Artworks of Yves Saint Laurent and Bergé to be sold
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PARIS: Pierre Bergé sits four square on a leopard print sofa - a Picasso to his right and a Léger above his head - with the same pugnacious look as the bulldog, Moujik, who is sniffing round the late Yves Saint Laurent's apartment.
"Fashion has no connection with art - the entire idea of discourse between art and fashion has been invented," says Bergé, who spent 50 years with Saint Laurent acquiring fine art and supporting high fashion.
"I never thought that fashion was an art - not at all, but I think it requires an artist to do fashion," says Bergé. He might have added that it takes two artistic souls to juxtapose works of art, creating a home where each object seems to be in conversation with the other.
But these exceptional cultural dialogues are now over. After the death of Saint Laurent last summer, everything is to go under the hammer in February: Brancusi and Braque; Matisse and Mondrian; the gold and silver objects standing sentinel on a Jean-Michel Frank table; the Italian rococo chairs circling an Art Deco marble dining room table; and the 15 sinuous bronze mirrors created by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne for the music room.
Until the auction, to be held by Christie's in February at the Grand Palais in Paris, with the support of Pierre Bergé Associés, collectors are flocking to see these extraordinary artworks that span so harmoniously historical periods and geographical continents.
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Bergé is clear and concise about the diverse objects and how they are displayed, with only a masterpiece quality uniting them.
"Everyone can be an art collector, but you don't always have the same result," says Bergé. "Yves and I wanted a collection that was demanding. We did not buy art before we had money, except for the African bird." (He was referring to a carved wooden totem facing the windows of the long drawing room.)
"Our first object was in 1965 - a Brancusi sculpture - very expensive at the time," says the creative entrepreneur, talking about the abstract wood carving. He explained how the two partners worked with a pair of galleries in a period when you could still buy museum-quality modern art.
To sit in Saint Laurent's drawing room, the sun slanting over the Goya that the designer loved too much to loan to Madrid's Prado museum ("I had to have a photograph made for him to look at," says Bergé) is to witness a home of pure refinement.
Some art objects had emotional connections to their life as a couple: the lions - in silver or bronze, crouching and rampant - that Bergé gave to Yves on his birthdays, "because he was a Leo." Or there were memories of the early days, when Saint Laurent could still go out unrecognized, yelling at Bergé to slam on the car brakes because he had spotted "something marvelous" in an antique store on the Rue Bonaparte. The couple had taken a nearby apartment at No. 55 Rue de Babylone in 1972. What they found were copper and lacquer vases by Jean Dunand from the Art Deco period that was only just coming back into fashion.
Early Modernism forms the soul of the style at this duplex apartment. The sale in 1972 of the collection of the Belle Epoque couturier Jacques Doucet set the tone for the daring choices, which include a dragon-decorated 1920s armchair by Eileen Gray.
"A collection is like a dinner table. It is about who is invited, but also who is not there," says Bergé. "We would have liked to have Barnett Newman, Bacon and perhaps Pollock. But we were not didactic. We wanted objects that talk to each other. And we did our collection with a lot of passion, but with certitude."
The concept of an artistic faceoff, now a staple of museum shows, was born in the hôtel particulier of Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles. Bergé, 78, who first visited the mansion in his early 20s, talks about the "audacity of the mix" in the art.
Memories of an Edward Burne-Jones tapestry at the top of the grand staircase at the de Noailles residence translates in the YSL apartment as a Burne-Jones "Adoration of the Magi," executed in 1904, its fiery, russet Pre-Raphaelite colors burning brightly in the light and airy library downstairs. There, the framed "family" photographs on the bleached book shelves gaze out at the ancient Roman Minotaur sculpture in the garden.
Even without Moujik wandering the rooms, the apartment has a homey feel. At the bottom of the stairs, beside a pair of Chippendale chairs, an artistic medley is showcased in the "cabinets de curiosité," built by Jacques Grange, a close friend and interior designer. The contents include a cluster of cameos, rock crystals, agate chalices and ivory carvings.
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