The Musée d’Orsay’s latest exhibition, “Impressionism and Fashion,” opened September 25th and runs through January 20th of 2013. The museum, famous for housing the largest collection of Impressionist masterpieces in the world, collaborated with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago to jointly curate an extensive exhibition that explores how fashion was captured during the artistic movement of the Belle Époque, providing a fresh perspective to the period’s works.
The exhibition begins with two 1874 prints of Publicité de costume des Grands Magasins du Louvre and the front page of Le Figaro dating March 3rd, 1984, announcing the debut of Parisian department store Printemps. The scene is set and the understated opening barely hints at the expansive exhibition beyond.
The first room, themed “The Phenomenon of Fashion,” centers around two jackets and twelve dresses ordered chronologically from 1860 to 1879. Crinoline skirts and cotton mousseline are the staples as layers emerge and the bustle takes shape over the passing of two decades. The last dress, a violet striped and polka-dotted number worn by the wife of French artist Albert Bartholomé, is displayed beside the portrait titled “Dans la serre” (1881) in which it appears. Specialist fashion magazines, including Le Mode Illustré, depict the trends of time. It is revealed that two such illustrations inspired Cézanne’s “Les Deux Soeurs” and “La Promenade” (1871). Among the prints are vintage escarpins with heels no higher than a half-inch and the first bottles of French perfume house Guerlain.
The second and fourth rooms set the stage for a fashion show in ceiling-to-floor red, lined on each side with two rows of gold painted chairs with red velvet cushions and handwritten names of the figureheads of society at the Fin de Siècle. Center of attention are large Manets, each reflected in the oversized mirrors facing them and each reflecting the notable fashions of the time. The exhibition pairs its extensive collection of remarkably maintained dresses with the works that translate their cloth to canvas, capturing their sartorial essence in oil paint. We see near replicas of the detailed black dresses of Manet’s “La Parisienne” (1875) and Renoir’s “Portrait de Madame Charpentier et de ses enfants” (1878).
The space titled “See and be seen” is a demonstration in how eveningwear differentiated depending on the occasion. Tulle, tarlatan, ribbons, lace flounces, ruching, and ruffles come alive in dynamic paintings set at the circus and the opera. “In Private” reveals various boudoir pieces that are cleverly laid out in front of Henri Gervex’s controversial “Rolla” (1878), which depicts a naked woman sprawled across a bed, her dress and undergarments strewn on the floor and chair beside her. Next, a room occupied almost entirely by a glass case full of hats, in velvet and straw, with ribbons or flowers, displays Degas’ renderings of the headwear of the time.
As its second to last theme, the exhibition tackles menswear with a dramatically more subdued showcase of demure dark grays and blacks. While women of that era had dresses for various hours of the day, the men of the late 1800s really only had two options. One look for the day and another for evening. The section is much more stern than the fanciful fashion parade of the sections before, underscoring the opposing gender norms of the time.
The exhibition closes with a breath of fresh air, stepping out onto artificial grass turf into an open room of high ceilings and sky blue walls. “Enjoying the Open Air” presents large outdoor paintings, including Monet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe” and “Femmes au Jardin,” in the spacious setting while light summer dresses rotate slowly within glass cases. The airiness of summer comes to an end with the exhibition’s close and the grey, rainy “Rue de Paris, temps de pluie” by Caillebotte (1871).
September 25th through January 10th, 2013
(except Mondays and holidays)
Free for Students (Must show ID) Musée d’Orsay
Written for The7eme.com.
Copyright © The7eme.com 2012
