The CollectorNice, not Andy Warhol, was top for pop art, Le French May show suggests

When considering early pop art, most people would not automatically think of France, let alone a single French city. But according to a new exhibition in Hong Kong, a group of artists in Nice were converting household objects into art well before Andy Warhol turned his attention to soup cans and Brillo pad boxes. 

“School of Nice – From Pop Art to Happenings” is part of this year’s Le French May Arts Festival, the annual, weeks-long celebration of French culture in Hong Kong and Macau. It features 100 pieces that have come mostly from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Mamac) in the French Riviera city, the adopted hometown of Henri Matisse, which conjures up visions of luxury yachts  bobbing on azure seas in Mediterranean sunlight. 

The show reveals that Nice also served as a backdrop to the so-called New Realist school, the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon world’s pop art. 

With Gallic flamboyance, the exhibition literature declares that “the School(s) of Nice created its own version of Pop Art – even more radical and daring than in America”. Indeed, artists such as Martial Raysse and Arman were using musical instruments, boxes of washing powder and references to the entertainment industry before Warhol and James Rosenquist. 

It was the time of the New Wave movement in film, too, and avant-garde artists were similarly eager to close the gap between “fine art” and real life.

Julien-Loïc Garin, chief executive of Le French May, says the festival previously brought more historic exhibitions to Hong Kong, but it is now time to reflect on how pre-20th century French masters influenced modern and contemporary artists.