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There are artists we think we know inside and out, and then a museum decides to look elsewhere. This is what the Musée Réattu in Arles is doing, dedicating, for the third time in its history, a two-part exhibition to Christian Lacroix: one focusing on his drawing style, the other on his eye as a collector. After haute couture in 2008, and stage costumes in 2012, what has always been his lifeblood—the line—is finally revealed.
“Drawings, Scribbles and Graffiti” brings together previously unseen works from private collections and all 69 drawings that the artist deposited with the museum between 2015 and 2024, created during his time at the haute couture house. Without formal training, Christian Lacroix developed a remarkably virtuosic style from a very young age, working with pencil, felt-tip pen, ink, gouache, and collage, drawing on a vast visual culture. “I never intended to become a painter, but always to draw in service of a project,” he confided to The Express in 2010.
The collection on display reveals the obsessions, or rather the totems, that run through his entire oeuvre: Arles, the Arlesienne woman, Provence, the Camargue, the bull, bullfighting, the history of costume—all motifs constantly revisited, reinterpreted, exaggerated, with his characteristic epic and picaresque flair. Drawn on hotel notebooks, envelopes, sticky notes, or medicine boxes, these scribbles speak of a necessity: the need to draw, all the time.
In a similar vein, "Photography Collector" explores another, more private facet of this multifaceted creator: his perspective on the photographic image. Through personal passions and professional projects, Christian Lacroix has built a remarkably coherent collection. It features scenes of everyday life by Véronique Ellena and Guillaume Janot, poetic and unconventional visions of fashion by Sarah Moon and Grégoire Alexandre, and his own face, captured over more than 20 years by Annie Leibovitz, Paolo Roversi, Mario Testino, and Erwin Wurm.
Two exhibitions, one same gesture: that of an artist who has never stopped looking, drawing, collecting images to always make a theatre out of them.
“Christian Lacroix, Drawings, Scribbles and Graffiti” and “Christian Lacroix, Photograph Collector”
Réattu Museum
10 Rue du Grand Prieuré, 13200 Arles
From 4 July to 4 October 2026
http://www.museereattu.arles.fr/
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