Enjoy the last segment of the series, introducing Gilles Fuchs--founder of the Marcel Duchamp Award, which is a key point of this exhibition, and currently a representative of the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art (ADIAF)--whose responses exude his abundant love of art.
Photo: Jennifer Westjohn
■Profile
Establishing the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art (ADIAF) in 1994, serving as a representative of that organization since 1998, and establishing the Marcel Duchamp Award in 2000, Gilles Fuchs serves as a spokesman for the development of French contemporary art.
A: I am now retired (I previously was in the fashion and perfume business) but I have been for nearly fifty years an "addict" art collector.
Upon my retirement I created with some friends an Association to promote French artists abroad. (ADIAF)
We were convinced that the French way of life or "civilisation" should be taken with more consideration than it is presently the case.
The main art stream (under the fallacious reason that it should be better understood by" every one") has aimed at being spectacular, "sensational" and out of measure with some tendency to vulgarity.
French art is by tradition based on reflection, elegance and sense of measure. It is a humanism. Two different aims; one, provocative to the extreme; the other one discreet and trying to convince.
Our association is composed exclusively of contemporary art collectors (about 300).
We wish to underline the choices of collectors, with modest means, what play an active part in the present art world distinct from the overwhelming institutions or "institutional collectors".
Their choices are not based on speculation but on their deep taste and reflection. The value or symbolic financial status of a work of art is far from their main preoccupation.
They never forget Leonardo Da Vinci: "art is cosa mentale"
It is a sort of democratic alternative.
A: Collectors are "maniac"; it is part of their character and they cannot live without indulging in this side of themselves.
You may collect everything from stamps to "white elephants" but it is theoretically a finished world. There is a day when your collection is completed.
This is not the case when you collect contemporary art. There is always something new happening and like mushroom in autumn, new artists spring from anywhere with something new to say or a new way to say it.
This is the interest of collecting an art that is always challenging
Art is the soul of its time:To be in close contact with it is essential. To learn about it when it has become historical loses some impact.
Art is a choice of society .There is no aesthetics without ethics.
As I told previously I am more interested in emerging artists than in celebrities. It is then that you may feel the vulnerability of a work as well as its raw boldness. Creation is always stimulating. I am not a prophet, I like to discover.
Celebrities have to consolidate their works, to make them more understandable, more acceptable. But there may be repetitions (with no real meaning) or even complaisance.
It is like the story of the 3 little pigs.
One builds his house quickly in straw.
The second one is more cautious and makes it in wood.
The third one works for eternity and builds it in stone.
I may often prefer the first one.
■Relevant information
・The answer from the collector participating in "French Window" exhibition
- File01. Jerome and Emmanuelle de Noirmont
- File02. Alex and Greta Vanden Berghe
- File03. Michel Poitevin
- File04. Gilles Fuchs
・The Answer from the artist participating in "French Window" exhibition.
- File01. Mathieu Mercier
- File02. Pierre Ardouvin
- File03. Thomas Hirschhorn
- File04. Camille Henrot
- File05. Claude Closky
- File06. Valerie Belin
- File07. Philippe Mayaux
・"French Window: Looking at Contemporary Art through the Marcel Duchamp Prize"
・Mori Art Museum on Flickr
Images of "French Window: Looking at Contemporary Art through the Marcel Duchamp Prize"-1
Images of "French Window: Looking at Contemporary Art through the Marcel Duchamp Prize"-2
Images of "French Window: Looking at Contemporary Art through the Marcel Duchamp Prize"-3
