Jacques Doucet - Yves Saint Laurent - Vivre Pour L'Art

Image via Fondation Pierre Berge - Yves Saint Laurent

Hello dear readers.  This post comes some ten days after my return from Paris where I quite luckily took in this exhibition at the Fondation Pierre Berge - Yves Saint Laurent.  Long time readers are more than familiar with my posts and mini obsession with the collecting prowess of Jacques Doucet.  This exhibition made links between the two couturiers and their voracious collecting habits that were largely against the grain and were testaments to their forward thinking visions.  I came across the press release for the show some months ago and it appeared to highlight about twenty works and I thought it would be a fairly modest yet interesting showing.  I was pleasantly surprised by what the Fondation PB-YSL was able to achieve.

Exhibition vignette -- Image via FOMO blog

The exhibition was able to reunite an impressive amount of material from Jacques Doucet's "Studio" collection, culled from public and private institutions across the globe.  Turning every corner within the galleries was truly a jaw dropping experience.

Exhibition vignettes -- Image via WWD

I was especially struck by Marcel Coard's "Africaniste" sofa from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts being reunited with Henri Rousseau's canvas "The Snake Charmer" lent by the Musee D'Orsay in Paris.

Doucet's "Studio" showing works in-situ -- Image L'Illustration 30 Mai 1930

Exhibition vignette -- Image via Deco-Source

Moments like this are truly breathtaking, when you see pieces separated by time and circumstance reunited with the original collector's vision in mind.  Unfortunately, the exhibition closes today, but the exhibition catalogue is exceptional.  Every single piece is documented and illustrated.  There are also a number of essays weaving a thread between Doucet and YSL and their overlapping collections.  I was particularly grateful for the number of previously unpublished period images that give one a better sense of the layout of Doucet's "Studio" and its contents.  Around every corner was an object that I had never seen in its original context...but I digress.

Doucet "Studio" period images -- Images Fonds Pierre Berge - Yves Saint Laurent

I have plenty of material to pour over for the time being...until next time I leave you with this clip of the exhibition presented by curator Jerome Neutres--AR.