Daniel Buren Profile

Brief profile of Artist

The artist publicly tells nothing else about his biographical facts.

In the latter half of the 1960's, after studying painting, Daniel Buren began producing works by using striped cloth. This striped cloth, which Buren calls "a seeing tool," is a fabric that is widely sold in France. The width of the stripe is invariably 8.7 cm. In 1968, for example, Daniel Buren, without permission, put up 200 striped posters around Paris; in 1970, also unauthorized, he put up striped posters in 140 Metro stations. Thus distributing stripes to various places, he drew public attention. At his first solo exhibition in a gallery, he blocked up its entrance with stripes.
Through such an eccentric manner of presentation, he objects to existing systems such as museums and galleries, seeking a new way of existence of art. In 1971, he was invited to Guggenheim Museum in New York yet his work was rejected because of its excessive audacity. In the 1970's and 1980's he was asked to give various exhibitions in Europe, America and Japan. In 1986 he participated in Venice Biennale as a representative of French artists and won the "Golden Lion Award." In the same year he completed a notorious work in the Palais Royal court, Paris, with the support of the late President Mitterrand, gaining his position among the seats of leading artists in France. His more recent achievement in the square of the Lyon City Hall was finished in 1995.
He was introduced to the Japanese public as early as 1970 when he first visited Japan as a participant in the "Humanity and Matter" exhibition at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. He has since presented many works in Japan. He produced 200 flags at Ushimado International Art Festival in Okayama in 1985, and gave large-scale solo exhibitions at ICA Nagoya and Touko Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo) in 1989. His latest works in Japan are those in Shinjuku I-Land (1995) and in the Tokyo Coastal Metropolitan Sub-Center (1996).