Jean-Marc Bottazzi on why good accumulating shouldn’t be about ‘ticking containers’ – The Art Newspaper

Jean-Marc Bottazzi didn’t spend his childhood visiting museums, rising up, he says, “without much money, in a cultural desert near Lyon”. Art, nonetheless, runs in his blood: his youthful brother is the painter Guillaume Bottazzi, and their relationship sparked his love of viewing artwork—and shopping for it too.

Today the Japanese bond dealer has settled in Hong Kong after a stint in Tokyo. His assortment numbers round 1,000 works and displays his world biography, with notably deep holdings of abstraction and conceptual pictures from Western Europe, the US and East Asia. This consists of the Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell, and Simon Hantaï, whose fractal-like folded work and different experiments on canvas make him “France’s most important post-war artist”, Bottazzi says.

From the East, he favours artists related to the Japanese avant-garde motion Gutai, such because the painter Kazuo Shiraga, in addition to earlier experimental pioneers like Ei-Q, proudly owning a number of of his distinctive photographic works that had been made with no digital camera.

Having an artist brother has knowledgeable his philosophy on accumulating. “You want to really make a difference to an artist’s life. It’s not about ticking off boxes and having one of everything—otherwise your home will look like an apartment in Trump Tower.”

For Bottazzi, deep accumulating means the enduring assist of A-Yo, the 96-year-old Japanese artist whose rainbow-patterned work and sculptures symbolise an anti-elitist strategy to art-making, influenced by Fluxus. Bottazzi was the important thing lender to a latest monographic exhibition of the artist at M+, the Hong Kong museum the place is each a donor and a member of its worldwide committee for visible artwork.

As he speaks to The Art Newspaper, he’s within the technique of buying one other tranche of works by A-Yo, so as to add to the 100+ works by the artist he already owns. As he says: “When I collect, I really collect.”

The Art Newspaper: What was the primary work you got?

Jean-Marc Bottazzi: An summary baroque-style portray by my brother within the early Nineties

What was the latest work you got?

Either a Fontana Tagli, or a Man Ray, La Priere (1930) photographic version. 

What do you remorse not shopping for whenever you had the prospect?

Two issues: a Minotaur {photograph} by Man Ray that I didn’t have the balls to purchase ten years in the past. Another is {a photograph} of the author Yukio Mishima by Eikoh Hosoe, for which I didn’t pull the set off rapidly sufficient.

If you would have any work from any museum on the earth, what would it not be?

Marcel Duchamp’s urinal.

What is one of the best recommendation you will have obtained on accumulating?

Focus and decide to few. Try to not make a template assortment simply since you’re wealthy. The collector Uli Sigg has made such a distinction by his focus.

Where do you wish to eat and drink in Hong Kong?

Ta Vie, Ole, Feuille.

What is your least favorite factor about artwork gala’s?

That the primary day is the busiest. What type of privilege is it to be surrounded by a crowd of individuals. I desire going to gala’s on the finish. If you’re actually following a gallery you then already know what they’re bringing. ‘First Choice’ is faux. Total hype.

What tip would you give to somebody visiting Hong Kong for the primary time?

Go to M+, after which go to M+ once more. It’s one of the best factor to occur to the town. The tensions it presents between West and East make it so attention-grabbing.