The colorful artist from Nice, a claimed actor in the movement, presents there from Saturday, at the age of 87, a new exhibition entitled "The Indestructible Ego".

"I wanted to fill everything in the exhibition. But, no, I'm not going to give anything", smiles Ben Vautier.

"I leave a void on the questioning of the ego. That's all. (...) The questioning is the raw material of the exhibition but, there is stronger than me, there is Duchamp. Me, I'm just the underling."

The public will therefore find his illustrious messages, in the form of questions questioning the ego in art.

"Does art lie?", "Why sign?", "Was the ego there at the beginning of time?", thus challenge the visitor, who will of course be able to answer him in consecrated urns.

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Because Fluxus asks for a participation.

"There is a relationship between Fluxus and the collective: you have to get involved in creation," said the mediation officer, Marion Louis.

"It's about bringing art and life closer together, including everyday life," she continues.

"Fluxus is not an artistic movement, it is a state of mind of people who found themselves around a questioning: how to define art and approach it?"

In this, this internationalist movement was inspired by the New Realism and the "Ready Made" of Marcel Duchamp, who himself worked to desecrate art.

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"+ Who decides what is beautiful? +, asks Ben. There is not a single definition of beauty in Fluxus", she adds.

- "Beyond the wacky" -

Reopened in July with a new museography, the Fondation du Doute, known in particular for its facade covered with more than 300 messages from Ben, also leads the visitor through 60 years of creation.

The enriched permanent exhibition is now organized around the "eleven denominators" of the movement such as musicality, art-entertainment or transience.

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It naturally begins with a video of the concert that launched the adventure, in Wiesbaden (Germany) in September 1962. A first happening in front of a dumbfounded audience filmed by German public television.

The amateur will also be able to play the destructured piano used for this special and crazy concert.

We then find some installations and works emblematic of the movement, such as this grand piano that we feed with hay by La Monte Young or even the "astro-gastronomic trappings" by David Spoerri.

The public will also be able to listen live to Fandango, the noisy din of hammers on doors by Wolf Vostell, or, more zen, rest in front of this Buddha who observes himself on a Naim June Pak television.

"We can see all the facets of Fluxus, beyond the crazy", appreciates the director of the Doute Foundation, Alain Goulesque, also pointing to the minimalist creations which teach "how to create with little".

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"Fluxus is a state of mind, so unlike movement, it has no end," he says.

"As Ben's expo shows, he continues to question."

© 2022 AFP