Gainsb’art – with the participation of Lord Anthony Cahn
As we know, the late Serge Gainsbourg devoted an exclusive cult to the goddess of painting before hanging up the brushes and becoming the genius of the French song which, more than thirty years after its disappearance, continues to enchant the younger generations. Today, it is the artists who pay tribute to him. Painters, sculptors, visual artists, designers and urban art actors, they are 24 to draw a portrait on the walls of Yoxeone Art Gallery, both a luxury boutique and creative venue opened by Sélim Gouaned, rue de la Sourdière, in the heart of Paris, in the spirit of Andy Warhol’s Factory.
This adventure – because it is! – was initiated by Roberto Battistini, the photographer who, in the autumn of 1985, made roundabout portraits of the singer, including the one, who remained in the collective memory, of Gainsbourg in Dalí, with wide-eyed eyes and moustaches raised in the sky. The others – Gainsbourg gitane with the beak or wearing a beret.. -, are no less emblematic. It is from these portraits that Battistini asked confirmed artists to inscribe their own universe and look on the dandy of pop. Under the title Gainsb’Art, the project has grown as international creators from all generations, countries and universes have joined it.
/ ©Lord Anthony Cahn/ Roberto Battistini
The door of Yoxeone Art Gallery not yet crossed, it is the variations of the Parisian Lord Anthony Cahn around the Rue de Verneuil that we discover through the window. Recognized for his work on the “walls” that he sculpts at different scales, the artist has endeavored, as usual, to capture the spirit of an emblematic place, that here of the Parisian residence of Serge Gainsbourg where should soon open the house-museum dedicated to the singer.
Created from building materials covered with colorful posters and graffiti, evocative of Battistini’s portraits, the “wall” reveals itself quite differently on its interior façade, painted in black, like the radical color code adopted by the cabbage head man at home. The double-sided work is full of details, sometimes miniature, that are apprehended beyond the first glance. Icing on the cake: the buyers of the “wall”, as of all the others, are granted an act of property in due form. (Let us specify that this wall of the Rue de Verneuil is for sale to the tune of 17,000 euros).
© / Juan Le Parc/ Roberto Battistini
Among the other visual artists who played the game, the German Peter Klasen, co-founder of the narrative figuration, appropriates the famous Gainsbourg in Dalí and sprinkles it with graphic evocations of the provocs of the great Serge, including the unforgettable 500-franc note burned with a zipper on a television news. Further on, the Marseillais SkunkDog, faithful to its artistic signature, mixes texts, signs, materials and vibrant chromatic palette, while Juan Le Parc masterfully embodies a bald Serge, L’Homme à la tête de fou du chocolat Lanvin. Just as striking are the moving I love you and I’m afraid I will lose myself woven by the red thread by the outstanding knitter Anna Kache, Stéphane Pencréac’h’s Cargo Cult, and the assemblages rich in symbolism of Eric Liot. Without counting the self-portrait of Orlan hybridizing, rather happily, with Gainsbourg and Dalí.
/ ©Stéphane Pencréac’h/ Roberto Battistini
Any tribute to Serge Gainsbourg is worth taking. Hexagon knows something about it, which successively hosted the Gainsb’Art event in the Bettina, BOA, Keza and W galleries, in Paris, Art to Be Gallery in Lille, then that of David Pluskwa, in Marseille, before welcoming, last summer, tens of thousands of visitors to the Sainte-Anne de La Baule chapel. The long-awaited opening of the Maison Gainsbourg will no doubt be the next XXL step in this timeless tribute to the French song chisel that we keep celebrating.
By Letizia Dannery
