M HKA Ensembles

Mixed Media, 20.5 x 31.5 x 0.5 cm.

Collection: Foundation Walter & Maria Schnepel, Baté (Hungary).

Excerpt of the conversation between Robert Filliou (RF) and Irmeline Lebeer (IL), Flayosc, France, August 1976.

IL: ‘Frozen Exhibition’?

RF: Didn’t we put ‘See Galerie Légitime’?

IL: Yes.

RF: Yes, because then you come there immediately. For Galerie Légitime everything is basically documented in the hat of the Frozen Exhibition, because I’ve summarised it all there. You have the hat, no? What do you have as text here?

[...]

RF: Vitesse de l’art (‘The Speed of Art’). This is something new I’m working on, but I think the hat [Frozen Exhibition] will help you summarise it. It’s research that has been going on for more or less ten years. It’s part of a long series, which will pursue me until I break my pencil: Research on the Origin, Research on Pre-Biology, and now Research on the Speed of Art. I need to work with a mathematician. This time I’ll try to do that. I’ve made the general and intuitive proposition that art is a function of life + fiction, and that fiction tends towards zero. If there’s no fiction at all, art is life. In that case, it should be completely anonymous, so that we don’t speak about it. This fits with our conversation where I said: ‘If it’s true that everything is art, then we shouldn’t say so.’ From the moment you say it, you make a distinction between art and life.