Guest Speech｜Arthur de Villepin, Founder and CEO of Villepin Art
Date：2022-06-13
Speech by Arthur de Villepin, Founder and CEO of Villepin Art
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I'm very happy today to be part of this forum about cultural heritage. Let me tell you cultural heritage is very important for me, and I think for the world. The cultural heritage is about legacy. It's about our memory, not the memory that is imposed to us, but the memory we decide to choose and to preserve as a community. I think that, of course, we think of the states, we think of government's institutions that is our duty to preserve this memory and this legacy. But I think it's also part of every citizen and especially cultural and different institutions that are being part of this cultural community to also take their role and take the responsibility to preserve what will be left for their children. This memory that is also made of artists is made of food gastronomy. It's made of a nature that we should preserve.
I think that as a gallery, we really want, through artists, to create a new way we can look at the world, a new way we can mirror and understand the world. This, I'm trying to participate myself by making sure that the artist who promote Zao Wou-Ki, for instance, that is a very good friend of the family and that we had the chance to know really well, that promotes this idea of identities that are better when they are combined, identities that get stronger, like the Eastern culture and the Western culture that gets stronger when they are combined, and when they are brought together. This philosophy, this heritage, I want to preserve it, I want to promote it in this part of the world and through the gallery. So how do I do it? Of course, it's exhibitions. But I'm trying to bring guides, bring people to explain, create tours for free, of course, to help people understand what they see through the paintings, to help to understand his life made of someone who was born in China, but then developed his life in Europe, how he every time through challenges, through the encounter of new cultures, how he absorbed these cultures and create himself a new identity. We are bringing these different tours to explain people this message. But more than that, we are creating salons, where people can exchange, people can debate and give their point of views about the artist and about the themes.
Also, when we are talking about legacy, it's not just the tours, it's not just exhibitions, it's also the outside work that is necessary to keep that legacy alive. Of course, I'm talking about museum exhibitions, but I'm also talking about, for example, that we are taking the initiative of translating the book of Zao Wou-Ki, the autobiography of Zao Wou-Ki, into Chinese to help promote this philosophy and his life in China and of course in the rest of the world. So, I think that we can see through this example in being able to route the legacy of an artist into a heritage, preserve their philosophy is really important.
But of course, when talking about artists, we must talk about collectors. And we know that most of the time we are tempted to create collections, there will be mostly for speculation or for investments or for the idea to collect for yourself. I think we are in a moment where we have the duty and we have the responsibility to collect for more, to collect to preserve a certain heritage, a certain vision of the world. While with the gallery, with the advisory part of the gallery, we want to help collectors here take this responsibility, and be able to endorse a new vision of the world, because we need to listen, we need to hear this vision in other parts, whether it's the Europe or whether it's US, we need to hear that vision, and we want to help Asian collectors to bring that vision into the world. So helping them to select the right artists, to select the right paintings, and making sense to altogether preserve heritage, through art, with artists and of course with collectors. They all want to do more for the art world.
Thank you very much. And I'm very happy that this type of forum and this type of events happen so that altogether we can preserve the cultural heritage of this world. Thank you.
