear male clothing, such as 19th-century French female writer George Sand.

However, there are some surprises, including Louise Abbema's “Sale Le Lac Au Bois des Boulognes,” the 1883 landscape in a gentleman's suit, and her fellow actress Sarah Bernhardt, actress Sarah Bernhardt, in a pale pink gown, and the shaking actress of the park's lake. The curator said he wanted to shine a spotlight on long-forgotten female artists, such as Abbema, in order to revive their interest in their work.

Many threads of the show come together. The curator celebrates the collaboration of artists and fashion designers such as French sculptor Niki de Saint-Far and her great friend Mark Bohan, Christian Dior designer Mark Bohan from the 1960s to 1989. Next, for St. Fal, Bohan created a sparkling gold pantsuit and headpiece inspired by her snake for her snake launch event (hosted by Warhol). Both suits and perfume bottles and packaging are available at the exhibition. Sadly, the headpiece has been lost for a long time, Tenaise said.

As the museum people left the exhibition, they conveyed a full-length mirror zigzag wall inspired by the decorations of British designer Alexander McQueen's fashion show, explaining the exhibition scenegrapher Mattis Boucher.

“We looked at our visitors in the mirror and said, 'Why did I put this today? What am I trying to say in this outfit?” Tenaise said.

The Art of Dressing: Artist-like Clothing
From March 26th to July 21st, we will be using the ruble lens of French lenses. louvrelens.fr.