It’s only a matter of time! Serge Gainsbourg’s home, occupied by the artist for more than twenty years, was transformed into a museum by his daughter Charlotte, born of his relationship with Jane Birkin. The opening is scheduled for the spring and the final details are being finalized. This temple, Serge Gainsbourg himself did not know how to define it: “I don’t know what it is: a sitting-room, a music room, a brothel, a museum” he said on the show The guest Thursday in 1979. One thing is certain, “brothel” was not really the right word. Jane Birkin knows something about it. She, who lived ten years with the artist, remembered this very special place in which she too lived. And as much to say that his interior, Serge Gainsbourg held there more than anything else.
On the set of C to you this Thursday, March 10, Jane Birkin spoke of the maniacal side of the owner of rue de Verneuil in Paris: “You didn’t have to touch anything! […] It was the inside of his head actually, he couldn’t stand the mess, he said he would go crazy because there was already a mess in his head. It was his museum already and Charlotte is the prodigal daughter who made it become a museum after thirty years, a bit like The Sleeping Beauty. If there had been thorns around the house at 5 bis rue de Verneuil and no one had touched them since he went to bed, it’s the same effect when you go inside..”
Jane Birkin said she was overwhelmed by the result of her daughter Charlotte’s long years of work, in tribute to her father: “People will be amazed! It’s so aesthetic, it’s so beautiful.“She was one of the first to discover it and still cannot believe the authenticity that this emblematic place of her life has kept:”You diminish yourself a bit like when you visit the places where you grew up when you were a child. It’s the same strange sensation, that of becoming very small. In Serge’s house, it’s just imagining in the kitchen that there was him, Kate, Charlotte, me, the bull terrier Nana. And there we were, with the spinning chicken, watching fan school in front of the television, on the glass table in front of the glass fridge. And all this is the size of a quarter of this table [celle du plateau de C à Vous, ndlr] so charming, so small. So indeed it is very valuable.” Memories that she will now have to share, no offense to Bénabar.