James Lee Byars

After his first solo exhibition in an emergency fire stairwell of the New York MoMA in 1958, he began exhibiting in Japan from 1962, in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1970 and at the MoMA in 1976, and also at the Museum of Fine Arts Bern. Although he worked with performance from the 1970s, his work also extended into installations and sculptures dominated by the colours gold, red, black and white. These colours gave a mystic dimension to works and performances which articulated art and life, focussed on the quest for the sublime and for perfection, showcasing the ephemeral, the fragile, the invisible and even death.

After having participated in Azur in 1993, James Lee Byars was invited to hold a solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier two years later. Inspired by the light and transparency of the space in Jean Nouvel’s building on Boulevard Raspail, he designed two monumental works that symbolised the quest for the absolute and perfection that was the powerful driving force behind his art. Reflecting his quest for the perfect form, The Monument to Language, a large gilded bronze sphere, three metres in diameter, was accompanied by The Diamond Floor (1995) and incorporated the performance of an actor reciting quotations from Roland Barthes on language. His work was subsequently displayed in the group exhibitions Amours in 1997, Un monde réel in 1999 and Mémoires Vives in 2014.