Bebe

When Christian Berard died last February at 46, Paris lost its most fashionable artist. A scraggle-bearded, sack-bodied man who wore his jackets soiled and kept up his trousers with string, he rated in Paris as a top arbiter of good taste in women's fashions.

"Bebe" Berard had only to ask, with an archbishop's solemnity, "Isn't pink a lovely color?" to send designers running to their shelves. He turned out a stream of ideas for ballet, stage and screen, designed the sets and costumes for such notable numbers as The Madwoman of Chaillot (TIME, Jan. 10).

On the Knees. Berard often spoke a little wistfully of the paintings he was doing or of others he had in mind, but the few finished pictures he did produce were apt to be dim, moody echoes of the Renaissance masters. In view of all this, many an art critic wondered if he could be considered a true painter at all. When Novelist Gertrude Stein once put that harsh question to him, Berard fell on his knees protesting, "Yes, oh, yes!" Last week, a Manhattan gallery staged a posthumous show of his portraits that helped to tip the decision a little in Bebe's favor.

Among the exhibits were a couple of canvases as sharp and literal as snapshots made in bright sunlight. The curious thing was that Berard had painted them without models, purely from imagination. When he used a model, as in his portrait of a Parisian torch singer, Mlle. Damia, the literalness disappeared; Mlle. Damia was waxy, unsmiling, delicately pushed out of shape. A few months before he died, Berard had portrayed himself sitting like a somewhat damp but proud Bacchus on a beach. The painting conveyed the subtlety of his seemingly careless draftsmanship and the atmospheric shimmer he could evoke from a few dull colors.

On the Floor. But Berard would be remembered more for his influence and his eccentricities than for his painting. It would be hard for his friends to forget Bebe waddling about Paris dragging his fat, slovenly white poodle "Hyacinth" on a dirty rope. At fashion shows he would sometimes sprawl full-length on the floor with Hyacinth in his arms, clapping his hands and crying out "Ravishing!" as the models swished past his head. If he did that, the dresses were sure to be a success.

In Manhattan in 1946, he learned to his surprise and pain that U.S. dress designers considered Paris washed up as the fashion center of the world. Back home he looked up a then-obscure friend named Christian Dior, sketched a plan of action and cried, "There is no other way. You must be Joan of Arc!" Berard, his friends believe, was the real begetter of the "New Look."

His admirers often wished he had worked more in a permanent medium like oils instead of feeding free ideas to dress designers, for since every new idea outmoded his previous ones, his most delightful notions swiftly became old hat. Berard once explained what he liked best about his position as a beacon of Paris elegance, and why he preferred prettifying girls to painting them. Said Bebe: "I don't like women, I just like silk."

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