The Perfect Antidote

Photo by Celine Clanet

Houzé with Xavier Veilham's "Xavier" (2006)

Yves Klein Christian Boltanski Liam Gillick S Afif Bonnard Manet Annette Messager David Noonan

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"Art is a necessity for me,” Guillaume Houzé notes in his rapid-fire French. “Probably an addiction, I’ll admit. It is inseparable from who I am.” Houzé, a descendant of Théophile Bader, who founded the Galeries Lafayette department store more than a century ago, has the charm and easy confidence, though none of the frivolity, of a young man born to privilege. Sitting at a café on the Place de l’Alma, in Paris’s 8th arrondissement, he cuts a striking figure: tall and handsome, with intense eyes under dark brows and prematurely graying hair—he’s only 27. He points to an apartment building with an enviable view of the Seine. “My great-grandparents lived right there, on the top floor. I knew them until I was 17. At their home, I discovered a Soutine that was completely abstract. It made a strong impression on me.” In addition to the Soutine, paintings by Bonnard, Manet, Pissarro and Renoir covered the walls.

Houzé is part of a long line of entrepreneurs and collectors. He studied business at the University of Paris X Nanterre and last January started working at Galeries Lafayette (where his father is president), moving among the different departments, learning the nuts and bolts. He talks of going to the U.S. in a couple of years to complete an MBA. As for the acquisitive gene, Houzé’s great-great-grandparents gravitated toward the Impressionists and his great-grandparents toward rare books and 18th-century drawings of Paris, while his grandparents specialized in the 20th-century School of Paris, from Serge Poliakoff to Pierre Soulages. The collecting trait skipped his parents’ generation, but he displays it with a vengeance. When Houzé was just 14, he made his first art purchase— an oil by Erró, the Icelandic-born painter whose Pop-style pictures sample images from a multitude of sources. This particular Erró was an homage to Picasso and Léger. “I walked into the gallery and fell for it on the spot,” says Houzé, who wound up spending all his savings on the work, about 10,000 francs (approximately $2,000).

The collector was first drawn to color, notably as used in Pop art and its French counterpart of the 1960s, Narrative Figuration. Gradually, though, his tastes changed, and about six years ago he began buying homegrown artists of his own generation. Soon prominent Parisian contemporary-art dealers—figures like Philippe Valentin, Olivier Antoine, of Galerie Art:Concept, and Michel Rein—took him under their wings, teaching him what to look for and exposing him to emerging talent.

At the time, contemporary French artists interested France and the rest of the world even less than they do today, and it didn’t require much to become their champion. In 2005, Houzé and his grandmother Ginette Moulin, the chairwoman of Galeries Lafayette’s supervisory board and a majority shareholder, teamed up to launch Antidote—primarily a collection but also an annual exhibition intended to support France’s current crop of artists. The two have quickly amassed holdings of about 250 works in all mediums, from which they exhibit close to a dozen mostly large-scale pieces each autumn in the Galerie des Galeries, an exhibition space within the Paris store. The show, in which nothing is for sale, is an exceptional commitment in a commercial venue where every square foot has a price tag. But for Houzé, promoting culture is as important as reaping profits: “Antidote is our way of being engaged. The idea was to respond to the defeatism of the French art scene.” This year’s Antidote exhibition, featuring the work of 11 artists, opens on October 9, overlapping with the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC), of which Galeries Lafayette has been a major sponsor since 2006. It remains on view through December 6, after which a version will travel to the Galeries Lafayette in Berlin, in fall 2009.

Houzé’s efforts to give young French artists a rare public platform have not gone unnoticed. Guy Boyer, the editorial director of the magazine Connaissance des Arts, which produced a supplement covering Antidote last year, remarks: “It sends a strong signal during FIAC when a company like Galeries Lafayette promotes French artists in such a public location in the heart of Paris.” Jennifer Flay, the Fair’s artistic director, calls the exhibition a “powerful vector of change that stimulates the emergence of a new generation.”