French conceptual art persona created by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill
Claire Fontaine
Born
Founded in Paris, France 2004
Nationality
Italian / British
Education
Università degli Studi di Padova, Paris VIII / Glasgow School of Art
Known for
Conceptual art, Human Strike, ready-made artist
Notable work
Foreigners Everywhere (Arabic), 2005, In God They Trust, 2004
Website
www.clairefontaine.ws
Claire Fontaine, Untitled (on vous intoxique!) (2018)When women strike the world stops (2020)/ Newsfloor (Le Monde Pixelisé) (2020)Claire Fontaine, In God They Trust (2005). Twenty-five-cent coin, steel box-cutter blade, solder and rivet.Claire Fontaine, Untitled (Negative) (2016)
Claire Fontaine is a feminist, conceptual artist, founded in Paris in 2004 by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, an Italian-British artist duo who declared themselves her assistants.[1] Since 2018 Claire Fontaine lives and works in Palermo and has a studio in the historical centre of the Kalsa near Piazza Magione.
After lifting her name from a popular brand of French school notebooks and stationary, Claire Fontaine declared herself a readymade artist[2][3] and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people's work. Claire Fontaine translated into English means "Clear Fountain" and can also be conceptually linked to the artwork Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, known as the most famous readymade.[4]
Work
Claire Fontaine uses the concept of the readymade as a way of criticising "production" disguised as a creation of more and more artefacts that are desirable because they superficially appear as new. Generally she works with appropriation on a formal level and she hijacks contents, using sculpture, installation, video and painting to create an emotionally loaded criticism of the author and the forms of authority at this stage of capitalism. This aesthetic approach that she describes as "expropriation", a way of giving an existential use value to pre-existing objects and artworks, also addresses the general crisis of singularity, which she describes as the individual and collective impossibility to give a meaning to one's life under the current political circumstance and the systematic surveillance, repression and countless limitations of our freedom. Claire Fontaine prefers to integrate the existing art circuit to create complicities and foster change which entails partaking in the mechanisms and subjects of the art industry including collectors, dealers and institutions.[5]
In an Interview with Circa Art Magazine in 2008 she states: "I think forming gangs, mafias, collectives, networks, bands of people is a way to survive in the hostile capitalist system and then eventually a way to become a pressure group, in order to transform these particular conditions."[6]
Writing and text based pieces play an important role in Claire Fontaine's work. She distributes texts in her exhibitions and she uses different registers in her writing such as poetry, critical theory, essays and manifestos. The artist criticises the hierarchy between visual and verbal expression.
In February 2020 she was invited by Maria Grazia Chiuri to create the mise-en-scène for Dior's Autumn/Winter 2020 collection for Paris Fashion Week which took place in the Les Tuileries. The artist used the catwalk to perform an operation of Institutional Critique investing the floor and the ceiling; she presented Newsfloor (Le Monde Pixelisé) (2020) and several large suspended LED signs stating for example: Patriarchy Kills Love, When women strike the world stops, Feminine beauty is a ready-made or Patriarchy = Climate emergency.[7][8]
Viaggio in Sicilia, Free Energy,[10] Vito Planeta (Author), Valentina Bruschi (Author), Leonardo Sciascia (Author), Donatien Grau (Author), Planeta, ISBN 9791220050180 (2019)
Foreigners Everywhere by Hal Foster (Author), Bernard Blistène (Author), Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov (Author), Letizia Ragalia (Introduction), Walther König, Köln; Bilingual edition ISBN 3863351703[11] (31/03/ 2013)
Human Strike and the Art of Creating Freedom, Hal Foster (Forward), Semiotext(e), Dec. 2020 ISBN 978-1635901368
Lo sciopero umano e l'arte di creare la libertà[13](Italian), Ilaria Bussoni (Forward) DeriveApprodi, 2017, ISBN 978-8865481981
La Grève humaine: et l'art de créer la liberté, Diaphanes, 2020 ISBN 2889280462[14]
The Human Strike Has Already Begun & Other Essays,[15] Mute, 2013. Print ISBN 978-1-906496-88-3;[16] eBook ISBN 978-1-906496-89-0[17]
Notas sobre économia libidinal,[18]MUSAC, 2011, edited by Maria Ines Rodriguez
Some Instructions for the Sharing of Private Property,[19] One Star Press, 2011
Vivre, Vaincre, Editions Dilecta,[20] ISBN 978-2-916275-50-5[21] 2009
Writings
Towards a Theory of Magic Materialism[22], Vers une théorie du matérialisme magique, Diaphanes, Issue 8/9 Winter 2019/20
Making Life (im)possible in Jens Hoffmann, In the Meantime. Speculations on Art, Curating, and Exhibitions, Sternberg Press, 2020, ISBN 9783956794919[23]
The Visitor as a Commercial Partner: Notes on the 58th Venice Biennale,[24] E-flux Journal No. 102 – September 2019
L'anno in cui la paura andò in sciopero in È solo l'inizio. Rifiuto, affetti, creatività nel lungo '68[25], edited by I. Bussoni, N. Martino, Ombre Corte, 2018, ISBN 9788869481079[26]
If our Lives are Black. On Angela Davis and Gina Dent's conference at La Maison de l'Amérique Latine, Paris, May Quarterly Journal,[27] #.17, 14 March 2017
Boredom,[28] edited by Tom McDonough, Documents of Contemporary Art, 2017, ISBN 9780262533447[29]
1977. L'anno dello sciopero umano,[30] Cultura, Il manifesto, 05.04.2017
Draft for aesthetic subjects anaesthetic object, Flashart, January–February 2010
Entrée en matière, May Quarterly Journal,[35] #.4. 06. 2010
Toward an Imageless Political Education,[36] Diacritics, a review of contemporary criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 39 no.23, ISSN 1080-6539, Fall 2009
The Emancipated Reader, May Quarterly Journal,[37] #.1 06. 2009
Human strike within the field of libidinal economy, Descent to Revolution,[38] edited by James Voorhies, pp. 144–151, Bureau for Open Culture, ISBN 0979747643[39] 2009
Preface to Coco Fusco, Petit manuel de torture à l'usage des femmes-soldats,[40] Les Prairies Ordinaires, Paris
Interviews
L'immanenza del linguaggio: un dialogo con Claire Fontaine,[41] Anita Chari, Simone Ciglia, Flashart Italia, June 2020
L'arte di essere libere[42], Interview with Eva Morletto, Grazia, no. 23 21.05.2020
Claire Fontaine Collective Capital,[43] Interview with Evrim Oralkan, Collecteurs, March 2020
Pretend to be dead, An Interview with Claire Fontaine,[44] Kyra Kordoski, White Fungus, 2015
Giving Shape to Painful Things,[45] Interview Andrew Culp and Ricky Crano, Radical Philosophy, RP175 (Sept/Oct 2012)
Claire Fontaine.La nostra Italia bruciata che non-cambia mai, Laura Larcan,[46]La Repubblica, 3/2/2012
Grève humaine (interrompue), a conversation between Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey, May Quarterly Journal,[47] No. 4 March 2010
In Life There is No Purity, Only Struggle, Interview with Bart van der Heide, Metropolis M magazine (February/March 2009)
Acts of Freedom, Interview with Niels Van Tomme, Arts and Papers[48] 33.06 (September 2009)
The Glue and the Wedge: The Cases of Claire Fontaine and Canell and Watkins[49], Isobel Harbison and Ilaria Gianni No. 124, Circa Art Magazine[50] 2008
Macht Arbeit, Interview with Stephanie Kleefeld Texte zur Kunst, Issue 73, 2009
Claire Fontaine by Anthony Huberman,[51] Bomb Magazine No. 105, 10.2008
Solo exhibitions
2005: Claire Fontaine, Galerie Meerrettich[52] im Glaspavillon an der Volksbühne, Berlin
Requiem for Jean Charles de Menezes[53] : Notes on the state of Exception (2005). Text pile or window announcement, A5 double-sided photocopy, no copyright.2005: Requiem for Jean-Charles de Menezes, Tratari, Graz AT
2005: Étrangers Partout, 21 rue Ste Marthe, Paris FR
2006: Siamo tutti singolarità qualunque, Il piccolo Museion, progetto Garutti, Museion Bolzano IT
2006: Couvrir Les Feux,[54] Zoo Galerie,[55] Nantes, FR
2007: The 00's, The history of a decade that has not yet been named, Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon 2007, Institut d'Art Contemporaine, Villeurbanne, Lyon FR
2009: Is freedom therapeutic?, Barock: art, science, faith and technology in the contemporary age (curators: Eduardo Cicelyn, Mario Codognato), Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Napoli[60]
2011: No Family Life[61], Air de Paris,[62] Paris[63]
2012: Généralités[64], La Douane, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris[65]
^"– Interview with Claire Fontaine: "Historical Fiction as Realism"". realism working group. 2008-05-25. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
^Harbison, Isobel; Gianni, Ilaria (2008). "The Glue and the Wedge: The Cases of Claire Fontaine and Canell and Watkins". Circa (124): 48–53. doi:10.2307/25564920. ISSN 0263-9475. JSTOR 25564920.
^"Artist Claire Fontaine on the Dior Autumn-Winter 2020–2021 Set". Retrieved 2020-05-28 – via YouTube.
^"The incredible feminist decor from the Dior show in pictures". Vogue Paris. 25 February 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
^CLAIRE FONTAINE : newsfloor. [Place of publication not identified]: Verlag DER BUCHHANDLUNG W. 2019. ISBN 978-3-96098-689-8. OCLC 1126550396.
^"VIAGGIO IN SICILIA #8 |Free Energy|Tribute to Ettore Majorana". Planeta Winery. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Katrib, Ruba. (2010). Claire Fontaine : economies. McDonough, Tom, 1969–, Claire Fontaine (Artist collective), Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami, Fla.). North Miami, FL: Museum of Contemporary Art. ISBN 978-1-888708-38-7. OCLC 652540968.
^"Lo sciopero umano". DeriveApprodi (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^FONTAINE, CLAIRE. (2020). LA GRVE HUMAINE : et lart de crer la libert. [Place of publication not identified]: DIAPHANES. ISBN 978-2-88928-046-9. OCLC 1145103636.
^"The Human Strike Has Already Begun & Other Essays". Mute. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Claire Fontaine (Artist collective) (2013). Human strike has already begun & other writings. London. ISBN 978-1-906496-88-3. OCLC 880682049.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Claire Fontaine (Artist collective) (2013). Human strike has already begun & other writings. London. ISBN 978-1-906496-88-3. OCLC 880682049.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^"Claire Fontaine. Notas sobre economía libidinal (2011)". Issuu. 31 March 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"Some instructions for the sharing of private property – Claire Fontaine – onestar press". onestarpress.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"Claire Fontaine: Towards a Theory of Magic Materialism". diaphanes.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Hoffmann, Jens, 1974– (31 March 2020). In the meantime : speculations on art, curating, and exhibitions. Berlin. ISBN 978-3-95679-491-9. OCLC 1114864084.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^"The Visitor as a Commercial Partner: Notes on the 58th Venice Biennale". e-flux.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"È solo l'inizio / Rifiuto, affetti, creatività nel lungo '68". OperaViva Magazine (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^È solo l'inizio : rifiuto, affetti, creatività nel lungo '68. Bussoni, Ilaria,, Martino, Nicolas (Prima edizione ed.). Verona. 2018. ISBN 978-88-6948-107-9. OCLC 1090171407.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
^Press, The MIT (27 January 2017). Boredom | The MIT Press. Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262533447. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Fontaine, Claire (Fall 2009). "Toward an Imageless Political Education". Diacritics, A Review of Contemporary Criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, No.23. 39: 7–19 – via Project Muse.
^"Human strike within the field of libidinal economy". The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Descent to revolution. Voorhies, James Timothy., Bureau for Open Culture., Columbus College of Art and Design. Columbus: Bureau for Open Culture. 2010. ISBN 978-0-9797476-4-9. OCLC 649513797.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^"Download Petit manuel de torture à lusage des femmes-soldats ePub eBook @4423A70628A820AC72B148D5F39303E9.FARMACRED.COM.AR". 4423a70628a820ac72b148d5f39303e9.farmacred.com.ar. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"L'immanenza del linguaggio: un dialogo con Claire Fontaine |". Flash Art (in Italian). 2020-06-09. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Morletto, Eva (20 May 2020). "L'arte di essere libere". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Harbison, Isobel; Gianni, Ilaria (2008). "The Glue and the Wedge: The Cases of Claire Fontaine and Canell and Watkins". Circa (124): 48–53. doi:10.2307/25564920. ISSN 0263-9475. JSTOR 25564920.
^"Circa Art Magazine • Writings on Visual Arts in Ireland". Circa Art Magazine. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"Claire Fontaine by Anthony Huberman – BOMB Magazine". bombmagazine.org. October 2008. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Independent Police Complaints Commission (England and Wales) (2007). Stockwell one : investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station on 22 July 2005. Independent Police Complaints Commission. OCLC 191242302.
^"Claire Fontaine | Zoo Galerie" (in French). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Salmeron, François (18 April 2012). "Généralités – Claire Fontaine – galerie Chantal Crousel – Critique". paris-art.com. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
^"Claire Fontaine | CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts". archive.wattis.org. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Considine, Liam (2018-09-20). "Claire Fontaine, Redemptions". In Dossin, Catherine (ed.). France and the Visual Arts since 1945: Remapping European Postwar and Contemporary Art. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 269. ISBN 978-1-5013-4154-0.
^"Claire Fontaine Launches Contemporary Art Series in Museum Lobby". The Jewish Museum. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"La borsa e la vita, Claire Fontaine e il capitalismo in mostra al Ducale di Genova". Repubblica TV – Repubblica (in Italian). 2019-03-08. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^redazione (2019-05-02). "Carige per i Rolli Days apre al pubblico collezioni d'arte e caveau". Liguria Business Journal (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"OK NO | SYNNIKA". synnika.space. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"Galerias Municipais de Lisboa | Your Money and Your Life". Galerias Municipais de Lisboa (in European Portuguese). 2020-04-11. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
Further reading
What Comes After Farce[1] by Hal Foster, Human Strike (pg. 59–67) Verso, 224 pages / May 2020 / ISBN 9781788738118
Out of This Disaster, New Approaches to Art May Emerge, Hal Foster on What—Or May Not—Come After Covid-19,[2] Hal Foster, Literary Hub, May 21, 2020
On Claire Fontaine at Reena Spaulings,[3] Los Angeles, Anita Chari, May Quarterly Journal,[4] No. 20 14 March 2020
PFW FW20: Dior's Ode to the Past is a Path to the Future,[5] Eliza Jordan, Whitewall 26.02. 2020
A Companion to Feminist Art, Hilary Robinson (Editor), Maria Elena Buszek (Editor), Dana Arnold (Series Editor) The Hidden Abode Beneath/Behind/Beyond the Factory Floor, Gendered Labor, and the Human Strike: Claire Fontaine's Italian Marxist Feminism, (p. 369) Jaleh Mansoor, Wiley-Blackwell, 2019 ISBN 9781118929155[7] 2019
Collettivi di artisti, sul mercato l'unione fa la forza,[8] Silvia Anna Barrilà, Il Sole 24 Ore, 04.08.2019
Claire Fontaine: la borsa e la vita[9] in Il primo amore, Umberto Sebastiano, 23.03.19
Speculation as a Mode of Production, Forms of Value Subjectivity in Art and Capital,[10]Marina Vishmidt, Haymarket Books, ISBN 9781642590517[11] 2019
Going Nowhere, Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression, Mikkel Krause Frantzen, Zero Books ISBN 978-1-78904-214-6[12] 2019
Nuova luce su Ettore Majorana. Claire Fontaine protagonista di Viaggio in Sicilia di Planeta,[13] Desirée Maida, Artibune 08.2019
Storie dell'Arte / Claire Fontaine, ready-made per riflettere sul senso delle cose,[14] Maria Chiara Valacchi, Corriere della Sera 30.10.2019
^"PFW FW20: Dior's Ode to the Past is a Path to the Future". Whitewall. 2020-02-26. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Dürrholz, Johanna. "Paris Fashion Week: Sorry, das ist Poster-Feminismus". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^A companion to feminist art. Robinson, Hilary, 1956–, Buszek, Maria Elena, 1971–. Hoboken, NJ. ISBN 978-1-118-92917-9. OCLC 1081376220.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^"Collettivi di artisti, sul mercato l'unione fa la forza". Il Sole 24 ORE (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"il primo amore". ilprimoamore.com. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Beech, Dave (April 2019). "Marina Vishmidt: Speculation as a Mode of Production – Forms of Value Subjectivity in Art and Capital". Art Monthly. No. 425. pp. 37–38. ProQuest 2224924770.
^Vishmidt, Marina. (2019). Speculation as a mode of production : forms of value subjectivity in art and capital. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1-64259-051-7. OCLC 1088740454.
^Frantzen, Mikkel Krause (29 November 2019). Going nowhere, slow : the aesthetics and politics of depression. Winchester, UK. ISBN 978-1-78904-215-3. OCLC 1124609251.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Maida, Desirée (2019-08-21). "Claire Fontaine per l'ottava edizione di Viaggio in Sicilia di Planeta". Artribune (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"Storie dell'Arte / Claire Fontaine, ready-made per riflettere sul senso delle cose". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Mansoor, Jaleh, 1975– (30 September 2016). Marshall Plan modernism : Italian postwar abstraction and the beginnings of autonomia. Durham. ISBN 978-0-8223-6245-6. OCLC 930683605.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^Andrea Rossetti (2019-04-12). "Prendi i soldi e vivi! exibart.com". exibart.com (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Le Monde diplomatique https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2017/03/journal#!/p_5. Retrieved 2020-06-09. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^"il manifesto" (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^"Musings on the Mutinies to Come | The Village Voice". The Village Voice. 11 October 2005. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
^Tiqqun. (2011). Conscious organ of the imaginary party : exercises in critical metaphysics(PDF). Paris: libcom.org. ISBN 978-1620490099. OCLC 896732445.
^Tiqqun (2000). "Theory of Bloom" (PDF). libcom.org.
^Fontaine, Claire (2009). Ready-made artist and Human Strike: A Few Clarifications. mute.