Very early, his avant‐garde fashions reflected an understanding of a multicultural society’s issues and preoccupations, shaking up – with invariable good humour – established societal and aesthetic codes. Initiated, developed, produced and circulated by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to mark the thirty‐fifth anniversary of the designer’s own label, this exploration of Jean Paul Gaultier’s creative world has been organized in collaboration with the Maison Jean Paul Gaultier. Following its presentation in Montreal, the exhibition will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art (November 9, 2011–February 12, 2012) and then to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young (March 24–August 12, 2012).

“I wanted to create an exhibition on Jean Paul Gaultier more than any other couturier because of his great humanity,” explained Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. “Beyond the technical virtuosity resulting from exceptional expertise in the various skills involved in haute couture, an unbridled imagination and ground‐breaking artistic collaborations, he offers an open‐minded vision of society, a crazy, sensitive, funny, sassy world in which everyone can assert his or her own identity, a world without discrimination, a unique ‘fusion couture.’ Beneath Jean Paul Gaultier’s wit and irreverence lie a true generosity of spirit and a very powerful message for society. His humanist aesthetic touches me deeply.”

The exhibition – which the couturier considers to be not only a retrospective but a creation in its own right – will feature approximately 120 ensembles, mainly from the designer’s couture collections, but also from his prêt‐à‐porter line, along with their accessories. Created between 1976 and 2010, for the most part these pieces have never been exhibited. Many other exhibits are also being presented for the first time. Sketches, stage costumes, excerpts from films, runway shows, concerts, videos, dance performances and even television programmes will illustrate the artistic collaborations that have characterized Gaultier’s world: in film (Pedro Almodóvar, Peter Greenaway, Luc Besson, Marc Caro and Jean‐Pierre Jeunet) and contemporary dance (Angelin Preljocaj, Régine Chopinot and Maurice Béjart), not to mention the world of popular music, in France (Yvette Horner and Mylène Farmer…) and on the international scene (Madonna and Kylie Minogue…). Fashion photography will also be a major focus of attention, thanks to loans of, in many cases, never‐before‐seen prints from renowned photographers and contemporary artists (Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Erwin Wurm, David LaChapelle, Richard Avedon, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, Steven Klein, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Pierre et Gilles, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Paolo Roversi and Robert Doisneau…).

Keenly interested in all the world’s cultures and countercultures, Gaultier has picked up on the current trends and proclaimed the right to be different, and in the process conceived a new kind of fashion in both the way it is made and worn. Through twists, transformations, transgressions and reinterpretations, he not only erases the boundaries between cultures but also the sexes, creating a new androgyny or playing with subverting hypersexualized fashion codes.

Celebrating the daring inventiveness of his cutting‐edge designs, as well as exploring the audaciously eclectic sources of his ideas, the exhibition will be organized along six different thematic sections tracing the influences, from the streets of Paris to the world of science fiction, that have marked the couturier’s creative development: The Odyssey of Jean Paul Gaultier; The Boudoir; Skin Deep; Eurostar; Urban Jungle; and Metropolis.

Under the leadership of Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk is curated by the MMFA’s Thierry‐Maxime Loriot.

Conceived by Projectiles, a Paris‐based architecture firm, the sophisticated exhibition design will showcase the couturier’s designs, as well as prints and video clips that illustrate Gaultier’s many fruitful artistic collaborations. Thirty mannequins with animated faces provided by ingenious audiovisual projections will be placed throughout the galleries, surprising visitors with their lifelike presence. The design and staging of this poetic and playful audiovisual creation has been entrusted to Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin of the Montreal theatre company UBU. Several celebrities, including Jean Paul Gaultier, models Ève Salvail and Francisco Randez, singer and filmmaker Melissa Auf der Maur, soprano Suzie Leblanc, and TV host Virginie Coosa, have agreed to lend their faces – and sometimes even their voices – to this unique project, which is being presented in a museum for the first time.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will publish a major monograph on the occasion of this exhibition in collaboration with Abrams for the English edition and the Éditions de La Martinière for the French edition. Produced under the general editorship of Thierry‐Maxime Loriot, this magnificent volume (424 pages and over 500 illustrations) will include many interviews with Gaultier’s mentors, muses and colleagues, as well as the artists he has worked with: Pedro Almodóvar, Catherine Deneuve, Madonna, Helen Mirren, Martin Margiela, Pierre Cardin, Dita Von Teese, Marion Cotillard, Kylie Minogue, Polly Mellen and Tom Ford, to name just a few. It will feature many previously unpublished illustrations from renowned fashion photographers and the Maison Gaultier archives. An essay written by Suzy Menkes, journalist at The New York Times and fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, will look at Jean Paul Gaultier’s fashion shows and examine their visionary reflection of society’s evolution over the past thirty‐five years. The work will include two interviews with the designer himself, in addition to an interview with Valerie Steele, fashion historian and director of New York’s The Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology), as well as a timeline of Gaultier’s career and a complete bibliography. The catalogue’s graphic design has been entrusted to the Montreal agency Paprika.

About the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has one of the highest attendance rates among Canadian museums. Every year, its 600,000 visitors enjoy its encyclopedic collection, unique in Canada and free to all, and its original temporary exhibitions, which combine artistic disciplines (fine arts, music, film, fashion, design) and feature innovative exhibition design. The Museum designs, produces and circulates many of its exhibitions in Europe and North America. It is also one of Canada’s leading publishers of bilingual art books, which are distributed worldwide. More than 100,000 families and schoolchildren take part in its educational, cultural and community programmes every year. In 2011, the Museum will open a fourth pavilion dedicated to Canadian and Quebec art, and a 450 seat‐concert hall housing a rare collection of Tiffany stained glass. At the same time, the Museum’s rich collections will be reinstalled in the three other pavilions devoted to ancient cultures, European and contemporary art, as well as the decorative arts and design. Music is now an integral part of the Museum, providing another perspective on the visual arts, through musical audioguides and other innovative activities organized in co‐operation with the new Arte Musica Foundation. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a private, non‐profit institution that must generate the funds for nearly 50% of its annual operating budget and nearly 100% of the acquisition of works for its collection.