A documentary Johnny by Johnny on Netflix, another title Johnny by Laeticia on 6play… Unpublished songs, books you name it, here you go, on the life of the rocker, his songs, behind the scenes of his concerts or even his cult phrases… Since his death in 2017, fans (and others) have been crumbling under the documents and objects around Johnny Hallyday. And that was without counting on a major exhibition on the artist who arrived in Paris.
After being presented in Brussels at the start of the year, the event opens its doors at the Parc des Expositions at Porte de Versailles this Friday, until June 19, 2024. On the program? “74 years of an extraordinary life retraced” in a 3,000 m² space in the shape of a guitar.
“I dreamed of this exhibition. To show the man he was, his simplicity, his sentimentality, his fragility, his closeness. To get back to the basics, music,” underlines Laeticia Hallyday in the press kit. But what more can we say than everything that has already been said since the singer’s death more than six years ago? Haven’t we already seen everything, read everything, heard everything about Johnny?
“The bias is Johnny’s artistic life”
“There have never been major exhibitions made with his personal collection,” explains Benoît Remiche, director of the Collective Curator and exhibition production. It highlights the immersive aspect of the device. “Here, we have an intimate relationship with objects. You don’t have the same experience being in front of his desk in physics. It’s a real immersion, where a documentary can be more distanced,” he believes. Visitors will notably discover a scenographic installation inspired by Johnny’s teenage bedroom on rue de la Tour-des-Dames in Paris, in the 1960s. “What seemed interesting to us was to tell his beginnings thanks to these decorative elements but also to retrace a bit of daily life in France at that time,” explains Alain Wattieu, the props designer who designed this reconstruction using archival elements. Nothing belonged to the artist, but there is a mustache armchair similar to the one that furnished his room, his readings of the time or even the stuffed toy of a little favorite monkey.
The singer’s personal office in the Savannah house in Marnes-la-Coquette (which moviegoers were able to see in the film Rock’n’roll by Guillaume Canet in 2017), is 100% authentic.
The centerpiece which closes the exhibition, it is reproduced identically and contains the objects and furniture from the original room. As if we were there. And maybe a bit too much?
In his autobiography, David Hallyday explained that he had chosen not to visit. “The red line separating public life from the intimate and the sacred seemed to me to be crossed. I would have had the impression of seeing before me the spoils of a burglary,” he wrote, as reported Europe 1 last November.
“The bias is Johnny’s artistic life,” defends Benoît Remiche, claiming to have produced the exhibition “in the most sincere way possible.” He also adds that he took particular care not to address certain points in the artist’s intimate life, such as his various romantic relationships.
“Hardly anyone has ever seen Johnny up close”
The music accompanies the visitor throughout the journey. “The logic of the scenography is as if you were backstage at a concert,” explains Benoît Remiche. Upon entering, the visitor is immersed in what the singer did best: the stage. A screen broadcasts an anthology of Johnny’s spectacular entrances during his concerts: by helicopter, crossing the crowd in the pit of the Parc-des-Princes, emerging with a giant hand… A totally immersive space also awaits the public at the center of the system: a concert show made up of several extracts, in a 360° room with giant screens. “Almost no one has ever seen Johnny up close,” notes the exhibition curator. You see his rage, what he gives, the way he dances…”
The exhibition also gives pride of place to his guitars (25 of them are present) and his costumes (50 in total), some of which were made by great designers such as Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent or Jean-Claude Jitrois. Benoît Remiche affirms that around 90% of the objects on display had never been before the creation of the exhibition. One of them was even added after Brussels: a letter sent by Quentin Tarantino to offer a small role in Inglorious Bastards to the singer. The artist will decline.
More personal objects that belonged to the artist are visible. Some of his Harleys, his cowboy boots, his collection of knives, decorative objects from La Lorada, Johnny’s legendary villa on the Saint-Tropez peninsula. An entire space is also devoted to his jewelry, including his pendant of Christ holding a guitar, displayed like a relic. “In the object there is a part of the past which is shown today. For the people that Johnny accompanied for fifty years, it’s as if it gives them back a kind of physical connection,” analyzes Benoît Remiche. Other more incongruous (but funny) pieces are on display, such as the parka worn by Jean-Claude Camus in 1998 to announce the cancellation of a concert at the Stade de France, to boos from the public and pouring rain.
“We are exposing someone who is more than a singer”
“The fans love it, they are all in tears. They relive their lives through this exhibition,” notes the exhibition curator, with his first experience in Brussels. But can it reach a wider circle than Johnny aficionados? “Even people who aren’t fans can discover things, like the link between Johnny and cinema,” he replies. He adds: “We are exposing someone who is more than a singer. He embodies part of French identity at a given moment. It is part of the collective heritage of France. It’s something that can speak to everyone. »
Will the public be there? Benoît Remiche hopes for between 250,000 and 260,000 visitors, more than double that of Belgium (110,000, according to AFP). On Monday, a few days before the inauguration, the commissioner announced 20,000 pre-reservations, a very encouraging number according to him. “The appetite of the media to cover the exhibition is incredible. There is a real fascination. Does it resonate with the public? We haven’t done a survey but I think so,” he says. Is the fervor for Johnny Hallyday still intact? The next six months at the exhibition center will tell us.