Whenever one hears of people from financial backgrounds building collections or opening art foundations, it is hard not to associate them with speculation, collections rife with the biggest names in art, purposeful tax reduction and other motives. For these reasons they are often scoffed at by collectors, who collect purely for love and interest. Many people may have retained such preconceived notions about Edouard Carmignac, the French financial magnate and founder of the Carmignac Foundation – but I was able to unearth that these sentiments are simply not true.
Villa carmignac©Fondation Carmignac
Photo Laurent Lecat
Edouard Carmignac and Charles Carmignac
© Photo Anthony Lanneretonne
As the founder of the French investment fund Carmignac Gestion, Edouard Carmignac’s success puts him in league with that of many financial giants. However, the large number of blue-chip artworks collected by his foundation are not necessarily the most impressive aspect of his collection. Rather, Carmignac’s romantic youthful intentions, that he gifted a Max Ernst work to the love of his life, made me think that the story of this great collector, named ‘Top 200 collectors’ by ARTnews, might be a little different.
© Fondation Carmignac
Photo Camille Moirenc
Not long ago, I travelled to Porquerolles, the island in Southern France, to visit Villa Carmignac, an art venue opened by Edouard in 2018 after founding the Fondation Carmignac at the turn of the millennium. There, Edouard’s son, Charles Carmignac, the current director of the foundation, shared with me many anecdotes about his father, as well as his own collection.
Portrait of Luning and Charles
Charles told me that his father’s first addition to his collection was not in fact Max Ernst’s ‘Alice in Wonderland (a scene)’, but a painting copied by his mother. At the time, his parents were still living in New York and Edouard had not yet reached the level of success he has today. He fell in love with an expensive painting, so his wife spent weeks copying every detail of the work, and it became their first ‘collection’, a piece full of memories.
Permanent collections of Carmignac foundation
Top：Huma Bhabha, Receiver, 2019 © Huma Bhabha – Photo Camille Moirenc
Middle：Miquel Barceló, L’Alycastre, 2018 Adagp, Paris 2021 © Fondation Carmignac – Photo Camille Moirenc
Bottom：Wang Keping, LOLO, 2018 © Wang Keping – Fondation Carmignac. Photo Camille Moirenc
Although Edouard has collected all the masters’ blue chips – unlike many big collectors whose hobby it is to tick off their shopping lists – Edouard has claimed in previous interviews that he instead uses the word “compulsion” to describe his collecting behavior. A sensual urge and urgent desire that is inextricably linked to his life experiences and emotional connections. As a young man, he was attracted by music and especially rock, but after completing his MBA at Columbia University, he entered the financial industry. It struck me that this man of great passion and fervour allows this to control his decisions on art, rather than financial strategy.
Permanent Collection of Carmignac foundation
Left-Top：Nils-Udo, La couvée, 2018 © Fondation Carmignac – Photo : Nils-Ud
Left-Botom：Jean Denant, La Traversée, 2018 © Fondation Carmignac – Photo Camille Gasser
Right-Top：Jaume Plensa, Les trois Alchimistes, 2018. © Fondation Carmignac – © Adagp, Paris, 2021 – Photo : Marc Domage
Right-Bottom：Ugo Rondinone, Four seasons 2018© Fondation Carmignac – Photo Camille Moirenc
The preference for pop art in his collection stems is a great example of his tendencies being led by his own personal inclination, as it was this genre that was particularly prevalent in his youth. Pop art was born during Carmignac’s formative years and is a genre he can both relate to and empathise with. In 1984, Edouard met Basquiat, through being involved in the pop art circle, and became friends with him. Basquiat portrayed him dancing and the ‘C’ logo in the painting even inspired the company’s logo design when Edouard founded ‘Carmignac Gestion’ five years later.
Many collectors’ collections are in fact an accumulation of ‘chance’ – perhaps an encounter with an artist or an ‘enlightenment’ about a school of art as a result of an experience. However, the wealthy and eager collector often loses sight of treasures aside from money, such as the time spent on acquiring a favourite piece or the unexpectedly touching moments along the way. If a collection makes for less of an emotional journey and lacks unexpected encounters with people and objects, there is less appreciation and understanding of other people’s perspectives – ultimately, the collection loses its romance, and the sale of the art becomes purely a monetary transaction, the process of interaction between collectors and art loses the power of life.
Luning and Charles, Permanent Collection sculpture in the park
Charles believes that he has personally experienced the power of art to change hearts and minds. Many years ago, he travelled to Teshima, Japan, where he saw in person the work of Japanese artist Rei Naito – a giant concrete wall. It was on the face of this sculpture that Charles observed the movement of water droplets under the wind and the interaction with the elements around them and instantly recalled a woman he once loved. It is difficult to describe the power of the sudden perception and how love can be rekindled from a dying flame. After this revelation, he returned to France, phoned his past love and managed to revive their relationship.
Rei Naito’s work on Teshima island
Not only do artworks have the power to move people and create an intense emotional response – the same can be said for a thoughtfully curated exhibition, if anything witnessing a collection of works can be even more awe-inspiring than a singular. Charles mentioned that Jean-Marie Gallais, the current curator of the Pinault Collection, curated an exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz called Painting The Night, which changed his preconception of the nighttime. He found that he started doing many things he had never dared do before during later hours – it had a freeing effect on him that totally changed his lifestyle.
The Carmignac Foundation’s current exhibition on the island, The Inner Island, is curated by the same curator and includes Peter Doig, Kiki Smith, Auguste Rodin, Roy Lichtenstein, Kiki Smith. Andrew Cranston, Francis Upritchard, and other artists in various media. It is an exhibition that begins and ends with the island, a site-specific exhibition to encourage the viewer to rethink their perception of the island and rather to consider it a spiritual place.
Current exhibition: The Inner Island
Top：PETER DOIG，100 Years Ago, 2001，Oil on canvas – 229 x 359 cm，Centre Pompidou, Paris – Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS/Adagp, Paris, 2023.Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM- CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Audrey Laurans
Bottom：ROY LICHTENSTEIN，Landscape, 1977，Oil and magna on canvas – 101,6 x 152,4 cm Carmignac Collection © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein New York / Adagp, Paris, 2023
Sometimes, you have to wait for a true connection with someone or something and this might not always happen in the first encounter but maybe days, weeks, months or years later. Villa Carmignac was originally a farmhouse that appeared in French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard’s film ‘Pierrot le Fou’ and was later bought by architect Henri Vidal in the 1980s and renovated into a villa. Edouard first came to Porquerolles, which he describes as a “forest floating on the sea”, and stayed in the villa on a hill, when he was invited to Vidal’s daughter’s wedding 30 years ago – even then, he was in love with the place. A few years later, when Vidal passed away, his daughter contacted Edouard and confirmed the sale, which led to the current Villa Carmignac. Charles told me that this event was monumental for his father, who used the island as the groundwork for continuing the foundation’s lineage.
The Villa ©Moirenc
Charles’ personal upbringing was different from his father’s, and made him more interested in conceptual art – one of his prized pieces in his personal collection is ‘Millennium Hourglass’ by Benoît Pype. The special asphalt material in the hourglass means it takes a thousand years to complete the pouring. Another such piece is ‘Night Enclosed in Marble’ by Charbel-Joseph H. Boutros, a white marble box intended to encase the night of Lebanon.
Since Charles officially started working on the foundation, father and son have discussed and exchanged ideas, not always agreeing on what to do: “After all, we’re not clones,” Charles says. His father, Edouard, is more interested in works that are visual and instantly intuitive, works that do not need to be explained, although Charles says his father is also attracted to conceptual art, but stubbornly refuses to admit it.
Left：Ciclotrama 50 (wind), 2018 © Photo Janaina Mello Landini
Right-Top：Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Fish Fountain, 2005. © Fondation Carmignac – Adagp, Paris, 2021 – Photo Marc Domage
Right-Bottom：Miquel Barceló, Not titled yet, 2018 © Fondation Carmignac – Adagp, Paris, 2021 – Photo : Luc Boegly, David Desrimais Editeur
Inheriting his father’s artistic tendencies and carefree nature, Charles chose a different path and a far more diverse identity than his father: a political economy major, he is was a musician in the rock band Moriarty, a journalist, an entrepreneur, an enigma writer, and the current director of an art Carmignac foundation. His cross-disciplinary background allows him to be constantly inspired by new and unexpected ways of actually running the foundation.
Outdoor cinema Villa Carmignac
A decade in music has made Charles a great listener as well as a great businessman – he doesn’t have the collectors’ mentality, instead wanting to open the exhibitions to a larger public. His experience in newspaper entrepreneurship and working in journalism has given him a wide range of resources, the ability to work with different types of people and provide a big-picture view. More importantly, these experiences have allowed Charles to focus on a ‘storytelling’ approach to promoting art and presenting exhibitions.
With interest in journalism and a keen eye for current political events, the Foundation created another pillar, the Carmignac Photojournalism Award, in 2009 to support photojournalists in the field. Charles talked about how he could empathize with the biggest challenge facing the profession of journalism, which is the lack of funding and local resources. For although large amounts of work go into a few simple pages of a newspaper where the selection of a topic may be the result of a long period of investigation, there is rarely funding to support long-form photojournalistic reports. The Foundation supports each year the laureates of the Photojournalism Awards, which funds 6 months of fieldwork on a designated theme and produces both a monograph and a travelling exhibition. Through the power of photojournalism, they hope to reveal and raise awareness about social, environmental and human rights issues.
Villa Carmignac’s location is unique – access to the island requires a boat ride across the Mediterranean and a 15-minute hike up a mountain road before arriving at the pavilion. I immediately succumbed to my hay fever, but I was still enchanted by the untouched beauty of the natural environment. Villa Carmignac has maintained as much of the original landscape and geological features of the area as possible, without exaggerated and complicated alterations. The exhibition space is designed in accordance with the principles of island-based, simple and effective design, using museum-quality standards and subtle integration with the surrounding landscape, in order to provide the best possible conditions for the display of the works.
Auguste Rodin : La Voix intérieure (ou La Méditation sans bras), 1896
Ed Ruscha, Sea Of Desire, 2018© Fondation Carmignac – Photo Marc Domage
Since its opening in 2018, Villa Carmignac has been committed to developing links with local institutions and, in 2020, created in partnership with Port-Cros National Park, Villa Noailles the Plein Sud network, a network of art communities in the south of France, to address the regional environmental crises. Such a highly humane and forward-looking foundation is more than a glittering list of collections and interesting anecdotes, it is a place that inspires and fosters an engagement not only with art but with the world around us.
-the end-
Text: Luning
Copyedit: Rosie
