Jean-Marc Bottazzi did not spend his childhood visiting museums, growing up, he says, “without much money, in a cultural desert near Lyon”. Art, nonetheless, runs in his blood: his younger brother is the painter Guillaume Bottazzi, and their relationship sparked his love of viewing art—and buying it too.
Today the Japanese bond trader has settled in Hong Kong after a stint in Tokyo. His collection numbers around 1,000 works and reflects his global biography, with particularly deep holdings of abstraction and conceptual photography from Western Europe, the US and East Asia. This includes the Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell, and Simon Hantaï, whose fractal-like folded paintings and other experiments on canvas make him “France’s most important post-war artist”, Bottazzi says.
From the East, he favours artists associated with the Japanese avant-garde movement Gutai, such as the painter Kazuo Shiraga, as well as earlier experimental pioneers like Ei-Q, owning several of his unique photographic works that were made without a camera.
Having an artist brother has informed his philosophy on collecting. “You want to really make a difference to an artist’s life. It’s not about ticking off boxes and having one of everything—otherwise your home will look like an apartment in Trump Tower.”
For Bottazzi, deep collecting means the enduring support of A-Yo, the 96-year-old Japanese artist whose rainbow-patterned paintings and sculptures symbolise an anti-elitist approach to art-making, influenced by Fluxus. Bottazzi was the key lender to a recent monographic exhibition of the artist at M+, the Hong Kong museum where is both a donor and a member of its international committee for visual art.
As he speaks to The Art Newspaper, he is in the process of acquiring another tranche of works by A-Yo, to add to the 100+ works by the artist he already owns. As he says: “When I collect, I really collect.”
The Art Newspaper: What was the first work you bought?
Jean-Marc Bottazzi: An abstract baroque-style painting by my brother in the early 1990s
What was the most recent work you bought?
Either a Fontana Tagli, or a Man Ray, La Priere (1930) photographic edition.
What do you regret not buying when you had the chance?
Two things: a Minotaur photograph by Man Ray that I didn’t have the balls to buy ten years ago. Another is a photograph of the writer Yukio Mishima by Eikoh Hosoe, for which I didn’t pull the trigger quickly enough.
If you could have any work from any museum in the world, what would it be?
Marcel Duchamp’s urinal.
What is the best advice you have received on collecting?
Focus and commit to few. Try not to make a template collection just because you’re rich. The collector Uli Sigg has made such a difference by his focus.
Where do you like to eat and drink in Hong Kong?
Ta Vie, Ole, Feuille.
What is your least favourite thing about art fairs?
That the first day is the busiest. What kind of privilege is it to be surrounded by a crowd of people. I prefer going to fairs at the end. If you are really following a gallery then you already know what they are bringing. ‘First Choice’ is fake. Total hype.
What tip would you give to someone visiting Hong Kong for the first time?
Go to M+, and then go to M+ again. It’s the best thing to happen to the city. The tensions it presents between West and East make it so interesting.
