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November 28, 2009
Art market anarchy at Paris Photo 2009 -- free photos!
A surprise act of art market anarchy took place just outside the entrance to the exclusive gala VIP opening night at Paris Photo 2009 last week. While the crowd of well-dressed international art collectors began to enter the giant hall at the Louvre, dozens of pranksters quickly dumped thousands and thousands of anonymous vintage photos into a giant heap, and tossed handfuls of photographs in the air. "Free, free, free!"
Even in this art-loving socialist capital, this act caused a momentary cognitive disconnect:
Inside, a single rare photograph could fetch a price of 40,000 euros ($60,000) or more. Outside this heap of interesting (and potentially) precious gems were free for the taking. You just had to get down on your hands and knees and shuffle through the stack to find something that spoke to you. Nobody else assigned a value to any of these photos.
It was like a feeding frenzy. And it was quite evident that some people were torn between spending all evening crawling on the floor in search of some personal treasures -- or going inside to sip champagne and look at some of the best work available in today's official international art market.The gleeful perpetrators recorded their "happening" for YouTube. Vive la France!
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Well, that´s ok but...
What´s the matter with this?
What he wanted to show?
At first view I think this is an useless action.
If you listen to what M. Breuvard said about his performance (because it is first of all an art performance more than an action) you'll understand why he did it.
Vive la France.
c'est magnifique!
In my opinion this is just a shameless self promotion episode.
GREAT set of photos documenting more of this fun craziness on Flickr: http://bit.ly/8FwnE6 My favorite is the woman in orange practically diving into the pool...
@Sergio Jaén Lara
During the event nothing mentionned fabien breuvart name nor shop. It's everything but a self promotion.
It was a great piece of art... a true message around photography at the age of digital.
I am glad to have helped !! thanks for the article.
If you want to see more about fabien it's here : http://www.imagesetportraits.fr/
PS: glad to do him some promotion
reminded me of Matthew Rose's A Book about Death show in NYC at Emily Harvey.
something is happening
Self-Promotion? What were the people inside Paris Photo doing? (Apart from giving £15,000 each to the promoters and legging up an increasingly greasy money pole).
Finally, an action that demonstrates the superficiality of the market and the power of the still image in the hands of the citizens.