Mlle. Fontaine’s Not Here

It seems like the easiest possible way to make art: Draw up a set of exacting blueprints and then hire a bunch of lackeys and gophers to carry out the fine details of your grand plans for dominating the worldwide art system. That's what Warhol did. And now, that's what...

By S. Pajot

May 20, 2010

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It seems like the easiest possible way to make art: Draw up a set of exacting blueprints and then hire a bunch of lackeys and gophers to carry out the fine details of your grand plans for dominating the worldwide art system. That's what Warhol did. And now, that's what Paris-based multimedia superstar Claire Fontaine appears to be doing. Except Mlle. Fontaine doesn't actually exist.

Formed in 2004, this so-called collective artist is really a group of people that created a fictional character, named it for a famous French paper company, and began making conceptual art from pre-existing materials such as tennis balls, vacuum cleaners, and sawed-off shotguns. Most notoriously, there's a 2006 sculptural piece titled Change, basically a dozen American quarters equipped with retractable razor blades.
Tuesdays-Sundays, 2010

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