Apart from glass panels halfway up which leave the visitor at the entrance to the rooms, the place has remained as it was when the artist died.
“Let me open the door for you”: welcome to 5 bis rue de Verneuil in Paris, the legendary lair of Serge Gainsbourg which finally opens to the public on September 20, with the voice of his daughter Charlotte via audio guide. The childhood memories of the singer and actress – in French or in English, your choice – carry this half-hour sound journey and avoid the effect of entering a mausoleum.
Apart from half-height glass panels which leave the visitor at the entrance to the rooms – and prevent him from touching everything – the place remains as it was when the artist died in 1991 As seen for years by friends – Jacques Dutronc, Françoise Hardy, etc. – journalists invited for interviews, as well as taxi drivers and police officers with whom “Gainsbarre” liked to “drink” as the murmurs Charlotte Gainsbourg.
BERTRAND GUAY / AFPPeople take photos of the wall in front of the house of the late French musician, composer and singer Serge Gainsbourg, in central Paris, on March 2, 2021, thirty years after his death
We enter through the living room. There are the expected elements, the black piano – the same color as the walls and ceilings – the gold records, the photos of the women in his life – Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Bambou – and the icon Marilyn Monroe. The most moving thing is a bench, slightly distorted on the left, where the owner always sat. Her daughter’s voice cracks a little at this point in the headphones.
The most surprising thing is the hundred badges left by police officers – as well as a few pairs of handcuffs – invited to toast at the end of the night with the author of “The Javanese”.
“Don’t move anything”
“As soon as he died, I wanted to not move anything, immediately I talked about opening a museum because he himself had talked about it,” Charlotte Gainsbourg told a few journalists during a a round table Wednesday afternoon. The journey to the opening of Maison Gainsbourg, at 5 bis rue de Verneuil and a museum dedicated to “The Man with the Cabbage Head” at 14 rue, lasted 32 years. With sequences of excitement and doubts. “There were moments of great dust, when I no longer had confidence and I no longer wanted anyone to enter,” confides Charlotte Gainsbourg.
/ArchivesParis: Portrait of Serge Gainsbourg taken on March 11, 1984 at Studio Cognacq-Jay during the show 7 sur 7 of which he is the guest.
With the death in July of Jane Birkin, his mother, who had lived within its walls between the end of the 1960s and her departure in 1980, tired of the excesses of “Gainsbarre”, the question of postponing the opening arose. is posed. “But there was no reason to push back,” his daughter whispers to the press.
Yohan BONNET / AFPJane Birkin and her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg in 2021
Guardian of the temple, the artist managed to make time freeze in the house. Yes chocolate cakes – an iconic brand of the 1980s – are vintage, intact in plastic. At 14 rue de Verneuil, the museum allows you to exhibit objects that were not visible in this doll’s house, cramped despite its 130 square meters as the collector Gainsbourg piled up so many trinkets there. In a museum window, the school reports before he entered 6th grade are touching. Some 100,000 visitors are expected per year.
2023-09-15 08:19:09
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