Isarian countryside

November 2015, Juliette Gréco explodes. A black Gréco anger: mind-blowing. "Her" painting has disappeared. In the large stone house of Verderonne, in the Oise, there is a general commotion. "I am very unhappy, I feel like a little piece of my life has been ripped away from me," laments the singer, then aged 88, who lives in the Isarian countryside with her husband, the pianist and composer Gérard Jouannest. There is disorder in this house where family, collaborators, journalists, relatives, employees, the conquered, the devoted, the sycophants circulate.

fame

Today, the painting is at the Gainsbourg Museum, on loan for five years by the Steinitz family. Here again, a little twist. Before the sale, the Gainsbourg house under construction was interested in the painting. The Gainsbourg clan had made overtures to Julie-Amour Rossini. Having learned of this, Benjamin Steinitz had written to Charlotte Gainsbourg just before the sale. "I told her that if she wanted to acquire the painting, I would not push the bidding, in order to avoid the work moving away from the family." She did not respond, he bought it. Also read the story: Article reserved for our subscribers In the Gainsbourg House, Charlotte celebrates her father's glory Add to your selections But, immediately, La Maison Gainsbourg requested a loan. "It was complicated to move from the will to the reflection. I thought: "It would be nice if it was at the Gainsbourg Museum, in his house, at his place." I was moved. But to detach myself from it... explains Benjamin Steinitz . With my wife, we had imagined putting it in our room, in front of the bed. On the eve of the inauguration, I was not ready. And then, I thought that it would please Monsieur Serge." He gave in, out of respect, at the very last minute. As for Julie-Amour Rossini, she gave the Gainsbourg Museum another object cherished by her grandmother, a letter sent to the singer by the Ginsburg parents thanking her for having created La Javanaise, the cornerstone of their son's fame.

Still alive, Jacqueline and Liliane live in Paris, far from the public eye, just like Serge Gainsbourg's first two children, Natacha and Paul, born in the 1960s to Françoise-Antoinette Pancrazzi, his second wife, known as Béatrice, 92 years old and still silent. Liliane, Jane Birkin told us before her death in July 2023, is "completely kind. She doesn't have Serge's cruel cynicism. It's as if he had taken all the sarcastic sides while keeping the romantic. She was Madame Bovary." And she concluded: "The two sisters were terrifying at Scrabble."

"When you have, like me, a soul folded into a fetus, you need to provoke to loosen it up," said the one they called "Ginette" at school, he was so cute. Gainsbourg-Gainsbarre, Lucien-Serge... In search of unity, twins, even "false" ones , have a particular, dual functioning. They are looking for the lost fusion and sometimes mix genres. "Looking at the hidden twin sister allows another reading of Serge Gainsbourg's work, this probably explains his inclinations towards cross-dressing, including as a Nazi," suggests Bruno Bayon, former journalist at Libération and author of Gainsbourg mort ou vices (Grasset, 1992), a book of interviews in which the singer recounts his death, drawing up a salty assessment of his depths and his sexuality. This resonates with Gainsbourg's hidden-shown ." On the cover of Love on the Beat, photographed by William Klein, Gainsbourg appears made up as a woman – “the spitting image of his sister,” Jane Birkin observed. Not the older one, Jacqueline. “The other one, his twin.” The one in the sandbox. Never short of inspiration in the meanness, Juliette Gréco whispered to us  : “The girl in the painting is ugly. The twin sister was Gainsbourg as a woman and it was worse. She was hideous, appalling. He wasn’t ugly, he had an incredible inner beauty and a shattering charm.”

Because Les Enfants du square is a dive into the psyche of its author and his childhood. The little boy on the right of the painting is him. The little girl is his twin sister. The family nucleus – and his twinning – of the singer is an aspect very little known to the general public. Thus, in the Ginsburg family, after the death of a first son, Marcel, taken at the age of 16 months by pneumonia, Jacqueline was born in 1927, then twins, Liliane and Lucien, on April 2, 1928. Jane Birkin analyzed the situation thus: "Olga had had a little boy who died, Jacqueline was born and, now, Olga is expecting twins, she does not dare to have the abortion in Pigalle, and when the twins come out, it is Liliane first. Believing that the twins are necessarily identical, Olga starts to cry, because she sees herself with three girls! And when Serge comes out, it is: boy, joy, surprise! What a relief! Obviously, Olga was unfair, typical of Jewish families." Serge Gainsbourg and his twin sister, Liliane, circa 1930. PERSONAL DOCUMENT The price is high. Serge fills the void left by his dead brother. He has to be perfect, he couldn't make any mistakes. Any fusion with his twin becomes impossible. After childhood, Liliane fades away. Married to Meyer Zaoui, she becomes a teacher in Casablanca. She is not against this occultation. Never cut off, contact with her brother becomes "rather impersonal. He impressed me because he was sometimes a bit icy. There was a certain staging. He would have me come into his house and admire his fabulous interior," she confided to Gilles Verlant, Gainsbourg's biographer. The day their mother died in 1985, Serge withdrew with Liliane to rue de Verneuil, where they listened together to Ravel's Pavane pour une infante morte . "It stirred my insides," she continued. Twinhood would torment Gainsbourg all his life. "When I started working with Serge in 1977, he was very afraid of becoming Mr. Birkin," explains Alain Chamfort. " He didn't talk about his twinhood, he repressed it. However, there is always a part of childhood in the artist. And he had known this complicated state of union, made of love and hatred, a closed relationship where no one enters." The composer of Manureva, himself the father of twins, adds: "Gainsbourg was a character full of contradictions, torn between misogyny and love of women."

Then he listens to Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles, with the song Juif et Dieu, then Rock Around the Bunker and the famous Nazi Rock . "I was born under a lucky star - yellow , " joked Gainsbourg. Benjamin Steinitz, who married a Russian, is delighted with these pirouettes. "It's all very Ashkenazi. It speaks to me, it echoes in my head. I felt as crazy as he was, minus the talent."

In November 2021, a year after her grandmother's death in Ramatuelle, Julie-Amour Rossini, who lives in Roscoff, Brittany, far from the rumors of fashion and show business, organizes an auction at Drouot, through the Crait-Müller auction house. "It was an adventure, I will remember it," confides Thomas Müller. There is everything, automatons, stage dresses (the most beautiful were donated to the Musée Galliera), bags, objects, gifts from major brands. And the famous painting. Read also (2014) | Article reserved for our subscribers A painting by Serge Gainsbourg, offered to Juliette Gréco in 1959, sold at auction Add to your selections Sold for 132,000 euros with fees, it was sold for more than the Foujita. The buyer wanted to be discreet. However, he could not help but post a photo on Instagram, with the comment: "honor, happiness and emotion, forever inspiration" . The Children in the Square find themselves, pale and devilishly incongruous, in the middle of photos of furniture, busts, antique chandeliers and extreme refinement. Antique dealers Marina and Benjamin Steinitz, who acquired Gainsbourg's painting in 2021. Here, in their gallery, in Paris, in January 2024. FRANKIE & NIKKI FOR M LE MAGAZINE DU MONDE The account is, in fact, that of the prestigious Steinitz Gallery, specializing in the sale of 18th century furniture and objects  . Located on Rue Royale, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, it was founded in 1968 by Bernard Steinitz, a Jew originally from Poland. "My father had a sparkling look in his eyes, he thought that everything he experienced after the Holocaust was a bonus , " says Benjamin, his son, who took over from him in 1998. When, at the end of 2021, the latter saw the Gréco sale in the Gazette de Drouot, he spotted the canvas. "I was extremely moved by this painting. It is pretty, aesthetic, but so is its story." Between Gainsbourg and Gréco, parallel lives, years of stubborn resistance. If he gave in to this "impulse purchase", it is because, he says, invisible links were woven between the Gainsbourg family and his own, "a slightly crazy family" , and a resounding success in the arts, without worrying about fashions: "It was very emotional. I wanted to buy it without feeling like I owned anything, but to be the repository of our stories . Yes, I really liked Gainsbourg, the artist. My older sister, who had a complicated life, who died from her excesses, had given me the album Aux armes et cætera ."

"After this show, he came to my house and said: 'I burned everything, destroyed everything, I'm giving you this. It's the only one left,'" explained the friend of Sartre and Desnos. Elisabeth Levitsky, the former wife, sees in Juliette Gréco, a certified seductress, the armed hand of this desertion. "Her ambiguous, deep relationship with the painting was rooted in a kind of guilt for having led Gainsbourg away from his passion for painting and for having participated in his conversion to song," according to Didier Varrod. Juliette Gréco never parted with the object. Speaking to José Artur on France Inter in 1987, the singer confided: "I love this painting. It was above my bed, but I carry it around the house. It's more than a painting, it's a part of him." The painting "Ginsburg" was carried around as its owner moved. Juliette Gréco was the first to live on rue de Verneuil, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, at number 33, in a house acquired in the early 1960s thanks to a casino win - Gainsbourg bought number 5 bis in 1968. Juliette Gréco and Serge Gainsbourg on the set of the show “Top à…”, by Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier, in 1964. INA VIA AFP Then there she was on Rue d'Alésia, in the 14th arrondissement , next to the Hardy-Dutroncs. In 1966, she bought a country house in Verderonne, which she shared with her new husband, Michel Piccoli. The migrant painting settled there. "There were two small offices, one with sofas, the other with a bookcase. The painting was on the floor, like the children," recalls Julie-Amour Rossini. Sometimes drowned in the middle of dozens of dolls, postcards, statues of African art, acquired at the time of her affair with the American film producer Darryl Zanuck. After her stroke, Juliette Gréco settled permanently in the house in the hills of Ramatuelle, in the Var. When she moved, her granddaughter asked: "Where do you want me to put the Gainsbourg, granny?" The champion of words then lost her speech, but not her lucidity. "She held out her hand, there, on the mantelpiece in her room, right in front of her eyes. Next to a drawing by the Japanese painter exiled in Montparnasse, Foujita, representing her and photos of her grandfather whom she loved so much. This painting represented Gainsbourg's tenderness and intimacy."

In the early 1950s, the "painter in the making" was struggling, unsure of his talent and penniless. In 1954, he replaced his father, Joseph, the regular pianist at the Montmartre cabaret Madame Arthur . Classically trained, Joseph Ginsburg supported the family by accompanying transgender stars Coccinelle and Bambi, as well as Lucky Sarcelle, for whom Lucien wrote his first song, Antoine le casseur, registered with Sacem that year under the name Julien Grix. In 1957, after changing his identity, Serge Gainsbourg divorced "Lise" and painting. Exit major art. Les Enfants au square survived his rage. In 1959, well before La Javanaise (1963), Serge Gainsbourg offered it to Juliette Gréco. Reading this content may result in the deposit of cookies by the third-party operator who hosts it. Given the choices you have expressed regarding the deposit of cookies, we have blocked the display of this content. If you wish to access it, you must accept the “Third-party content” cookie category by clicking on the button below. Accept to view content The interpreter, friend of the existentialists, was already dominating the post-war intellectual scene when she met Gainsbourg with protruding ears, speechless and dying of stage fright. They frequented Les Trois Baudets, the Montmartre cabaret run by the producer Jacques Canetti, of which Boris Vian, whom they admired, was a mainstay. They shared a passion for Titian, in particular for The Man with a Glove, painted around 1520. "They talked about painting for hours," says Didier Varrod, journalist, documentary filmmaker and musical director of Radio France. " Since they were broke, they spent their days wandering around the Louvre" and other museums, in the warmth. By what Gordian knot were these two rebellious artists united? By history, no doubt. Juliette Gréco was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 at the age of 15, beaten, then freed, while her older sister and mother were deported to the Ravensbrück camp for acts of resistance. Lucien, for his part, spent the war hidden in Limousin.

From an art history perspective, the work is not very important, but it does have some exceptional features. Because it is signed Ginsburg, Serge Gainsbourg's real name. Because it is one of the only paintings that the future singer, who dreamed of becoming a painter, did not destroy that day in 1958 when, realizing that he would not be a great artist, he burned most of his paintings. Because it depicts yet another Gainsbourgian mystery. A piece of this mythology that, through books, broadcasts, collector's boxes, films and exhibitions, we seem to know everything about, but which always surprises. The painting tells the story of Gainsbourg before the myth, before Jane, before Gainsbarre... A strange face, this painting, so rarely photographed, so little known, today exhibited among so many photographs and posters at the Gainsbourg Museum, inaugurated in September 2023 on rue de Verneuil, in Paris. It shows two blurred silhouettes, two children curled up in a ball, folded into a fetus, androgynous shirt, little polka-dot dress, playing in a square, leaning towards each other with tenderness. In the foreground, a small rake. A post-impressionist style, in the style of Bonnard . “They seem very close. It’s like a zoom, as if a parent had sat on the edge of the sandbox,” notes Julie-Amour Rossini. “A monochrome, 50 centimeters by 35. Precious. Blond hair, red hair. Gainsbourg was extremely feminine, fragile…”, Juliette Gréco told us in 2016.

"There was a lot of traffic at her house and the painting acted like a magnet for some," says Julie-Amour Rossini, Juliette Gréco's only granddaughter and heiress . "As she didn't like the police very much, she preferred to send a press release to the AFP." It contained an ultimatum  : "I'll give my thieves a few days to put it back where they found it, then I'll launch the war machine!" And it worked. A quick and miraculous return to the fold of oil on canvas.

is "completely kind. She doesn't have Serge's cruel cynicism. It's as if he had taken all the sarcastic sides while keeping the romantic. She was Madame Bovary.

Fernand Léger

Post-Impressionist style, Bonnard style

Steinitz Gallery

the same year she will lose her only daughter, Laurence Marie Lemaire, to cancer.

Gérard Jouannest

Juliette Gréco

Gainsbourg Museum in Paris

rare paintings painted by Serge Gainsbourg

Juliette Gréco