Five Parisian artists on their favorite books

From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, five Paris-based artists share the texts they keep going back to.

Mary Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

Jean-Marie Appriou

‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’ is the first work of science fiction – a term that didn’t exist when it was written. Mary Shelley wrote her novel in disparate fragments that she pieced together like the creature’s body, and the story is told by several different narrators. The book’s subtitle juxtaposes the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus (who brought fire to humankind), with modernity.

‘At the time Shelley was writing the book, the world was opening up – it was the age of great discoveries. For her this was a matter for concern, with the context of scientific advancement outpacing human morality. Shelley’s worries are similar to those we may have in regard to technology today: We might well wonder whether we are in the process of creating Frankenstein’s monster with artificial intelligence. In the book, the young scientist realizes that the creature he has made is violent beyond all moral boundaries, and so he leaves it to fend for itself in a world that is not yet ready to accept it.

‘I often invoke antiquity, Egyptian sculpture, and mythology in my work, while at the same time trying to project my sculptures into something that is also influenced by science fiction. There is a parallel between this fantastic novel, in which the protagonist gives life to a creature, and the way in which I conceive of sculpture. When I make an arm, a head – in the end, I am creating collages that form a new story.’

Albert Camus
Nuptials (1938) followed by Summer (1954)

Christine Safa

‘I read Nuptials followed by Summer when I was finishing my degree at Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2018. From the very first sentences, the descriptions evoked states I had found myself in when I was in Lebanon. The book was a doorway to those emotions, like a sweet sense of nostalgia.

‘I spend every summer in Lebanon, and it is a very important season for me. But the first two summers after I finished my studies, I stayed in Paris to work. It was the first time I didn’t go back, and I cried on the first day as I read this book that described all these moods and feelings that I missed. I read it like a collection of poems, with its descriptions of summer feeding into my work. My painting was based only on that.

‘In the book, Camus recounts his summers in Algeria during a tragic period. Instead of pleasure and tranquility, the moments of contemplation and boredom that characterize the season accentuate the seriousness of certain things. When I am in Lebanon, I realize the absurdity of this contrast between the beauty of the landscapes, these stolen moments outside time, and the descriptions in the book of bodies enjoying the sun and sea on the one hand, and the tension of the country’s geopolitical situation on the other.

‘I seek out these moments when I can both think and enjoy myself at the same time. For me, that is the most beautiful state of being. It is also in this state that I ask myself: “How can there be so much beauty at the same time as there is so much suffering?” Camus’s book resonates deeply with this question.’

Cheikh Anta Diop
Nations nègres et culture : de l'Antiquité nègre égyptienne aux problèmes culturels de l’Afrique noire d’aujourd'hui [‘Black Nations and Culture: From Black Egyptian Antiquity to the Cultural Problems of Black Africa Today’] (1954)

Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux

‘For me, the act of painting is not just about the material. It is also about constructing an architecture of thought built through reflection and looking inward. I have deconstructed my sense of self in regard to my past, my history. Coming from the West Indies, the history taught to me in school was limited to slavery and colonization, with falsified information about the African continent. I wanted to go further and understand the roots of my culture.

‘Cheikh Anta Diop fought for recognition of the African continent’s major contribution to humanity, and for the revaluation of Egyptian civilization and its African origins. To achieve this, he drew on a variety of hard and soft sciences. His aim was to restore pride and historical consciousness to African peoples – to show their unity, to bring to light their common roots.

‘When I am on a residency, especially in the West Indies or in West Africa, I try to understand the different bridges between each of our lands and the ties of kinship that bind us. What interests me even more than Diop’s writings is his approach to restitution: drawing from the richness of one’s historical heritage, one’s personal heritage, to unshackle an historical and cultural consciousness, to gain confidence and free one’s creative genius.’

Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

My-Lan Hoang-Thuy

‘It is a world in a book. Starting with a story about love that might seem rather simple, Milan Kundera takes on universal themes that speak to all ages and nationalities. He addresses existential and essential subjects, writes of poetry, reflects on art, aesthetics, love, and family. He achieves a marriage of form and content that resembles the artistic ideal I would like to attain in my visual work. His style has such elegance – it is astonishing.

‘Kundera states the obvious in a truly brilliant way. At a time when everything has been tried in art, I find it comforting to be reminded that singularity can exist within the commonplace, poetry can emerge from uncomplicated language, without agitation.

‘These days, for example, I hardly use anything other than paint. I used to mix a lot of different techniques in the past, but without noticing it, when I read this book, I cut down the variety of my tools dramatically. It must have influenced me. I reduced them while trying to push deeper into a kind of encapsulation of all the thoughts that cross my mind about my place in society, in history, in my personal history and that of my ancestors.’

Laura Vazquez
La Semaine perpétuelle [‘The perpetual Week’] (2022)

Théo Mercier

‘La semaine perpétuelle is poet Laura Vazquez’s first novel. I find her writing very animistic: She makes all the world speak, and all at the same time – from humans to rocks, to chairs, to the Internet, to clouds, and on and on. She brings the reader into a vast universe made of materials and ideas. At times it is polyphonic and at others more of a cacophony.

‘Vazquez’s style is hypnotic and has this rare, almost vertiginous richness. She constantly appeals to the imagination and leads the reader to discover, listen to, and get to know the world in all its complexity and immensity, a little like a vast philosophical, poetic network.

‘Last summer, she and I got the chance to meet while I was working on my exhibition “BAD TIMING” at the Villa Medici in Rome, because she was a resident there at the time. Vazquez is someone I imagine working with in the future, either in my practice as a theater director or as a visual artist. I feel very close to the world of her imagination – her relationship to things, the way she gives them voice and extracts their ghostly content…

‘All of that really speaks to me, and it is something I try to do in my own way, working with objects as though they are words. Like her, I am constantly looking to compose sentences from time and objects, to tell improbable stories about the world.’

Jean-Marie Appriou is represented by Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zurich, Seoul, Vienna), Clearing (New York, Brussels, Los Angeles), Jan Kaps (Cologne), MassimoDeCarlo (Milan, London, Paris), and Perrotin (Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo).

Christine Safa is represented by Lelong & Co. (Paris, New York).

Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux is represented by Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris).

My-Lan Hoang-Thuy is represented by Galerie Mitterrand (Paris).

Théo Mercier is represented by mor charpentier (Paris, Bogotá).

Juliette Amoros is Art Basel’s Editorial Assistant.