I might have a new favorite artist, and her name is Claire Fountaine. The best part? I don’t feel like I’m letting down Marcel DuChamp, who has claimed the “favorite artist” spot in my life for the past 10 years. After all, Claire Fountaine is a nod to the very essence of DuChamp. Even her name, “Fountaine”, is supposedly a play on the title of Marcel Duchamp’s famous readymade Fountain (which also happens to be my favorite work of art) signed by R. Mutt. It may be that he is the same R. to whom Claire has addressed several of her letters.

There is no actual person called Claire Fontaine that stands behind the works made, it is a French collective of ready-made art. She observes the world around her with a special interest in culture, and the political realties of today’s world. Philosophy is of importance to her too, as are the fine arts. Claire is a prolific writer and her letters offer us essential insight into her character. In an early letter to R., written during the riots in the Parisian suburbs ‘where all buildings are rectangular,’ Claire expresses her repulsion and sadness in light of society’s persistent tendency to remain cold and detached despite the obvious tyranny, exploitation and repression inflicted on all of us by those in power.

I think I’ve fallen in love with Claire. She makes my heart beat with the joy of one in love. 

Claire Fontaine, Father and Son (Prisoner with Child)

Claire Fontaine, Foreigner Everywhere (Arabic), 2005

Claire Fontaine, Please God Make Tomorrow Better, 2008

Claire Fontaine, Capitalism Kills Love (Red, White and Blue), 2009

Claire Fontaine, In God They Trust, 2005

Claire Fontaine, Study for Joke Painting: Fight to Save Torture Images, No 6, 2009

Claire Fontaine, Consumption, 2011

Claire Fontaine. They Hate Us For Our Freedom

The Weeping Wall Inside All of Us

Claire Fontaine, We are with you in the night, 2008

Claire Fontaine, Palestine Occupied, 2008

Claire Fontaine, Palestine Occupied, 2008

Is Freedom Therapuetic?

“Powder Your Life Away” by Felicia Simion

Lauren Youngsmith

Tran Nguyen

Matthew H. Sharack

Aurore De La Morinerie

Unknown

Unknown

Drew Blom

Studio Muti

Salvador Ramirez Madriz

If you were forced to lose all your senses and keep two, what would you choose?

It’s a morbid thought, I know, but it’s one that I have consistently thought about since I was a little child. Two senses instead of one because I can never get myself to choose between the two senses I find most precious.

I’m a visual person. I see form before I understand meaning. My career is all about visual organization. I’ve been trained since childhood to look at the world. In fact, my very existence revolves around my eyes’ ability to perceive things more acutely than the eyes of others. Thus, the sense of sight is not something I take lightly.

The other sense I equally appreciate is the sense of touch. There is something magical about touch, perhaps even more magical than sight, don’t you think?

I’ve always been exceptionally aware of sensation in my fingertips. Even when I type (and I do a lot of that), I am very conscious of every key that my nerves experience as they crash against the plastic to type words. I can feel the slightly embossed letters printed. When I used to draw, I was often more aware of the texture of the paper than the shadows of what I would be seeing. When I want to really “look” at something, I have to run my fingers over it or else my vieweing experience wouldn’t be complete.

It’s the magic of touch that makes me really love hands. Hands do all the work that the brain dictates. A person who works with his or her hands must be very aware of them. He or she must be constantly conscious of every nerve, must really know how to use them.

And there are those few amazing humans who use their hands to think with their eyes. When I look at photographs of Picasso, for example, my eyes first land on his strong, well-defined hands, and then they get lost in the brilliance of his own eyes.

Look at the tapering of his fingertips. The hard texture of his palms. The thickness of each finger. These hands painted things that changed the world. It’s amzing.

What sense would you never be able to lose?

Picasso is sitting in the park, sketching.

A woman walks by, recognizes him, runs up to him and pleads with him to draw her portrait. He’s in a good mood, so he agrees and starts sketching.

A few minutes later, he hands her the portrait. The lady is ecstatic, she gushes about how wonderfully it captures the very essence of her character, what beautiful, beautiful work it is, and asks how much she owes him.

$5,000, madam, says Picasso.

The lady is taken aback, outraged, and asks how that’s even possible given it only took him 5 minutes.

Picasso looks up and, without missing a beat, says: No, madam, it took me my whole life. 

[Via BrainPickings]