Yves Saint Laurent Pierre Bergé - Christie's

84
Claude and
François-Xavier Lalanne
François-Xavier Lalanne recently recalled the
moment he and Claude first met Yves Saint
Laurent. The 25-year-old couturier had just joined
the house of Dior; the artists were ten years his
senior. Their friendship lasted nearly half a century
and was celebrated in two major commissions: the
bar by François-Xavier of 1964 and the mirrors for
the salon de musique, first discussed with Claude in
1972. Other creations that should not be
overlooked include: the historic collaboration of
Claude Lalanne in 1969 on Yves Saint Laurent’s
haute couture collection with her Empreintes; works
created for the Château Gabriel, notably a love-seat
and a pair of candelabra for the dining room; and,
for the garden of the rue de Babylone, armchairs in
the form of birds by François, cut under the
direction of architect Manolis Karantinos in a white
Cretan marble. The Lalannes are among the very
few artists to have established a close bond with
Bergé and Saint Laurent – along with Andy Warhol,
whose portraits of the couturier have become so
well known.
A brilliant partnership
It was in 1964, when Yves Saint Laurent was
working on his ‘Mondrian’ collection, that he and
Pierre Bergé invited François Lalanne to create a
sculptural bar. In response to this, his first private
commission, the sculptor – who refused to
acknowledge any distinction between functional or
non-functional art – devised a robust rectangular
console, with a frame of steel cut with a blowtorch.
This contains the two maillechort alloy
shelves within which are set the overscaled service
elements. These comprise a huge hammered brass
egg with a counterweight system that allows the
top to rise and reveal the bottle store; a translucent
spherical glass ice container blown in the
Cristalleries of Choisy-le-Roi; a very tall cylindrical
vase from the same maker, inspired by the giant
test tubes developed for nuclear research in the
Atomic Centre at Saclay; and finally a metal
cocktail shaker, evoking the horn drinking vessels
of the Renaissance, piercing the bar as if it has
been gored by a rhinoceros. This private bar is
from the same period as the flocks of bronzefeatured
wool sheep that attracted so much
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LALANNE (1927–2008)
The ‘YSL’ bar, 1965, maillechort, steel and glass, 51 1 ⁄8 in. (130 cm.) high, 65 3 ⁄4 in. (167 cm.) wide, 21 1 ⁄8 in. (53.5 cm.) deep.
Estimate: 3200,000–300,000