Christian Bérard Helped Shape Fashion History—The Artist Finally Gets His Due in a New Exhibition in Monaco Bebe Berard

Almost any account you can find of Bérard includes a description of his appearance. A handsome, bearded man who looked fetching in a smoking, he was better known for his dishevelment. In fact, he was so famously disheveled that a biography of the artist is titled Clochard Magnifique, or Magnificent Tramp. His constant companion was a white dog, which was usually as paint-stained as its artist owner. Bérard earned the nickname Bébé for his baby face. It was what Cocteau (who introduced the artist to the opium that would become an addiction) called him and it stuck.

The exhibition at Monaco’s Villa Paloma is divided into three parts over three floors. It opens with the theme of interiors, and includes Bérard’s work for Jean-Michel Frank (also a close collaborator of Schiaparelli), as well as set design. Mauss has recreated the famous trompe l’oeil decor Bérard created for L’Institut Guerlain in 1939, and there’s a particular focus on beds. Bérard was often photographed in repose; his bedroom doubled as his studio and he toiled there late into the night.

The Mediterranean is the theme of the third floor, and is the subject most in sync with Villa Paloma’s locale, through whose windows one sees only endless expanses of blue sea and sky. Bérard’s partner Kochno was the Director of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with whom Bérard worked, and they both spent a lot of time on the Cote d’Azur. In Bérard’s work, the sea is a stand-in for Western and European civilization. Not only do his paintings reference the history of art, but he comes back time and time again to the (romanticized) idea of classical culture. Bérard was 12 when the First World War broke out, and the clouds of the Second World War were gathering in the mid to late 1930s when he was at his most prolific. In this context, the longing for something continuous and lasting is very understandable.

The second floor is dedicated to the theme of Enchantment, which is perhaps the most trenchant characteristic of Bérard’s fashion work. Here the classical and the rococo both flourish. The easy calligraphy, the pulsing animation of a line that suggests rather than dictates. The colors as delightful and delicious as candy.