Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity links art and fashion

In other parts of the world it might seem a stretch to turn a museum exhibition about one of the greatest periods in painting into a lesson in the history of couture, but not in the city that happens to be the world capital of both.

Welcome to “Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity,” on view through Jan. 20 at that marvellous former railway station, the Musée d’Orsay.

Showcasing 80 paintings by Impressionist masters (including Monet, Manet, Renoir) and some of their contemporaries from the early 1860s to the mid-1880s, this smart and sumptuous exhibition is an impressive co-venture between the d’Orsay and two North American partners, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, each of which will present somewhat different versions of the exhibit in 2013.

In Paris, the show has a special magic that is in danger of being lost on its way across the Atlantic. That’s thanks to the witty and innovative way Toronto-born Robert Carsen has turned this into as high-spirited, dramatic and illuminating an experience as you could hope to have.

Linking artistic masterpieces with fashion trends of the same era, he takes us for a joyride as the wizards of both worlds compete to dazzle their society with knockout creations. Visitors are swept down a runway of cultural and social history while becoming intoxicated with splendid explosions of style and the exuberant mood of la Belle Epoque.

“By the time I got involved, the works of art had already been chosen by curators from the three museums involved and so had the title of the exhibit,” explains Carsen.

(He is better known as one of the world’s leading opera directors than as a museum maestro, but at the moment he is a creative force not just in the Impressionist show but in another Paris exhibit, about the depiction of Bohemians in art, currently at the Grand Palais.)

Guy Cogeval, the president of the Musée d’Orsay (and former director of Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts), told Carsen: “These are the paintings. You choose the clothes.”

It was up to Carsen to come up with a design and decide how the paintings and the clothes should be presented in relation to one another.

“When I was invited to join the project, I didn’t think we could get all the period clothes and I didn’t like the idea of making copies,” said Carsen. “Luckily, we were able to find all those clothes.”

It helps that Carsen lives in Paris (though he works all over the world) and is intimately acquainted with its fashion world as well its opera, museum and theatre worlds. (The son of the late philanthropist Walter Carsen, he grew up in Toronto but left while still a student.)

Carsen persuaded the museum to add sections about accessories: perfume, gloves, fans, shoes, hats.

Immersing himself in the subject, Carsen discovered how fascinating this quarter-century period was. It coincided with the opening of department stores. And Cogeval gave Carsen huge spaces to work with.

The result: a constantly astonishing show with tremendous momentum. It is filled with delicious insights into how artists depicted the social history of the era as reflected in what the people in their paintings were wearing.

The upshot: while exploring the treasures of a great museum, you may also feel you’ve somehow landed in the display window of the world’s most exclusive department store. Many of the dresses on display here are genuine works of art. In the course of a walk-through, a visitor can learn a lot about the use of ribbons, buttons and bows, and become an expert in the evolution of undergarments such as corsets and crinolines.

The 80 oil paintings flow through nine large rooms. In two of those rooms, Carsen has created runways, using paintings instead of models.

Memorable paintings include Renoir’s La Loge, Monet’s Women in the Garden, Manet’s At the Milliner and (on loan from the Art Gallery of Ontario) James Tissot’s The Shop Girl.

An example of Carsen’s flourishes: a room featuring Manet paintings is decorated with a red carpet and an array of dining chairs, each with the name tag of a prominent person of the age. In his research, Carsen learned that the same chairs used by catwalks today are the ones seen in Impressionist paintings.

At the end of the show, runways flow into the vast, open gallery so that we end up in a green, airy garden where scantily clad young people cavort in parks and along river banks.

Different versions of this exhibition will be seen in New York starting in February and in Chicago next summer. Carsen will not work on the New York installation. He will bring his touch to Chicago, but it won’t be the same extravaganza he created for Paris.