Jean-Marc Bottazzi didn’t spend his childhood visiting museums, rising up, he says, “with out a lot cash, in a cultural desert close to Lyon”. Artwork, 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.
At the moment 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 significantly deep holdings of abstraction and conceptual images from Western Europe, the US and East Asia. This consists of the Summary Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell, and Simon Hantaï, whose fractal-like folded work and different experiments on canvas make him “France’s most essential 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 have been made and not using a digicam.
Having an artist brother has knowledgeable his philosophy on accumulating. “You wish to actually make a distinction to an artist’s life. It’s not about ticking off containers and having one in all every part—in any other case your property will appear like an residence 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 current 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 Artwork Newspaper, he’s within the strategy 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: “Once I gather, I actually gather.”
The Artwork Newspaper: What was the primary work you obtain?
Jean-Marc Bottazzi: An summary baroque-style portray by my brother within the early Nineties
What was the newest work you obtain?
Both a Fontana Tagli, or a Man Ray, La Priere (1930) photographic version.
What do you remorse not shopping for while 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. One other is {a photograph} of the author Yukio Mishima by Eikoh Hosoe, for which I didn’t pull the set off rapidly sufficient.
When you may have any work from any museum on this planet, what would it not be?
Marcel Duchamp’s urinal.
What’s the finest recommendation you could have obtained on accumulating?
Focus and decide to few. Attempt to not make a template assortment simply since you’re wealthy. The collector Uli Sigg has made such a distinction by his focus.
The place do you wish to eat and drink in Hong Kong?
Ta Vie, Ole, Feuille.
What’s your least favorite factor about artwork gala’s?
That the primary day is the busiest. What sort 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 then you definately already know what they’re bringing. ‘First Selection’ is faux. Whole 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 the very best factor to occur to town. The tensions it presents between West and East make it so attention-grabbing.
