Ben Vautier

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Ben Vautier (born on July 18, 1935 in Naples, Italy), also known as just Ben, is a French artist.

He is living and working in Nice, where he ran a disc shop when he was young. He discovered Yves Klein and the Nouveau Réalisme in the 1950s, but he became quickly interested in the french dada artist Marcel Duchamp, the music of John Cage and all the Fluxus artistic movement in the 1960s. He is also active in Mail-Art and is mostly know for writing his texts as a statement for example his work "L'art est inutile. Rentrez chez vous" (Art is Useless, Go Home).

He always defended the right of the minorities in any coutry, and he is been influenced by the theories of François Fontan about ethnism. For example, he has always defended the occitan language (south of France), which is about to be extinct because speakers are shifting to French.