LE TEMPS
BEN VAUTIER, 1961
Look at this. A French alarm clock. The kind your grandmother had on the nightstand. Ben Vautier signed it. Called it Le Temps. French for Time. That's the work. He didn't make this clock. Didn't modify it. The red was already there. He put his name on it and said: ok, mine now. And he didn't call it Clock. Or Alarm. Or Red Object. He called it Time. The fucking balls on this guy. A guy in Nice, in 1961, walks up to the concept of time itself and puts his name on it. This becomes Vautier's whole career. He spends decades signing things — found objects, photographs, even living people. He's got a phrase for it: "Ben, je signe." I, Ben, sign. His whole thesis is three words. Tout est art. Everything is art. If I say it is. But this one — this one's the boldest move. Because he didn't sign an object. He signed an idea. The one thing nobody owns. The thing that owns everybody. He just put his name on the package. You can call it ego. You can call it a joke. You can call it the most efficient sculpture ever made. One signature, one title, done. The alarm clock is sitting there as the evidence. The most ordinary object in any French kitchen, marking the most universal thing there is. He claimed it. Wrote his name down. Which is, basically, what every signature is trying to do.