Tailor-made: how fashion guru Paul Smith earned his stripes designing a bespoke celebration of Picasso in Paris

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, an occasion being marked by a host of exhibitions and events worldwide. Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, one of the key players is the British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith.

‘It has been an exciting and humbling opportunity for me,’ says Smith, the guest artistic director of a major exhibition at the Musée National Picasso-Paris called Picasso Celebration: The Collection in a New Light (which runs to 27 August). He was given carte blanche to select from the 5,000 artworks and tens of thousands of archival items in the museum’s holdings, and to rehang its collection as he chose.

Smith says that, although he is a long-time admirer of Picasso, he doesn’t pretend to offer an academic perspective. ‘My approach was very much about visual and spontaneous associations,’ he says.

A room dedicated to Picasso’s Blue Period, for example, is dimly lit and painted dark blue to accentuate the melancholy of the works on show. A room devoted to the Spaniard’s love of theatre has wallpaper patterned with blue and yellow diamonds, matching the costume worn by Paul, his eldest child, in the painting Paul en Arlequin (1924).

Walk into another room — featuring Picasso’s series of variations on Manet’s masterpiece, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe — and one encounters grass underfoot.

Smith brings to curation exactly the flair and imagination for which he’s renowned in the world of fashion. The show is spread across the first, second and third floors of the Hôtel Salé, the converted 17th-century townhouse in the Marais district that is home to the museum.

Smith has rejected the white-cube mode of seeing art — that is, the adoption of bare walls, ceilings and floors, so prevalent in exhibitions of recent decades. He prefers instead a fuller, more atmospheric gallery experience, which extends beyond the artworks themselves.

Another example of this can be found in a room dedicated to the striped Breton shirt that Picasso wore in a famous set of pictures by the photographer Robert Doisneau in 1952. That item of clothing went on to become synonymous with the artist, and Smith has hung dozens of examples from the ceiling. These ripple collectively above visitors’ heads in the air-conditioning.

‘One thing I’ve tried to do is to bring out Picasso’s playful side,’ says Smith. The largely positive response to the exhibition from reviewers suggests he has succeeded. According to the critic in France’s daily newspaper Le Figaro, writing shortly before the show opened: ‘This blast of fashion from across the English Channel, full of humour and freshness, should be a smash hit.’

The exhibition covers various aspects and styles of Picasso’s long career, but not in any obvious chronological order.

Smith, 77, was invited to curate it five years ago by the Musée National Picasso-Paris’s then director, Laurent Le Bon — who was already thinking about an anniversary show. The designer accepted, and there followed several trips to the museum, along with myriad video calls (much of the planning having to be done remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic). Le Bon has since moved on to the Centre Pompidou, with Cécile Debray now at the helm.

In an interview published in the exhibition catalogue, Smith says: ‘It’s Picasso’s curiosity that really speaks to me, the way he keeps asking “why?”, questioning everything and saying, “of course I can do it, let’s try!”, never shying away from a challenge.’

Smith has built a global fashion brand, with some 200 stores worldwide, including flagships in London, Paris, New York, Milan and Tokyo. Upon leaving school, he actually wanted to become a cyclist — only to change his plans after an accident on his bicycle led to a six-month stay in hospital.

The opening room of the exhibition, in fact, nods to that personal history. It features one of Picasso’s best-loved sculptures, Tête de taureau (1942), in which the Spaniard used a bicycle saddle and handlebars to create a form resembling a bull’s head. On the facing wall, Smith has hung a number of present-day saddles and handlebars.

What this exhibition amounts to is a fresh take on an artist about whom so much has already been said.

As related in the catalogue, Smith has even given thought to what outfit he might design for the Spaniard if he had to dress him for a day. ‘Definitely linen,’ he says, ‘because Picasso had a very relaxed way, and linen is always instantly quite relaxed. Then I’d put him in a very colourful shirt, maybe sunshine yellow.’

Picasso Celebration: The Collection in a New Light is at the Musée National Picasso-Paris until 27 August 2023