Charlotte Gainsbourg Brings Her Father’s Legacy to Life: The Story Behind the Museum at 5 bis, rue de Verneuil

2023-09-20 12:39:38

Charlotte Gainsbourg had carried this project with her since the death of her father in 1991. Wednesday September 20, 2023, the legendary house of Serge Gainsbourg at 5 bis, rue de Verneuil, remained as it was, as well as a museum dedicated to his life and his work, so often intertwined, open to the public.

On the eve of the event, the singer and actress appeared on the front page and in the columns of Release.

In an intimate interviewthe sole owner of the house that inspired the song The particular hotel confides in the need to make this project a reality to mourn “the person that[elle] love more than anything.”

“When I moved to New York following the death of my sister Kate [Barry, la fille aînée de Jane Birkin, disparue en décembre 2012, ndlr], I thought, either I sell it, or I make a museum, or I show it by appointment but I stop this mourning. Because it is regarding mourning. An unfinished mourning”, she knows. “I opened the house in the hope of letting go”, summarizes the artist later in the exchange.

A click thanks to Yvan Attal

“The distance, living on another continent allowed me to stop this mortuary side. It’s an obligation that I put myself under,” explains to Libé Charlotte Gainsbourg.

The latter reveals that her partner and father of her son and two daughters, the actor and director Yvan Attal, “animated” her, asking her: “Do you realize the burden you are leaving on your children? They didn’t know their grandfather. If you can’t do something regarding this house, it will be up to them to take care of it… They won’t know where to start.”

The interviewee “did not want to leave them with this weight”. “It was necessary to act because in my absence, people sent me photos which prove that [la maison de Serge Gainsbourg] was visited, that parties were organized there without my knowledge. Loads of objects have disappeared,” she also reveals.

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Visit to Maison Gainsbourg: a moving experience at Serge’s, with Charlotte as a guide

Jane Birkin, ultimately reassuring

Pour ReleaseCharlotte Gainsbourg remembers her exchanges with Jane Birkin in Serge Gainsbourg’s lair, following his disappearance.

“Since the first day of her death, she would have liked me to be a sharer. She even suggested to me very early on that I get rid of the house, that I give it to the State, that I offer it to the people , remembers the daughter of the famous couple. I was shocked by her proposal. As if I had to clear my head as quickly as possible or that I had no legitimacy to accept this inheritance.”

The most British of French women left before taking the route imagined by Charlotte Gainsbourg, from the house to the museum, on the sidewalk opposite. But before passing away on July 16, Jane B. “swept” [les] fears, validated [le] project” of her daughter, she shares.

Charlotte Gainsbourg says she asked her if she was “not afraid of the voyeuristic aspect” if the first floor – which houses the bedrooms, the office, the wardrobe, the bathroom – of the house was accessible to visitors, and Jane Birkin then “reassured” her. “It’s good too, the voyeuristic side, it’s not wrong compared to Serge’s personality, the exhibition in which we lived,” his mother replied, encouraging him in his choices.

In the audio guide, the moving voice of Charlotte Gainsbourg accompanies visitors to the house. With an open heart, she confides in them her childhood memories in these rooms, anecdotes regarding the objects.

She indicates to Release that she had proposed, as to her mother, as to Bambou, the last companion of Serge Gainsbourg and the mother of Lulu Gainsbourg, to record their “own journey”.

Jane Birkin replied to her daughter that it was “an era too old for her”. And for her daughter to imagine: “Perhaps she would have found her way in.”

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“She is incredible”: Yvan Attal reveals that Charlotte Gainsbourg proposed to him

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