Let the Arguments Begin

Inside a darkened viewing chamber on the top floor of Paris' Centre Pompidou, visitors peer at what looks like a psychedelic astral storm, raging to a soundtrack of electronic bleeps and retro '70s rock. In a 45-minute video loop, a twisting cloud vortex is projected onto a long rectangular screen, morphing through the colors of the rainbow while meteorite showers and 3-D computer incrustations drift across the foreground. "I'd like people to look at it like they'd look at a sunset," says Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, the artist responsible for Exotourisme. "I wanted to blur the boundaries between a work of art and an amusement-park ride."

Blurring boundaries is the kind of stuff you'd expect from any of the four nominees for Britain's Turner Prize, whose work went on display in London last week, setting off the usual firestorm of controversy over what constitutes art. (British Culture Minister Kim Howells dismissed the nominations as "conceptual bullshit.") Well, now the French have a prize that's designed to start the same kind of arguments. The Marcel Duchamp Prize, named after the father of Conceptualism, aims to do for French contemporary art what the Turner has done for the British. As this year's winner, Gonzalez-Foerster must be hoping to generate the buzz that Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread got from their Turners. The French prize, first awarded last year, is worth €35,000, and Gonzalez-Foerster will gain more valuable exposure from the other half of her reward: her show at the Pompidou, which runs until Dec. 16.

Gonzalez-Foerster, 37, began making a name for herself in the '90s with her "room" installations: 3-D spaces evoking the intimate interiors of an apartment. She has broadened her approach since then to include film — often solitary odysseys through far-off cities — and a marked focus on architecture. Her most recent works have pulled these strands together into all-enveloping, multisensory environments that use light and sound to transport the viewer into another world. "Dominique stood out because of the intimate character of her work," says Gilles Fuchs, head of the collectors' association behind the prize. "She manages to infuse large-scale works with a strong personal sensibility, and that's rare."

As a fully private initiative, with a short list compiled from the nominations of over 100 individual art collectors and an international jury selecting the final winner, the Marcel Duchamp Prize is a rarity in France's state-dominated cultural landscape. For although the country is home to some of the world's best-known museums, it is often regarded as an also-ran in the contemporary art world. "Contemporary creation in France still isn't getting the international recognition it deserves," says Jennifer Flay, a Paris gallery owner.

Flay blames the unwillingness of French galleries to show work by younger artists. Gonzalez-Foerster has another explanation. What makes British contemporary art world-famous is "the way the British media have latched onto young artists. We don't have that in France." With the Turner Prize acting as the main vector for that media attention in Britain, it's inevitable that the Marcel Duchamp Prize's founders should have adopted it as their model. "The Turner Prize has contributed to the emergence of British artists who have gone on to acquire international reputations," says Fuchs. "This prize aims to boost the visibility of French artists."

It's a little inconvenient, then, that Gonzalez-Foerster says she's never thought of herself as a French artist at all. But perhaps that is only fitting. The organizers may have chosen his name as a symbol for French artistic innovation, but they neglect to point out that Marcel Duchamp died an American.