A much-admired businessman, intellectual, avid collector and undeniable aesthete, the late Pierre Bergé was also widely known as the co-founder of the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house, and the designer’s one-time romantic partner and lifelong friend.
A household name across his native France, Bergé, who died in September 2017, will now posthumously reveal the dynamic contents of his very own households, when his estate comes to auction this autumn as part of a three-day sale at Sotheby’s Paris, from October 29-31.
Organized in partnership with Pierre Bergé & Associés, a Paris-based auction house which specializes in fine art and antiques co-founded by Bergé in 2002, the sale will put some 1,200 items grouped into approximately 800 lots, on the block. Sourced from Bergé’s four properties in Normandy, Provence, Paris and Tangiers, Morocco – the houses have all gone to market, too – the contents will reveal his wide-ranging passions and interests, from furniture and fine art that span many genres, decades and origins, to tabletop service, lighting, desktop objects and charming miscellanea.
Up to $9 million
“I have never seen such diversity in a private collection,” said Mario Tavella, Chairman of Sotheby’s France and Sotheby’s Europe, during a phone interview. “There is no domain, no category that he was not interested in. Through the houses I have discovered, without any surprise, a highly sophisticated man, a voracious man in terms of interests, a man of sublime taste. There is no object that is overlooked: one that is estimated at 100 Euros is as tasteful as one estimated at 300,000.”
Among the cheapest items will be a series of wicker furniture from Bergé’s Provence residence. Among the priciest, a series of ten paintings by the French expressionist Bernard Buffet, completed early in his career when he was romantically involved with Bergé; a mirror by husband-and-wife artists François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne (Les Lalanne), commissioned by Bergé and Saint Laurent for their onetime home on Rue Bonaparte in Paris; and a series of Orientalist paintings, which featured in Bergé’s Paris bedroom, a space decadently paneled with antique 18th century Indian textiles.
Though estimates are still being finalized and the catalog completed – the contents of the Normandy “Dacha” are yet to be reviewed – Tavella notes that prices are likely to range from a few-hundred to a half-million Euros. He expects the overall sale to total between €5 to €8 million (about $5.8 to $9.3 million) with all proceeds going to the two causes that were most dear to Bergé: the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation in Paris, and the Fondation Majorelle in Marrakech, which sustains the lush Majorelle Gardens that Bergé and YSL purchased in 1980, saving the historic oasis from development.
Broad audience
With an almost mythical allure attributed to the aesthetic life that Bergé and Saint Laurent shared, Tavella expects that the sale will attract a broad audience: both serious collectors and more novice buyers, perhaps looking to acquire a piece of cultural history.
“Bergé’s collection represents a way of life: for example, all the spectacular silver service and glassware that was used when we had dinner with him, it captures a bit of a world and a way of living that is going to disappear,” said Antoine Godeau, President of Pierre Bergé Associés, and a longtime friend of Bergé’s, during a phone interview. “But Pierre was never nostalgic: he didn’t believe that objects belonged to the owner, it was a temporary situation, before they went back to the market. As they will do now.”
Godeau notes that Bergé was a keen and fascinated spectator at the record-breaking auction of Saint Laurent’s estate at Christie’s in 2009, which at the time broke records for the sale of a private collection (since overtaken by the sale of the Rockefeller collection in May this year), raising over €373 million, or about $432 million, for charity.
While the Bergé sale will be much more modest in scope, the auction arguably marks the final chance to connect with one of the most dynamic collectors of our time, and one half of the most revered creative power-couple of the last century. Though, a fourth and final day of sales, devoted entirely to Bergé’s legendary collection of books and manuscripts, will follow in Paris this December. For the October sale, Tavella says that while Sotheby’s initially considered only auctioning the more valuable items in Bergé’s collection, they ultimately decided to include everything – down to a set of metal garden chairs – to capture the full-spectrum of the lifestyle that Bergé embodied.
“Sometimes you enter houses where everything is very valuable, and so much of the time I see houses which are meant to impress others,” says Tavella. “In effect, I discovered that Bergé found joy also in much simpler interiors and more decorative objects, which is very dynamic. In Bergé’s case, what I really loved was that his houses were clearly made to please himself, and for him to live well. It was not at all a show off, but a celebration of beauty.”