Charlotte Gainsbourg Turns Her Father’s Home Right into a Museum

PARIS — Ever since Serge Gainsbourg’s loss of life in 1991, followers have flocked to his home in Paris, plastering the partitions with scrawled tributes. Now his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg is opening the doorways of the residence to the general public, as a part of a cultural establishment that features a museum, café and idea retailer.

Beginning Sept. 20, guests will probably be allowed into the 1,400-square-foot maisonette, which the actress and singer has preserved as a sort of mausoleum for her father, a seminal drive in French tradition finest recognized for his erotic 1969 duet along with her mom Jane Birkin, on “Je t’aime…moi non plus,” a track banned in a number of international locations on account of its overtly sexual content material.  

When she inherited her childhood house at age 19, Gainsbourg would go there to mourn her father privately, since his grave on the Montparnasse cemetery was all the time mobbed with followers.

“I didn’t need to contact something. My aim was to maintain every little thing frozen,” she instructed reporters on Wednesday on the Gainsbarre café, which turns right into a piano bar at evening. “Everybody naturally wished a bit of my father, and I needed to take care of that, however at the least I had this door that I may shut. Every little thing stood nonetheless, as if he have been about to come back again.”     

Packed to the gills with objects and memorabilia, the home offers an awfully intimate glimpse into the non-public lifetime of the French singer-songwriter, actor, composer and director, who penned songs for everybody from Brigitte Bardot to Catherine Deneuve. The couch nonetheless bears the mark of the place he sat, whereas an ashtray overflows with the butts of his Gitanes cigarettes.

Nonetheless, it took Charlotte Gainsbourg greater than three many years to show her imaginative and prescient of a Gainsbourg museum into actuality. At one level, she fantasized about opening a themed lodge round the home. At others, she was tempted to throw within the towel, defeated by the technical challenges of welcoming guests to the cramped area.

In 2008, French luxurious magnate François-Henri Pinault supplied to assist, introducing her to architect Jean Nouvel, who proposed an audacious idea that might have showcased the rooms in glass bins. However with a movie, an exhibition and a ebook about her father launched in fast succession, Gainsbourg felt overwhelmed by the load of her heritage and stalled.

Ultimately, she may not stand to see the place deserted, and the present undertaking took form. Maison Gainsbourg is operated by Arteum, an entity that makes a speciality of museum present outlets, whereas the bar is managed by Paris Society, the hospitality group behind Paris eating places Girafe, Bonnie and Monsieur Bleu.

Famed inside designer Jacques Garcia conceived the fashionable annex, which may be visited collectively with the home or individually. When the primary batch of tickets for the home went on sale in April, they offered out inside seven hours. Slots are absolutely booked till the top of the yr, with extra tickets to be launched periodically.

With its partitions clad in black canvas and its huge assortment of esoteric objects, the inside of 5 bis, Rue de Verneuil was amply documented throughout Gainsbourg’s lifetime. From his Steinway grand piano in the lounge to his library and closet, every little thing is undamaged (there’s even a packet of Sure sponge truffles, since discontinued, within the glass-doored fridge.)

“We caught to a street map, and followers or guests who’re notably attentive will, I hope, discover issues the place they belong,” mentioned Anatole Maggiar, director of content material and programming of Maison Gainsbourg.

Throughout a list of the home’s contents, he catalogued 25,000 paperwork and objects, of which 450 are displayed within the museum situated at 14 Rue de Verneuil, whose design mirrors that of the home. “I felt a bit of bit like Howard Carter discovering Tutankhamun’s tomb,” Maggiar recalled.

Solely 10 persons are allowed inside the home at anybody time, making it a privileged second — and one which guests are requested to not file. They’re guided by an audio expertise, designed by Soundwalk Collective, that mixes Charlotte Gainsbourg’s reminiscences with classic snippets of on a regular basis life within the Gainsbourg-Birkin family.  

It makes for a poignant expertise. Within the bed room, guests hear her account of how she lay down alongside her father, who had handed away in his sleep, along with her sister Kate Barry and his final associate Caroline von Paulus, higher generally known as Bambou, as followers sang on the street exterior. “Time stood nonetheless for what felt like days,” she may be heard saying.

Gainsbourg introduced a documentary about her mom finally yr’s Cannes Movie Competition, however has hardly ever mentioned her father, with whom she recorded the controversial track “Lemon Incest” when she was solely 12.

“We waited for 32 years, however the floodgates actually opened. It’s wonderful what she managed to share. It’s not simple for her,” mentioned Sébastien Merlet, the scientific curator of Maison Gainsbourg and creator of “Le Gainsbook: Within the Studio With Serge Gainsbourg.”

Charlotte Gainsbourg herself sees it barely otherwise. Because the daughter of two nationwide establishments, she’s used to residing her life below a microscope. “I’ve all the time been each extraordinarily non-public, which my father was too, and intensely shameless, which my father was equally,” she mentioned with fun.

“I don’t really feel notably like an exhibitionist and on the similar time, I’m placing individuals within the place of being voyeurs and I’m conscious of that, nevertheless it doesn’t hassle me in any respect, really. I even have my share of secrets and techniques. In fact, there are issues that I don’t speak about. It’s not like I’m an open ebook,” she added.

The actress, who has pushed boundaries herself with movies like “Antichrist” and “Nymphomaniac,” embraces the edgier facet of her father, who in his later years was overshadowed by his drunken alter-ego Gainsbarre, who as soon as set fireplace to a 500-franc notice to protest towards excessive taxes, and lewdly propositioned Whitney Houston on French TV.  

“It’s lower than me to evaluate him. I’ve my recollections, I’ve my very own tackle what he left me that I need to hold intact,” she defined, including that she’s all the time needed to deal with questions on “Lemon Incest,” which she firmly describes as a product of her father’s creativeness.

“He favored to impress individuals and court docket scandal. It’s a part of who he was and I actually respect that. At a time when private expression is being curtailed, fortuitously there have been individuals like him, even when individuals discover it offensive in the present day,” she added.

One facet of Serge Gainsbourg’s heritage that everybody can agree on is his enduring fashion affect. His dandyish wardrobe, in truth, consisted of a handful of shirts, jackets and denims, 4 T-shirts and 4 pairs of his signature white Repetto loafers, all the time worn with out socks — even on a ski vacation.

“Persons are all the time speaking about his Pygmalion relationship with Jane Birkin, as if he had created her, however in alternate for the songs he wrote for her and that she carried out brilliantly, she performed an important position in shaping his fashion, as a result of she arrived straight from Swinging London within the ‘60s,” mentioned Maggiar.  

It was Birkin who inspired Gainsbourg to develop a three-day beard, unbutton his shirts and put on jewellery, he famous.

Within the present store, guests should purchase a duplicate of his frayed Lee Cooper denims, wraparound Pierre Marly shades, Zizi Oxford footwear and even a limited-edition Saint Laurent-designed reproduction of his favourite pin-striped ladies’s jacket, purchased at London’s Portobello marketplace for 2 kilos.

A mode muse herself, Charlotte Gainsbourg enjoys an in depth relationship with Saint Laurent artistic director Anthony Vaccarello, and the posh model, owned by Pinault’s Kering group, is the official associate of the museum, which expects to welcome 100,000 guests a yr. “We couldn’t have carried out it with out them,” she mentioned.

Having misplaced her mom in July, she briefly thought of delaying the opening however lastly determined to forge forward. Her husband, director Yvan Attal, and their youngsters have been among the many first guests. “Individuals discover it actually transferring, however I’m nonetheless shocked by the reactions and I’ve discovered it very soothing,” she mentioned.

She’s already desirous about what comes subsequent as soon as the preliminary flood of followers has subsided. “We’ll should hold the place alive for future generations,” she mused. “It’s fairly thrilling to suppose that sure, I’m turning a web page, nevertheless it’s not fully over. Maybe there may be extra nonetheless to do.”