When Keith Haring picked up a brush in 1983 to create the Montreux Jazz Competition poster, and when David Bowie took his flip in 1995, they had been taking part in a practice that had already established itself as probably the most prestigious commissions in visible arts. Since 1967, the Swiss competition has handed artistic freedom to painters, illustrators and graphic designers, constructing a group of posters that chart practically six a long time of visible tradition.
This yr, nevertheless, the competition has decided that indicators one thing extra important than merely selecting one other artist. By appointing clothier Kévin Germanier to create the poster for its sixtieth version in 2026, Montreux has damaged new floor; not only for the competition, however for the more and more porous boundaries between artistic disciplines.
Kévin’s creation is the primary embroidered poster within the competition’s historical past, a three-dimensional paintings composed of greater than 60,000 upcycled beads, sequins, and supplies meticulously hand-stitched onto velvet. Six artisans labored concurrently to attain what the designer describes as “organised chaos” – a technical feat that required the precision and collaborative vitality of a high fashion atelier.
Higher nonetheless, each aspect—from glass and picket beads to fragments {of electrical} tubing—has been salvaged from earlier collections, embodying Kévin’s unwavering dedication to sustainability.
The evolution of a practice
The selection represents a departure from conference, but it sits comfortably inside the competition’s historical past of risk-taking.
Artwork marketing consultant Pierre Keller recruited artists reminiscent of Jean Tinguely, Keith Haring, Niki de Saint Phalle and Andy Warhol to create paintings for the competition within the Nineteen Eighties, establishing Montreux as a platform the place visible artwork and music tradition intersect. Extra just lately, artists together with Yoann Lemoine (Woodkid), Malika Favre, Christian Marclay, Ignasi Monreal, JR and Camille Walala have contributed designs.
What makes Kévin’s appointment noteworthy is not merely that he works in style; it is the methodology he brings with him. The place poster artists sometimes work inside the acquainted territories of portray, illustration, or graphic design, Kévin has translated the labour-intensive processes of high fashion into a historically two-dimensional medium.
The result’s a poster that exists as each paintings and artefact, a chunk that shall be exhibited at MUDAC in Lausanne as a part of the designer’s exhibition Les Monstrueuses earlier than discovering its place within the competition boutique.
When sustainability turns into spectacle
It is sometimes groundbreaking work for the Swiss designer, now primarily based in Paris, who’s constructed his popularity on the premise that sustainability in style needn’t require sacrifice.
After profitable the Redress Award in 2015, a contest judged by sustainable style advocate Orsola de Castro, Kévin established his eponymous label in Paris in 2018. His work for Björk, Beyoncé and Woman Gaga, alongside latest costume design commissions for the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games ceremonies and the Eurovision Tune Contest in Basel, demonstrates how upcycling can obtain theatrical affect with out compromising on glamour.
For the brand new poster, Kévin immersed himself within the competition’s archive, finding out a long time of labor earlier than choosing a course impressed by the 1982 design by the sculptor Jean Tinguely.
Kévin’s alternative of color palette, black background and feather motifs all reference that earlier piece, while the maximalist aesthetic stays unmistakably Kévin’s personal. “My favorite Montreux posters are people who signify the Competition in a non-literal means,” he explains. “Music is not only a saxophone or a guitar; it is a feeling. I attempted to convey that explosion, that emotion that strikes each your physique and your coronary heart.”
Cross-pollination as artistic technique
One of many issues that Kévin’s appointment reveals is the growing fluidity between artistic disciplines on the highest degree. Vogue designers are creating stage units, graphic designers are producing installations, and musicians are directing movies. The normal silos that when separated these practices are dissolving, changed by a mannequin the place method and craft can migrate freely between contexts.
It is one in every of a collection of impressed selections the competition has made just lately. Final yr’s poster was created by London-based artist Lakwena, whose typographic design was the primary of its sort in Montreux’s historical past, that includes textual content because the central aspect and quoting Nina Simone’s lyrics.
Earlier than that, Geneva artist Rylsee created a road art-inspired poster targeted on festivalgoers themselves, quite than literal representations of music. With every of those commissions pushing the custom in new instructions, it is clear the competition’s management sees the poster collection not as a static archive, however as a residing dialogue about what visible artwork might be.
Inventive journey
The bodily poster will journey from MUDAC to the competition, the place it will likely be displayed alongside works by a few of the most celebrated visible artists of the previous six a long time. That journey—from museum to competition boutique, from high fashion atelier to cultural landmark—traces the trail that artistic work more and more follows: crossing contexts, adapting to new audiences, refusing to remain inside prescribed boundaries.
As Montreux prepares for its sixtieth version, Kévin’s embroidered, upcycled, three-dimensional poster stands as proof that essentially the most attention-grabbing artistic work usually occurs when practitioners convey their experience to unfamiliar territory.
The query is not whether or not style designers can create posters or whether or not illustrators can design costumes. It is whether or not we’re ready to desert the classes altogether and embrace a extra fluid, collaborative mannequin of artistic apply. On the proof of this fee, the reply seems to be sure.
