Holy high heels: Christian Louboutin’s exhibitionism

The 22nd Biennale of Sydney begins this weekend, and will be the first to showcase the work of indigenous artists from around the world. I’ll be taking a look at the Biennale next week, while keeping my fingers crossed. I’ve learned that it’s best not to go into this event with exalted expectations.

Christian Louboutin’s “The Exhibitionist” at Palais De La Porte Doree in Paris.Credit:Pascal Le Segretain

While the Biennale was being set up, I’ve been in Paris on other business. Even without coronavirus, the timing wasn’t great. Most major venues were between shows or closed for renovations, but there was one bright light in the museum gloom. Christian Louboutin: The Exhibitionist at the Palais de la Porte Doree might have been nothing more than row upon row of fancy shoes.

Instead, Louboutin, probably the world’s most famous living shoe designer, has created a show that tells his life story not by shoes alone, but also through a diverse collection of art and artefacts.

The curator of the show is Olivier Gabet, director of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs (MAD), which is hosting its own enormous shoe show. The MAD exhibition is bigger, but far less engaging, as one becomes wearied by the sheer volume of footwear, dating to a set of sandals worn by an ancient Greek.

It’s as if Gabet has kept his best ideas for the Louboutin show, although one presumes the subject made a decisive contribution. Even the choice of venue is deeply personal, as Louboutin spent much of his childhood lurking in the Palais de la Port Doree when it was the Museum of African and Oceanic Arts. Today this marvellous art deco building is a museum of immigration, but it retains the basement aquarium that has enthralled generations of children.

Designer Christian Louboutin at the opening of The Exhibitionist in February 2020.Credit:Pascal Le Segretain

The Louboutin survey is an entirely novel form – a one-man show which is also a group exhibition. As a shoemaker with the highest cultural aspirations, Louboutin is a precocious egotist but a generous admirer of talent. His comments on the show included in the Rizzoli book that passes for a catalogue are acutely intelligent. What he has to say about Marlene Dietrich or Yves Saint Laurent is worth anthologising.

Louboutin’s success has allowed him to indulge his passions as a traveller and a collector, but then of course one needs somewhere to store one’s treasures. In the book, Eric Reinhardt writes “to accommodate these new objects, which he likes to be surrounded with in everyday life, he buys houses and apartments in various countries he is fond of”. He presumably saved heaps on shipping charges.

Where Louboutin is different from a shopaholic such as Elton John is that most of his purchases seem to be a matter of calculation rather than impulse. Although the exhibition is full of disparate items, Louboutin can explain everything. Some invoke childhood memories, while others might be called "inspirational objects". This propensity to analyse and rationalise is typically French, but the show has enough visual dynamism to keep viewers on the hook from one room to the next.

(L to R) Dita von Teese, Christian Louboutin, Melody Gardot and Jacques Bungert at the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs opening in February.Credit:Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Fashion is notorious for what it lifts from the world of art, although many artists are now actively collaborating with fashion houses. Gabet accounts for Louboutin’s willingness to borrow motifs and ideas by making a case for eclecticism, which he sees as “a humanism, a capacity to be passionate about more than one thing, the opposite of monomania, drabness or mediocrity.”

Louboutin has approached the entire exhibition as a set of stages upon which he plays out aspects of his life and art. One may sit in a “Bhutanese theatre” and watch a hologram of a shoe transforming itself into Dita von Teese, who proceeds to do a burlesque routine. This is a nod to a lifelong love of music hall and cabaret.

Another room is made to resemble an English middle-class lounge room, albeit with an unusual sprinkling of designer shoes. An “adults-only” room presents fetish images of women clad only in shoes, made by Louboutin’s buddy David Lynch. This is also in line with Louboutin’s thoughts on Helmut Newton, that “a woman is even more naked when she’s wearing shoes.” Fetishism may be an inevitable part of any shoemaker’s life, although Louboutin, in his wide-ranging interests, is the very opposite of a fetishist.

A room devoted to a step-by-step explication of how shoes are made, is presented as a series of videos in which a tiny Louboutin, in a bright red suit, clowns around like an elf. Red, as every fashionista knows, is Louboutin’s signature colour, found on the soles of all his shoes.

The star of the show: high heels at Christian Louboutin’s Exhibition at the Palais De La Porte Doree.Credit:Pascal Le Segretain

The shameless theatricality of the presentation is offset by the works of other artists, including pieces from Louboutin’s private collection and special commissions. As a collector, he seeks out items that connect with moments in his own life or figures who hold a lasting fascination. These range from a painting by Eyvind Earle (1916-2000), who designed the backdrops for the great Disney animations, to a picture by Camille Clovis Trouille (1889-1975), an artist known for his comic book style and fierce anti-clericalism. Louboutin is no less attached to Gilbert & George, having attended their first commercial show in Paris when he was 13 years old.

He loves rocks, shells, crowns and crosses. He admires contemporary African art, architect Oscar Niemeyer, renowned window dresser Janine Janet and a long line of actresses and pop stars – from Mae West (whom he describes as “the ultimate pop grandmother”) to Cher and Tina Turner. This may be in line with the gay sub-cultural adoration of strong, iconic female celebrities, but Louboutin is no mere fan. He has reasons for everything.

“He loves rocks, shells, crowns and crosses”: at item from Christian Louboutin’s “The Exhibitionist”.Credit:Pascal Le Segretain

Among artists he has commissioned to make new work, there’s Imran Qureshi, the rising star of Pakistani contemporary art, and New Zealander Lisa Reihana. Like the rest of the world, Louboutin was smitten by Reihana’s panoramic video In Pursuit of Venus [infected] at the 2017 Venice Biennale. For this exhibition, she has produced a room-sized projection called A reverie, which blends indoor and outdoor scenes with the occasional designer shoe, in a mesmeric, psychedelic procession.

At this point, we may leave Louboutin’s fantasy world and return to Sydney, where Reihana will be showing a work called Nomads of the Sea at Cockatoo Island, as part of the Biennale; and stills from the film with Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert (until April 12). One suspects there’ll be no Parisian designers flying in for the show this time, but that’s OK. Reihana’s reputation has already escaped the Antipodean quarantine.

Christian Louboutin: The Exhibitionist, at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris, until July 26.

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