Nicole Farhi, for many of you, will need no introduction. Name and soul of the eponymous and iconic fashion brand, she left the fashion world to pursue her lifelong passion of art. The Art Collector asked Farhi about the arts, and the indelible legacy she has and will make.
TAC: Can you tell us about your art trajectory; has it always been a passion of yours (creating artworks)?
NF: I went to Paris at the age of 19 to study fashion design. It was the late 60s. I had been living in Nice where no such schools existed yet. My wonderful school “Cours Bercot” later called Studio Bercot was run by Suzanne Bercot and Marie Rucki. The main focus of their teaching was to develop their students’ personality and creativity. While learning to become a fashion designer, a rather new profession, I was going to “L’Academie de la Grande Chaumiere” in Montparnasse several afternoons a week to draw and paint. Here also the teaching was rather free from the academic rules of painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. During my second year in Paris, I started to sell Fashion sketches to fashion houses and very quickly I was making a living. Fashion became my career. But in the back of my mind I knew I will turn to Art one day.
What are your thoughts on the intersection of art and fashion? Where do you draw the line between the two?
I never thought the fashion I created was art. The companies I was working for and later my own company could exist only if the clothes I was designing were appealing and sold to a lot of people. If no women or men had been buying them and enjoyed wearing them until today, they would have disappeared along with the companies, and I would have lost my job and no-one today would remember me as a fashion designer. Art exists to stir emotion in people, it opens your eyes to new experiences and forces us to think and adjust our sights.
I never thought Art and Fashion could compare. On very rare occasions a Fashion Designer can also be an artist – I am thinking of [the late] Alexander McQueen.
What has been your most challenging art work and why?
Working in different mediums other than clay can be quite challenging. Starting life casting was technically more difficult. You have to be fast, and precise.
Aside from sculpture, do you work in any other mediums?
No. I quite like cooking. Casting in plaster sometimes makes me think of making pastry.
Your works celebrate technical virtuosity. Do you think we are at risk of losing this in an AI/AR/VR world?
I have used 3D printing in some of my sculptures, but only to make objects without a soul. A pair of spectacles, a hat… Art is symbolic of what it means to be human, to think, to feel. It says as much about you, the artist, as the person who looks at it and interprets. A machine will never do that.
As a follow up question, what are some of the positive aspects of technology on the art world?
AI/AR/VR are very interesting and fantastic technologies to manufacture parts, and it will inevitably improve no end, but I am not sure about them ever replacing the human touch.
If you had to choose one artist, alive or dead, to have dinner with, who would it be and why?
Giacometti. The artist whose work moves me profoundly, and who was at the start of my interest and love for sculpture.
Do you collect art?
25 years ago I started collecting works founded in 1960 by a group of painters: “Le Nouveau Realisme”. I collected Jacques de la Villegle, Mimmo Rotella, Raymond Hains. Their work concentrated on the new reality of a society of consumerism.
