Fashion mogul raises milllions for research
Print Edition
FASHION mogul Pierre Berge raised millions for AIDS research last week as the first part of his renowned library went under the hammer in Paris.
The French philanthropist said he had raised nearly US$12.8 million (83 million yuan) from the first of six sales of his collection of manuscripts and rare books, one of the most valuable in private hands.
A small drawing by the French novelist Victor Hugo of a ruined gothic tower at dusk was sold for about US$440,000, five times its estimated worth.
Berge, lover and business partner of the late Yves Saint Laurent, is putting almost his entire library up for auction in sales that could raise US$44 million for the charitable foundation he founded with the designer.
Berge sold the couple’s art collection in 2009 in what was dubbed “the sale of the century.
Most of the proceeds of the sales are going to HIV research, including to the Sidaction charity founded by Berge.
The manuscript of Gustave Flaubert’s “Sentimental Education” — one of the most influential novels of the 19th century — also went for a record price of US$510,000.
“I am very happy. It’s marvellous,” said Berge after the 3-hour sale, organized by Sotheby’s.
One of the biggest surprises was a first edition of Charles Baudelaire’s “Fleurs du mal” (The Flowers of Evil) which sold for about US$246,000 four times its valuation.
Almost all of the treasures of the library including the only pages of a lost erotic work by the notorious Marquis de Sade, “The Days of Florbelle”, to have escaped the censor’s flames, reached their estimates. The most valuable item on sale, the original manuscript of Andre Breton’s surrealist masterpiece “Nadja” — worth an estimated US$3.8 million — had already been snapped up by France’s national library.
Berge said when he bought the book in London “I felt that I had got hold of a fragment of the True Cross.”
The businessman began collecting rare books after arriving in Paris as a teenager, “buying a book on the banks of the Seine in the morning and with a bit of luck selling it to a book dealer in the afternoon.”
He later befriended members of the city’s literati, including Breton and Jean Cocteau.
Berge, who is the godfather of Cocteau’s son, held back one of the writer’s books dedicated to him from the sale.
Another book by Jean Giono, who was something of a father figure to him, and who is best known outside France for the film of his novel “The Horsemen on the Roof”, was also withheld.
Berge said that he intended to “replace all the books in the library” with identical cheaper copies. “A lot will probably be more fun to read in paperback.”
“I came to love these books through reading, the collector part only came later,” he said.
“You have to know how to get rid of things,” Berge said, adding that he had been planning the clear-out for years and had even stipulated it in his will.
Although known as a formidable deal-maker, Berge, 85, has been a lifelong supporter of left-wing causes.
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