Né à Nice en 1946, Jean Mas vit et travaille à Roquefort Les Pins (France).

Il s’ancre en 1963 dans la mouvance artistique niçoise et le mouvement Fluxus. 
Il y est reconnu avec la production d’un objet caractéristique : La Cage à Mouches.

L’objet princeps ‘Cage à Mouches’, véhicule essentiel de l’expression de Jean Mas, est perçu comme une mythologie individuelle dans le cadre d’un Art d’Attitude.

Artiste 'du signifiant', il développe une prolifique matière artistique, parmi laquelle la « PerforMas », qui est une performance de Jean Mas, une signature.
Lors d'un échange épistolaire en 1993, Pierre Restany s'adresse à Jean Mas en ces termes :
« Vous qui synthétisez l'esprit de l'Ecole de Nice… ».

En 30 ans, la production artistique de Jean MAS s’est ramifiée et s’articule autour de quatre axes essentiels :

Une expression plastique
La Cage à Mouches
Les Bulles de savon
Les ‘Peu’
Les Ombres
Les Versions

Une expression scénique
Des performances (PerforMas)
Des conférences-actions


 Une expression littéraire
Des romans
Des esssais
Des catalogues 
Des livres d’art

Une expression filmique
Un Peu de Jean Mas - DVD, Editions MAMAC.
Le festival du Peu de Bonson - FR3
Diverses vidéos...

"PerforMas" en quelques vidéos...

Jean Mas créateur du XIIe art


Réalisation vidéo : © France Delville

In Art Côte d’Azur - Chapitre 45 (Voir partie I & partie II)  
France Delville  4/04/ 2012

Jean Mas brûle 
« la crèche de l’Ecole de Nice »
Musée Rétif Saint-Paul de Vence

Réalisation vidéo : © Jean Claude Fraicher 
4 décembre 2010 

Jean Mas, promeneur de mots

On Va Vous Réveiller 11 février 2010 sur Nice Azur TV

Par Nicolas Garup Journaliste - Invité : François-Xavier Ciais, Directeur des Petites Affiches des Alpes-Maritimes présente Jean Mas,

Slam « A VENDRE »
Passerelle, Vallauris, 5 octobre 2010
Réalisation vidéo : Jean Claude Fraicher

"A VENDRE" un slam écrit par Alain Amiel pour Jean Mas

Venez buller avec Jean Mas

Flashmob du19 /12/2009 au Café des Arts à Nice

Réalisation vidéo : © 2009 Septoff

6ème Festival du Peu de Bonson

Championnat de lancer de noyaux d'olives

Organisé par Jean Mas à l'occasion du manifestation d'art contemporain à Bonson, Alpes-Maritimes. Réalisation vidéo : ©F Falsetti

Jean Mas et la fumée

Galerie Ferrero Nice le 01/ 02/2007

Films réalisés et montés par France Delville et Alain Amiel

Le festival du Peu de Bonson

Une histoire de p…eu
Documentaire 52 mn. 2004Auteur : Christian PASSUELLO Prod. Arcanae Diffuseur : France 3

"Fermez-moi doucement merci" 

Mur de mots de Jean Mas

Galerie Alexandre De La Salle – Saint-Paul de Vence 
le 17 mars 1996
Film de France Delville pour Art Côte d’Azur

« PerforMas »
Auditorium du Mamac de Nice 
le 06/10/1994

Réalisation vidéo : © France Delville
In Art Côte d’Azur
La promenade du Pilou

 FLUXUS

Tourné à Nice, France, en 1989 par le critique d'art et écrivain Denis CHOLLET. Origine : VHS. Mise en ligne par Mathias Girard avec accord de l'auteur

Jean Mas vous accueille avec...
Arman, Ben, Alexandre De Lasalle, Jean Ferrero, Claude Gilli, Raymond Hains,
Patrick Moya, Raphaël Monticelli, Pierre Restany, Sacha Sosno, Bernar Venet
(Photographes : Jean-Charles Dusanter, Jean Ferrero, François Fernandez, Raph Gatti, Mathias Girard, André Villers )

Sosno, Arman, Ben, Mas
Bernar Venet, Jean Mas
Jean Mas, Ben Vautier
Jean Mas, Raymond Hains

Jean Mas - Pierre Restany en photo
Jean Mas - Portrait André Villers
Jean Ferrero, Jean Mas, Raph Gatti
Alexandre De La Salle, Jean Mas

Jean Ferrero, Jean Mas
Un peu de Mas par F Fernandez
Jean Mas brûle la crèche de l'Ecole de Nice - Photo Mathias Girard
Claude Gilli, Jean Mas

Jean Mas, Raphael Monticelli
'Attestation de présence' par Jean Mas - Festival du Peu de Bonson
'Sapin, Ca peint' PerforMas
Photo JC Dusanter

Patrick Moya, Jean Mas
Chapelle Moya Clans (06)

Hôtel Windsor


CHAMBRE D'ARTISTE 

de Jean Mas


11 Rue Dalpozzo    06000 Nice

France

Voir le site LMS NEWS MAGAZINE

Striped jersey, hat or cap tilted back so as not to obstruct the view, eyebrows raised inquiringly… Jean Mas could have been the “ravi”* of his Crèche de l’Ecole de Nice - he looks at the world with quietly marvelled eyes.

 

But he burnt that Crèche at the end of 2010, when he made the Ecole de Nice go up in smoke. Just like he burnt some “letter boxes” more recently, as part of the exhibition of Frédéric Altmann’s photographs, “Du Nouveau Réalisme à l’Ecole de Nice”, in La Gaude. So, is Jean Mas an arsonist? No, his “PerforMas” (performances) are just one of his artistic expressions and invariably come with texts. The idea is to bring something to life by drawing attention to that thing. Like with his “A Vendre” (for sale) signs displayed in the most unusual places, such as the Pont des Arts in Paris. There are also his 0% electoral lists and his famous “Peu” which has its annual festival in the village of Bonson… But above all, he is the Fly Cage man – the Fly Cage being his “princeps object”...

 

Who then is this complex character about whom art critic Pierre Restany said that “he synthethized the spirit of the Ecole de Nice”? He was born in Nice in 1946 and has no artistic training other than in wrought iron and “from the street”, as he put it. But he was an avid reader and was the first to register in the local public library. He read all Giono’s books, all Proust’s, all Steinbeck’s, all Cendrars’s; he has carefully kept a copy of the latter’s book “L’or”, because it echoed his own aspirations of being a “globe-trotter, but a globe-trotter in words”. His first contact with art circles was with the Fluxus movement and the Ben Doute de Tout gallery. And that was it... That attitude, combined with a touch of humour, suited him perfectly well – he describes himself as “a teaser”. His first performance was carried out in 1969 - an igloo.

The Cages

But it was in 1973 that he conquered his place on the Nice art scene with his Fly Cage, a reminiscence of his school days, when at break time schoolchildren used to make cages with corks and sewing pins in which to keep the flies they caught in the classroom. The Cage, always empty at first, became the main vehicle of Jean Mas’s expression – “an individual mythology within the framework of an attitude art”.  He also develops a passion for philosophy and psychoanalysis. “I needed to acquire some cultural knowledge to eliminate the insect and change its prison into a pretext for intervening”. And the cage has since been multiplied ad infinitum and staged in countless ways – there has even been a giant version. It gave rise to the creation of the Ordre de la Cage à Mouches (Order of the Fly Cage), a “derisory, futile and insignificant” distinction which was awarded for the first time in December 1980. The award-giving ceremony is an artistic performance accompanied by a speech demonstrating Jean Mas’s virtuosity at juggling with the French language. 

 

Just a little (peu)

Not surprisingly, in 1989, his taste for the derisory, for minimalism and for words led to the “Peu”, after a foray into “Bubbles” (bubbles of soap filled with paint), another childish activity if ever there was one. But the “Peu” is far more serious. It is the visual formalization of the letter P of our alphabet, pronounced ‘peu’ which means ‘a little’ in French. The sign ‘P’ becomes the object of an artistic interpretation. “Playing with the homophony, I turned the letter P into a proper noun... Thus, the Art of the ‘Peu’ inaugurates a new art… I create the Art of the PEU.” 
The letter P comes in all sizes, colours and materials, and in 2003, an entire village, Bonson, “set about making ‘peus’”.  The Festival du Peu was born. Every summer, each villager decorates a ‘peu’ cut out in wood. Artists are invited and a big exhibition of the ‘peus’ is held. Jean Mas adds: “This letter has also been used as a means of expression in two schools and two old people’s homes.”  And Nice’s Faculty of Medicine is familiar with these ‘Peus’ because every professor going into retirement gets a Peu in his image composed by the artist.

Words

Jean Mas, this juggler with words, doesn’t content himself with writing texts which will be declaimed at his PerforMas. He also writes books – detective novels (“Un peu de meurtre à l’Ecole de Nice” and more recently “La Rue des Poilus”), catalogues, collections of thoughts, art books... Of course, the way he handles the French language makes it difficult to “export” because translators have a lot of trouble with it. He met with the problem on a visit to the United Arab Emirates – the interpreter was completely lost!

 

Nowadays, Jean Mas’s works can be seen in a number of galleries in Nice and at the Windsor hotel. Like a vestal, he keeps the flame of the Ecole de Nice alive, and also the memory of his glorious predecessors. He is working on a new book, “Un peu de conversation, 40 ans de performances”, and views the evolution of artistic creation with a psychoanalytic eye: “Lots of young people take up art... I don’t know... We are living through a time when narcissism is overriding the oedipal superego… It is a need for recognition, the advent of the “me, I...”

 

Yet he stays on course – his own course, that of an attitude artist, more teasing than provocative – and at the end of the year, he will not fail to celebrate in his own way the Nouveaux Réalistes and César’s 90th birthday with Frédéric Altmann at the Centre Culturel du Bon Accueil in Roquefort-les-Pins.

 

“I am for the ‘nothing than less’, that’s why I like minimalist art which can be reduced to the essential” 

 

*A character of the Provençal nativity scene

 

 

 

Nicole Benazeth