The Quiet Quarters of Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg’s house at 5 bis rue de Verneuil has been kept much as he left it. The rooms are dark, crowded and very still, and they say more about the man than most of what was written about him in his lifetime.
The visit is guided by sound: an audio walk narrated by Charlotte Gainsbourg and made with Soundwalk Collective. It moves at the pace of the house, room by room, and lets the private Gainsbourg come forward from behind the public one.
That double life is everywhere. There are the clothes and possessions of the performer, the provocateur the public knew, and beside them the signs of a quieter, more fragile person.
The collection runs to some 25,000 objects, photographed by Alexis Raimbault, from personal keepsakes to works of art, among them Lalanne’s L’Homme à Tête de Chou and Dalí’s La Chasse aux Papillons.
Jane Birkin is present throughout. Letters and photographs from their years together sit among his things, a record of a partnership that shaped his work as much as his life.
The contrast with his public reputation is the point of the place. Outside, Gainsbourg was the songwriter and the scandal; inside, the house speaks of a father and a lover, in ordinary objects left where they were.
Close by, Le Gainsbarre carries the story on. A café and piano bar drawn from his early years playing in bars, it is a good place to sit for a while after the house, and let it settle.
( left to right on web, top to down on mobile )
Photo 1 and 2: Maison Gainsbourg; Photo 3: Le Gainsbarre. Photos Alexis Raimbault, 2023. Courtesy of Maison Gainsbourg.
