Jane Birkin and the Art of Authenticity

In 2022, Charlotte Gainsbourg brought her mother, Jane Birkin, to her deceased father’s apartment in Paris’s 7th arrondissement and recorded the visit in her documentary, Jane by Charlotte. She was preparing to transform the residence into a museum—which is now open to the public, a walk-through memorial to the legendary pop singer Serge Gainsbourg. The scene does not serve as particularly glowing publicity. As mother and daughter reminisce over where the piano used to be and their memories of the first nine years of Charlotte’s life, one is struck by the darkness of the space, how it lacks light and air. Gainsbourg surrounded himself with expensive art objects, liquor bottles, and nudes of his female collaborators, including an enormous picture of Brigitte Bardot’s and Birkin’s headless busts. As Marisa Meltzer aptly notes in It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin, the place is “like a version of Bluebeard’s castle,” full of trophies commemorating his prowess. It doesn’t need to be transformed into a museum. Everything is already dead and under glass.