M HKA Ensembles

° 1941

Born in Paris (FR).

French artist, philosopher, and sociologist Hervé Fischer (Paris, b. 1941) graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, having written his master’s thesis on Spinoza’s political philosophy. For years, he devoted the bulk of his research to the sociology of colour. In 1981, he was promoted to associate professor at the Sorbonne. In tandem with his academic career, Fischer developed a visual journey – and discourse – as a multi-media artist and creator of sociological and ‘destructive’ art.

His début visual works are known as the Essuie-mains, paintings with handprints on fabric ‘hand towels’, to deconstruct the painting medium from within. Fischer also launched Hygiene de l’art campaigns to divest art of its traditional customs and habits. For example, he would invite artists to send him their works, which he’d then rip up and display in tiny plastic bags entitled La déchirure des oeuvres d’art. During the 1970s, his gaze shifted to the artistic reworking and reproduction of popular visual images and forms of expression, e.g. street signs and postage stamps, which he would enlarge, colour unconventionally, and reproduce in series. Barcodes, QR  codes, and pictogrammes suffer the same fate. They are produced in series with alternating colours to accentuate the gap between artistic and ‘real’ reality.

As a philosopher and countercultural scholar, Fischer also embarks on a quest for the true dynamics behind painting. He penned a critical essay entitled Market Art on the ‘financialization’ of art. Fischer distils ‘market art’ from a list of the most valued artists on the market and depicts the inverse relationship between their market and aesthetic value. As one rises, the other falls. Consequently, he concludes that market art, on the whole, is rather mediocre. And in De kapitalistische versie van de mythe van de kunst [The Capitalist Take on the Myth of Art], he expresses concern about the ability of institutions run by industrialists and collectors to safeguard themselves from the market’s sway when selecting artists. However, he qualifies this by insinuating that there isn’t anything scandalous per se about the capitalist take on the myth of art, given that the ties between art and capitalism are still better than alienation due to magic, war, or religion. He closes with a rhetorical question: wouldn’t it suffice for the artist to imbue a commercial object with their critical and interrogative powers, in that way making it meaningful art

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