Ben Vautier (French artist)

Ben Vautier
Benjamin Vautier in 2013
Born	Benjamin Vautier 1935 (age 81–82) Naples
Nationality	French
Known for	Lettrism, Performance art
Movement	Fluxus, zero

I will have liked
to be this cactus
in the ass of art...

Ben Vautier (born on July 18, 1935 in Naples, Italy), also known simply as Ben, is a French artist.

Vautier lives and works in Nice, where he ran a record shop called Magazin between 1958 and 1973. He discovered Yves Klein and the Nouveau Réalisme in the 1950s, but he became quickly interested in the French dada artist Marcel Duchamp, the music of John Cage and joined the Fluxus artistic movement in Octobre 1962. In 1959, Vautier founded the journal Ben Dieu. In 1960, he had his first one-man show, Rien et tout in Laboratoire 32.

He is also active in Mail-Art and is mostly known for his text-based paintings or « écritures » begun in 1953 with his work "Il faut manger. Il faut dormir". Another example of the latter is "L'art est inutile. Rentrez chez vous" (Art is Useless, Go Home).

He has long defended the rights of minorities in all countries, and he has been influenced by the theories of François Fontan about ethnism. For example, he has defended the Occitan language (southern France).

In 1981 he coined the name of the French art movement of the 1980s Figuration Libre (Free figuration).