Hasta La Ideas

What do a clutch of stunning Mondrian canvases, a 4th-century Egyptian sarcophagus cover, an Eileen Gray fauteuil adorned with dragons, and an adorable patinated bronze Boston terrier have in common? All will go on the block in Paris later this month when Christie’s holds its much-anticipated sale of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection. Beginning on February 23 at the Grand Palais, 691 lots worth of extraordinary paintings, drawings, sculptures, furniture, and decorative objects (from ostrich eggs to Ottoman jade-hilted daggers) will be auctioned over three days. The jaw-dropping collection, laid out in five—count them, five—sumptuous catalogues, is estimated to bring in between 200 million and 300 million euros (approximately $250 million to $400 million, at current exchange rates).

Sure, the Picassos are impressive, and who doesn’t love a perfume bottle concocted by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray (and featuring Duchamp’s female alter ego)? But we’re plotting to acquire the François-Xavier Lalanne-designed “Bar ‘YSL’” (pictured at right) for UnBeige HQ. Saint Laurent and Bergé’s first Lalanne commission, the two-tiered 1965 piece consists of “an ovoid bottle-rack in metal set in motion by a counterweight mechanism, with a horn-form shaker, a spherical ice bucket and a cylindrical crystal glass vase by the Cristalleries de Choisy-le-Roi, the vase passing through the two tiers, supported by four steel feet cut with a blowtorch.”

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