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Serge Gainsbourg exhibition at the Cité de la Musique

A huge exhibition for this French artist who died in 1991, revered around the world as a genius and provacateur. Many items have been specially lent by his family and especially his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg. Serge would have been 80 this year and there hasn’t been another French artist like him since…


Painter, writer, poet, singer, songwriter, actor, filmmaker… for forty years Serge Gainsbourg was – much like Britain’s David Bowie or America’s Bob Dylan – a catalyst for an age, always ahead of his time: his writing, his songs, his collaborations, his aesthetic sense of direction and even the way he handled his private life were often ahead of the public standards for the times – both in society and the arts – inspiring and forcing their evolution.

The exhibition show the modernity of his work with music, words and images. Sampling, mixing, remixng, borrowing, quoting, self-quoting and appropriation were predominant in his work, prefiguring the use of images and sound in the arts today. The exhibition has over a hundred filmed documents, including extracts from films and his many apperarances on TV, photos…

With contributions from Vanessa Paradis, Bambou (Gainsbourg’s wife in the 80s), French singer Alain Chamfort, Isabelle Adjani, Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Dutronc and Lulu (Gainsbourg’s son born in 1986) an audio piece has been created by Frédéric Sanchez, curator of the exhibition, with texts written by Gainsbourg being read out loud by the people who were close to him or who worked with him.

The exhibition is organised into four main areas: the “blue period”, the idols, “décadanse” and Ecce Homo.

As well as guided visits, many other event are being organised such as concerts (including Blonde Redhead and Daniel Darc), showings of films that Serge liked or involved him, and an “itinerant concert” with actor-musicians walking through the museum’s permanent collection readin texts by Rimbaud, Nabokov and Catullus, and playing music by Chopin and Debussy, all of whom played a role in Gainsbourg’s work.

Here is all the essential information for the Gainsbourg exhibition at the Cité de la Musique in Paris

When: 21st October 2008 – 1st March 2009
Where: Cité de la Musique, 221 av Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris. Métro Porte de Pantin (line 5). Bus n° 75, 151, PC2, PC3
Opening hours: open every day except Monday. Tuesday – Thursday 12 – 6pm, Friday and Saturday 12 – 10pm, Sunday 10am – 6pm
Admission: adults 8 €, 4 € for under-18s and people with a handicap
Official exhibition site (you’ll need a bit of French): here
Wikipedia for Serge Gainsbourg: here
Bonus!: did you know that Serge lived in rue de Verneuil in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and that he is buried in the cemetery at Montparnasse? Both of them are not far from our hotels! Perhaps it’s time for a pilgrimage?…


Bigger map here