Many recall the verses of the song Je t'aime... moi non plus, sung along with Jane Birkin and, in an earlier version, with Brigitte Bardot. Lyricist, composer, performer, director, but also photographer and novelist, profoundly influenced by literature and poetry, sources of inspirations for many of his songs, Serge Gainsbourg was a passionate collector of letters, autographs and paperolles, testimony to his daily rapport, meticulous and compulsive, with the written word. The Bibliothèque Publique d'Information (Bpi), for the first time, displays two manuscripts from his home at Rue de Verneuil in Paris, along with numerous works from his library. Gainsbourg left behind an impressive body of over five-hundered texts which testify to his influence on contemporary French music. The exhibition Serge Gainsbourg. Le Mot Exact, underway at the Centre Pompidou, invites visitors to rediscovers this work by entering into the literary universe of Gainsbourg through an ample selection of works from his heterogeneous library. Visitors will also encounter his media “double” - Gainsbarre - a character right out of his songs, right out of the tradition of literary doubles from the XIX Century, from The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde to Horla by Guy de Maupassant. The itinerary also looks at the immense productivity of the artist and his impeccable creativity, offering a rich series of manuscripts and handwritten notes. These precious documents, associated with the unreleased films of Yves Lefebvre, cast a light on the writing and composing process of the artist.
