On February 23, 2009, at 7 p.m., the first session of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge collection auction opened in Paris with Impressionist and modern art lots. Organized by Christie's France and Pierre Berge & Associes, the three-day sale dispersed one of the most famous private art collections of the early twenty-first century after a public viewing at the Grand Palais. The collection included works by Goya, Brancusi, de Chirico, Duchamp, Ensor, Matisse, Mondrian, and Picasso. The sale total reached about 373.5 million euros and was widely characterized as a record private-collection auction, with records for Brancusi, Matisse, and Mondrian; Eileen Gray's Dragons armchair also set a benchmark for twentieth-century decorative art.
The auction reset expectations for single-owner collection sales and intensified debates over masterpiece markets and cultural restitution.
