French artist Ben, real name Benjamin Vautier, during the reopening of the Fondation du Doute in Blois (Loir-et-Cher) on September 23, 2022
AFP PHOTO / JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER
“The world of culture loses a legend”, reacted on social networks the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, saluting a “goldsmith of language” with “humorous, sometimes satirical writings” and whose “art will continue to shine France throughout the world.
“This wonderful artist who embodies a large part of the culture in Nice has left us,” posted the city’s mayor Christian Estrosi on Instagram: “Yesterday, I learned of the disappearance of Annie, his wife. They are reunited as they always have been,” he added.
The Nice public prosecutor’s office confirmed in a brief press release “the death of Mr. Benjamin Vautier, born in 1935, known by his artist name Ben”. He “was discovered lifeless at his home. The first elements indicate a gunshot wound”, indicated the prosecution, specifying that they had opened “an investigation into the causes of death”.
In front of the artist’s large house-studio on the heights of Nice, two police vehicles were present at midday, noted an AFP journalist.
On the facade, decorated with a figure seated at the end of a pole, like a figurehead, a large banner still proclaims “experiment in progress”, in the round, linked lettering characteristic of Ben’s works.
“It’s a huge loss for the city of Nice, it’s a huge loss because not only, Ben, had he not locked himself into his achievements. He constantly continued to create, to provoke, to do what which is this Nice spirit of provocation,” Robert Roux, close friend of the family and deputy mayor of Nice delegate for culture, told AFP on site.
“Ben and Annie were close. One without the other did not exist. And if it had been Ben who had left before, I think Annie would not have survived,” added Mr. Roux : “Ben and Annie were one. Complementary, but really in an extraordinary way. She corrected him from time to time in his excesses, he teased her constantly and we couldn’t see Ben without Annie and vice versa. C “is a crazy example of a truly astonishing, impressive, touching, moving love.”
According to a Source close to the couple, confirming information from the local daily Nice Matin, Annie Vautier died on Tuesday of a stroke, and the artist then committed suicide.
The couple met in 1963, their daughter Eva says on her gallery’s website. Annie was “a member of the Théâtre Total collective”, organized her own artistic performances and “participated in Ben’s exhibitions, publications and performances” since they met.
Born in Naples (Italy) in 1935, of Franco-Swiss nationality and great-grandson of the Swiss painter Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier, the artist founded the “School of Nice” with Arman, Yves Klein and Martial Raysse. He had lived in this French Riviera town since the age of 14.
He will claim to be part of “Fluxus”, an avant-garde movement born in 1962 in Germany, in Wiesbaden, inspired by New Realism and the “ready made” of Marcel Duchamp, who worked to desecrate art.
His “writings”, formulas often drawn in white paint on a black background, seem at first glance to have come from the head of a schoolboy. But they shake up the established certainties of contemporary art: “What is art for?”, “Is the new always new?”, “What are you doing here?”, or “My biggest worry, ‘is me’ (Editor’s note: with a spelling mistake)…
They will be reproduced even on school bags, kits and notebooks.
He defended the presence of art in daily life, on the most banal objects, each time with a pinch of humor.
Ben is exhibited at Moma in New York as well as at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
