French Fluxus artist Ben Vautier, known for his humorous and boundary-blurring work, has died at 88. Vautier, who often went by the moniker Ben, was found dead in his Nice home on Wednesday with a gunshot wound, according to the Nice prosecutor’s office, which has opened an investigation. His passing occurred just one day after the death of his wife Annie from a stroke.
Over his six-decade career, Ben became a prominent figure in the Fluxus movement, challenging the separation between life and art with works incorporating everyday objects and provocative performances.
Born in Naples in 1935, Ben experienced a peripatetic childhood, moving from Egypt to Switzerland before settling in Nice. He first engaged with art through collaging books while working at a local bookstore, a job arranged by his mother after he struggled in school. His most famous work is “Le magasin de Ben,” an installation that he developed in Nice in the 1960s. While it started as a functional record store, the space snowballed into a freewheeling art installation, hung with Ben’s handwritten sayings as well as random household objects, from colanders to bicycle wheels. The work is now in the collection of the Centre Pompidou.
Ben’s contributions to the art world were multifaceted, including organizing a Fluxus festival in Nice in 1963 and creating “total theater” performances that brought art into everyday life. His famous aphorism, “Everything is art,” epitomized his action-based approach: for one performance he yelled until he lost his voice (Hurler, 1964), for another he scandalously exhibited his own urine (Urine, 1972).
