MY MOTHER, MY FATHER AND ME...

My mother is dead, my father is dead, I have no children. When I’m gone, what will become of my things? With no named heirs, a public sale could happen to me; sold at auction. If I want to exorcise the fear that when I die their shared history, as well as the one that links me to them, will be erased, I must begin with the dress rehearsal of what will happen to my estate. So I asked the auctioneers at Hôtel Drouot to stage my nightmare, to value the possessions in my house in Malakoff and to draw up a descriptive inventory of my moveable assets, but not an estimate. In accordance with the practices of the profession, only those lots worthy of description were listed. This means that household appliances, bedding and paperwork were excluded. With the exception of those that form part of the décor, I have chosen to exclude my own works of art, since their history has already been catalogued, as well as the jewellery I wish to wear in death. Since we’ve been together, the lots that appear in the Drouot catalogue have had a private life that isn’t always reflected in the accompanying description. Picasso said, ‘We should be able to show the paintings that are beneath the painting’. And I’d like to be able to tell the stories beneath the objects

Concession, 2018
I would have liked to spend my death in the Montparnasse cemetery. But those who aren’t dead yet cannot dream of taking up residency there. Forthis kind of real estate transaction, you must die first. Difficult, in these conditions, to make plans to move in. So I bought a plot in the cemetery of Bolinas, California, there where I had taken my first photographs. Since I live in France and there’sa strong probability I’ll die there, I expressed concern, while negotiating the purchase, about how my remains would reach the US. The manager reassured me immediately: the body, by UPS; the ashes, by FedEx. This detail thus swept away, I became the owner of Lot 74, Section T, 8,949 kilometers away from Montparnasse.

Dead in a good mood, 2013
Read in my mother's diary: December 28, 1985 - No use investing in the tenderness of my children, between Antoine's placid indifference and Sophie's selfish arrogance! My only consolation is, she is so morbid that she will come visit me in my grave more often than on Rue Boulard. May 29, 1986 – I don't remember to whom I said yesterday over the phone, about myself: "She came from nothing-and left jaded about everything!" September 9, 1986 - I still don't know whether I want to be cremated or buried. Funny how I can't imagine that happening to me at all! April 28, 1987 – Good-bye, Diary! I'm off to New York. Let's hope it will all be wonderful. If the plane crashes, here's a cheery farewell to life! November 10, 1988 - I slowly get used to my depression; slighted, it slowly backs away. June 6, 1989 - Abominable. January 1, 1990 - "To have accomplished nothing and to die overworked." (Cioran) April 1, 1990 - No, I'm not depressed, nor bitter, but I am terribly bored, without purpose or project or vision, "I feel that I am just a ruined tomb in which my virtues and illusions lie." February 21, 1995 - Nothing! Except nursing my sorrow. December 11, 1995 – I would already like Christmas to be over. Or perhaps I'd like my life to be over.

C ki, 2017
Who r u Delete contact. Difficult. When my father died, I didn’t erase his number from my phone. Yesterday I dialed it by mistake and hung up right away. A few minutes later, his picture and name came up on the screen. Bob was sending me a message.

My Mother, my Cat, my Father, 2017
My parents each took three months to die. Three months: time for the last gestures of love, time to become an orphan. But not the endless, grinding time of agony and despair, of seeing my flamboyant mother and my impeccable father fall from their heights. A week before she died, my mother refused to see an unwelcome visitor: “Tell him I’m dead!” On the Tuesday before he died, my father complained: “I’d like to go to that new place. We’re losing time. Let’s set a date, we keep delaying, delaying!” They died just in time, both of them: alive to the end. I forgot to cut a lock of their hair, and that’s not like me. When my cat died, I saved a tuft of his fur. Florence was relieved: “I’m glad to see that you still distinguish between humans and animals.”

Bob, 2017
Because he was ninety-four and I knew we didn’t have much time left
Because I ran into him at FIAC and thought that soon I’d no longer catch sight of his elegant person at contemporary art events
Because I was always elated to see him and wanted to save a trace of this encounter
Because he was wearing the cap that looked so good on him
Because he had the soft smile and impish, kind and knowing expression of the good days
Because he was standing in front of the work of an artist he admired
Because on that work was the word SILENCE Because he avoided being photographed, as he didn’t like the shape of his mouth, and because I had so few photographs of him
Because I knew he would go along with it, because it was FIAC, and there was that SILENCE above his head, and his daughter wanted it, it was enough to give in
Because I saw that it would be one of the finest portraits of him that would be left to me
Because I felt that it would probably be a last time of some kind
Because I needed more memories

Why should I throw away that which was kind enough to reach my hands ? Pablo Picasso

My mother is dead, my father is dead, I have no children. When I’m gone, what will become of my things? With no named heirs, a public sale may happen to me; sold at auction. If I want to exorcise the fear that when I die their shared history, as well as the one that links them to me, will be erased, I must begin I must begin with the dress rehearsal of what will happen to my estate. So I asked the auctioneers at Hôtel Drouot to stage my nightmare, to value the possessions in my house in Malakoff and to draw up a descriptive inventory of my moveable assets, but not an estimate.

In accordance with the practices of the profession, only those lots worthy of description were listed. This means that household appliances, bedding and paperwork were excluded. With the exception of those that form part of the décor, I have chosen to exclude my own works of art, since their history has already been catalogued, as well as the jewellery I wish to wear when dead.

Jean Michel Othoniel, Cenotaph, 2023

In 2004, at a funeral celebration organised by him, we inaugurated the funerary monument he had commissioned from Jean-Michel Othoniel in the meadows of Le Cailar, where his bulls lived. A grave but no body. Shortly afterwards, he fell seriously ill, as if the grave were calling for him, but he survived. In 2017, death manifested itself once again, in the form of a tree that fell on the final resting place he had chosen for himself. Two days later, on 13 January, we had a body but no grave; we cremated Jean. I kept a handful of his ashes to slip into an urn one day, made from glass balls that had escaped destruction.

Since we’ve been together, the lots that appear in the Drouot catalogue have had a private life that isn’t always reflected in the accompanying description. Picasso said, ‘We should be able to show the paintings that are beneath the painting’. And I’d like to be able to tell the stories beneath the objects.

In Pablo Picasso’s personal archives held in the museum, I found a letter on the letterhead of the AAAA, Association d’aide aux artistes aveugles [Association for the Support of Blind Artists], asking the artist for an original drawing of a blind man as he perceived him, with the aim of using the proceeds to build the House of Closed Eyes.

I didn’t find an answer from Picasso. I called on the generosity of Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, in order to organize, during this exhibition, the auction of one of the artist’s ceramic works, which they donated, and thus, sixty-five years later, to be able to donate the proceeds to Le Livre de l’aveugle association and the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso.

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