We often recognize artists through their work. Sometimes, though, we recognize them before they have even touched a brush to canvas: by a smock, a silhouette, a way of wearing clothes as if making a statement. The exhibition The Artist’s Wardrobe at the Bourdelle Museum asks a wonderfully simple question: what do our clothes say about who we want to be? For artists, the answer involves freedom and labor, self-presentation and the gaze of others.
A Discovery Among Bourdelle’s Belongings
It begins with a rediscovery in 2020: clothing that belonged to sculptor Antoine Bourdelle comes to light. What could have remained a biographical curiosity opens onto a much larger investigation. Clothes bear traces of a body, a period and a profession. They can tell us how an artist worked, how they wanted to be seen and what place they hoped to occupy in society.
Running from September 23, 2026 to January 24, 2027, the exhibition brings together garments, accessories, paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs. The objects are not treated simply as relics: they converse with images of the people who wore them. That is where the subject becomes fascinating. Between the portrait and the person, between a real fabric and its representation, there can be a carefully constructed distance.
Smocks, Suits and Personas
At the end of the nineteenth century, there was no single dress code for artists. Some appeared in everyday formal clothes; others adopted work smocks or overalls. These choices were not neutral. Showing clothes marked by studio labor could assert an identity as a maker and emphasize the physical reality of creation. An elegant silhouette might suggest a different social position, another way of inhabiting the art world.
The exhibition brings together figures as different as Gustav Klimt, Rosa Bonheur, Foujita, Sonia Delaunay and Camille Bernier. I find it fascinating that people we instinctively associate with paintings and images can also be understood through what they chose to wear. Clothing becomes an indirect self-portrait: it presents not only a body but an attitude.
Making an Image, Claiming Freedom
Rosa Bonheur, whose career challenged many conventions imposed on women, reminds us that appearance can be a matter of practical freedom. With Sonia Delaunay, the boundary between painting, color, textiles and dress becomes even more porous: clothing a body can extend an artistic experiment. Klimt’s distinctive smock, meanwhile, forms part of the visual memory we retain of him. There is no single way to be an artist, and that is exactly what these silhouettes reveal.
It would be easy to think this belongs to the past. Yet in an age when artists also present themselves on social media, film their studios and sometimes turn their faces into signatures, the subject feels strikingly contemporary. How much of our image do we construct? When does that image become a parallel artwork? The exhibition offers no single answer; it invites us to look differently at studio photographs and portraits we thought we knew.
At the Bourdelle Museum, Intimacy Meets Art History
There is something moving about watching an everyday garment enter the realm of history. A painting can survive centuries with its brilliance intact; a jacket immediately recalls the physical presence of the person who wore it. It retains the scale of an absent body. Perhaps that closeness makes this exhibition distinctive: behind the legend of the artist, we find a person who dressed, worked, posed and doubted.
L’Étoffe de l’artiste: De Rosa Bonheur à Sonia Delaunay is at the Bourdelle Museum, 18 rue Antoine-Bourdelle in Paris, until January 24, 2027. A late opening until 8 p.m. is scheduled for November 6. More than a show about fashion, it is an invitation to observe how an artistic identity takes shape—through fabric, images and many choices, conscious or otherwise.
