8/18/2023 0 Comments Style sketch fashion![]() Gertrude Stein collected his early paintings and his work often inspired the couture collections of designers like Christian Dior, Schiaparelli and Nina Ricci. Bébé’s vivacious creations, larger-than-life personality and exotic social circle bestowed an added dimension to the high-brow publications Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Art et Style. This creative duality of painting and fashion blossomed in the mid 20s with his costume design for the ballet Les Elves in 1924 and with his first painting exhibition held at the legendary Gallery Pierre in 1925. ![]() From his early childhood, Christian had had the urge to raid his mother’s fashion magazines and copy the drawings – this ignited a passion and ability for him to be able to immediately capture the essence of costume on paper, which stayed with him throughout his life. ![]() I said, ‘I’m so sorry you have suffered as you did today.’ He replied, ‘It’s all I like in the world!'” Cecil Beaton Christian Bérard at La Malcontenta, 1930 by Boris Kochno,īorn in 1902 of a rich and creative artistic vein, Christian’s father, André Bérard, was regarded as the official architect of the city of Paris of the day. After a long bout, he rested to smoke a pipe. Bébé’s work is the result of acute concentration, making even so lightly painted a portrait as mine a tribute to agony. Dieu!’ It was both a revelation and a lesson to me. ‘ You don’t know how difficult it is! Oh God, oh God! Ah, je vois. He groaned, whispered, sighed, whimpered, stamped his feet, jerked backwards and forwards, lunged with noisy intakes of breath. “This morning Bébé painted like someone in the throes of mediaeval torture. In his diaries, Bébé longtime friend Cecil Beaton recalls watching Bébés creative process… © Galerie Alexandre Biaggiīérard was a fashion illustrator extraordinaire. Christian Bérard, Château de Montredon Juillet 1942. He lovingly recounted their long romantic walks through Paris after dark and remembered how Bébé was so relaxed and playful away from the easel, but would design, draw and paint with a fervour and focus, as if driven by an unseen force. Together they were the most enviable and elegant gay couple of the 30s and had all of Paris and beyond eating out of their hands. Gabrielle Chanel Coco Chanel between Christian Berard et Boris Kochno in Monte-Carlo, 1932Ī longtime lover of Bébé, Boris Kochno was a Russian poet, dancer and Francophile who fled Soviet intolerance and would be a founder of the Ballets des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Chanel with Christian Bérard and the wife of Jean Hugo Christian Bérard (artist), Elsa Schiaparelli (Designer), and Jany Holt (actress) at Schiaparelli’s 1940 Summer Haute Couture show. Holiday companion to the superstar designers and artists, he counted Christian Dior, Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiapparelli, Colette and Yves St Laurent among his close friends. Let us introduce you … Gabrielle Chanel and Christian Bérard © Monte-Carlo SBM archives:īébé capered and cavorted with the great and the good, between Paris and London, he was a fixture and friendly face at every high society party and gathering of the 1930s. A supremely talented, industrious and capable artist, a wild socialite and extrovert, Bébé was a Parisian sensation. Famously dishevelled, “The Magnificent Tramp” or Clochard Magnifique (also the title of his biography) was frequently flanked by his beloved fluffy white dog, allegedly often as paint-stained as its owner. ![]() Bébé was the nickname given to Christian Bérard by his friend, the French prophet of the arts, Jean Cocteau, on account of his delightful babyface – and the name stuck. ![]() Bérard and his lover Boris Kochno were one of the most prominent openly homosexual couples in Paris during the 30s and 40s. A handsome, burly and intentionally unkempt man sporting a wild woolly beard with loveable puppy dog eyes, he accessorised with that essential designer cigarette teetering at the corner of his mouth and dressed his robust frame in a stained, crumpled painter’s overall. But there’s one name that was very much a part of this moment, who you must meet. The creative giants of the day, Picasso, Cocteau, Coco Chanel, May Ray, Beauvoir and Sartre, the Lost Generation and their cultural circle basked in a warm summer evening’s glow of new culture and liberalism. The avant-garde arts flourished, Paris was at the centre of it all and her output was bountiful. Painter Christian Bérard and Renée, suit by Dior, Le Marais, Paris, August 1947įabulous, free and fashionable, France bloomed in the 1930s. ![]()
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