Four years ago, Nice-based artist Ben, whose real name is Benjamin Vautier, told the magazine Parisian that the only way to get rid of your ego "is to kill yourself" . On Wednesday June 5, the 88-year-old artist took action shortly after the death of his wife.
The artist leaves behind more than 12,000 sculptures and paintings, many of them performance pieces, but above all a multitude of panels, large or small, black or colored, on which quotations, remarks, ideas and questions are traced in deliberately childlike white calligraphy.
Claiming to be a member of Fluxus, an artistic non-movement created in the early 1960s where playfulness and humor were the order of the day, Ben plays with words and delivers short, questioning sentences. In 2016, the artist declared on Europe 1 : "I wanted to communicate, but I can't draw what I feel; on the other hand, I can write words that say it". Words that Ben has chosen to write in a style readable by young and old alike.
For the artist, art had to be desacralized and could be found in all everyday objects. He interpreted this presence with humor and provocation in his various works. For him, the artist's signature was important. In 1963, he signed all the objects at the Nice flea market. Not surprisingly, one of his signature phrases is "We are all ego.
From sculptures to Quo Vadis notebooks to wine labels
In 1990, thanks to a collaboration with Quo Vadis, his distinctive handwriting, with its whimsical punctuation, round i's and rare capital letters, found its way onto the notebooks, binders, kits and office supplies of secondary school pupils and students.
40 years ago, this same calligraphy revolutionized a much more coded market than stationery: that of wine, and more precisely wine labels. The Château de Jau estate in the Pyrénées-Orientales asked Ben to design the labels for its Syrah, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc and Rosé varietals. Visit Jaja de Jau has become one of the vineyard's most successful marketing campaigns, against all odds, such was the daring nature of the challenge.
A measure of the artist's whimsy and impertinence can be seen, for example, at the entrance to a venue where his work is exhibited in Calvi. On the lawn stands a black cow with the words "Artists are not cash cows" and "This is not a cow but a cultural mayonnaise" .
Ben's most recent challenge to conformism came at the Musée d'Art Naïf in Nice, which was hosting a temporary exhibition until the end of May, "We're all crazy, dedicated to the artist, with the installation of a boxing ring at the entrance to the museum and debate areas in the center of several of the exhibition rooms.
