Yves Saint Laurent Pierre Bergé - Christie's

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Jacques Doucet
In the late 1920s the truly remarkable art collector
and equally distinguished couturier Jacques
Doucet – who surely would have opted to be
remembered for the former passion rather than
the latter profession – planned the furnishing of a
suite of rooms on the first floor of the Studio of
his Villa St James in Neuilly. These started with a
square vestibule reached by a grand modernist
staircase that swept up from the entrance hall.
Double doors by René Lalique opened from this
vestibule into a long rectangular salon with two tall
windows down one side; a broad opening at the far
end led into the cabinet d’Orient. The grand salon
was a sumptuous room, designed for use with a
desk, armchairs, side tables and a large sofa. But it
was conceived above all as a jewel box in which to
display harmoniously and to savour the dazzling
masterpieces of modern art that Doucet had
assembled. Between the windows hung a splendid
still life by Matisse; to the right of this on the end
wall by the corner hung an exceptional study by de
Chirico. In the vestibule, at the top of the stairs,
was Picasso’s historic Cubist masterpiece – Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon. Furniture, objects, sculptures
and paintings were installed in groupings, in
layers of colour, texture and form that created an
inter-connected succession of secular altars to
great artistic sensitivity and creativity. Jacques
Doucet, known as ‘Le Magicien’, had fulfilled a
vision to create an exquisite, provocative and
stimulating private aesthetic temple, a magical
synthesis of media and of cultures.
A notable role model
The grand salon of Saint Laurent’s rue de Babylone
apartment pays homage to the inspiration of
Jacques Doucet. Specific pieces – the stool by
Pierre Legrain, the pair of banquettes by Miklos and
the haunting picture by de Chirico – were in
Doucet’s illustrious collection, and for that reason
occupy a privileged place in the collection of Yves
Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. But just as
significant is the evidence – in the disposition of
pictures and objects and in the subtle
orchestration of colours and textures – of a finely
nuanced appreciation of the stimulating and
seductive ways in which Doucet juxtaposed and
presented works of art in all media.
Jacques Doucet, photographic portrait by Man Ray
The grand salon of Jacques Doucet’s Studio at the Villa St James, Neuilly, published in 1931 in L’Illustration
© Man Ray Trust/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2008
P.G.