Ben Vautier’s “Trou Portatif” from the Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry

Many thanks to Ruth and Marvin Sackner for the kind invitation to view their private collection in Miami.

Ben 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 the 1960s. In 1959, Vautier founded the journal Ben Dieu. In 1960, he had his first one-man show, Rien et tout in Laboratoire 32.

Vautier is also active in Mail-Art and is mostly known for his text-based paintings; an example of the latter is his work “L’art est inutile. Rentrez chez vous” (“Art is Useless, Go Home”).