Yves Derai : Why a collection of drawings?

Daniel Guerlain: We met through our shared love of art in the early 1980s and, quite quickly, we began buying works. At first, we bought everything, paintings, objects, photographs, drawings… We used to hold exhibitions at our country house and at a certain point, after eight years of collecting, we decided to focus on drawing. We sold off a lot of photographs to concentrate on drawing.

Yves Derai : Why?

D.G.: Drawing is an artist’s first creative act, whatever their field. It gives rise to dresses, cars and houses. ... Some drawings by architects or leading fashion designers are genuine works of art. I myself work in a profession where drawing is hugely important, as I’m a landscape architect. Drawing had faded somewhat in the 1970s and 1980s; video came along and took its place. Then, in the 1990s, drawing made a comeback, largely thanks to art schools.

Yves Derai : How did you become involved in this particular field?

D.G.: It simply came to us quite naturally. Drawing is the medium closest to thought, the essence of all creation, and its purest expression. As early as 1996, when we set up our Contemporary Art Foundation, we organised our first exhibitions dedicated to drawing. And ten years later, eighteen years ago now, we launched the Contemporary Drawing Prize. It was a way for us to discover and support today’s talent.

Yves Derai : Drawing is quite an understated discipline, isn’t it? When you hang a drawing in your home, it’s less visible than a painting or a sculpture placed in a room.. .

D.G.: Drawings are hung differently. You have to be careful with the light as it can damage them. We often place them in corridors, and we hang them closer together than we do with paintings. With drawings, we recreate something when we’re hanging them. We keep a number of them in the basement, which we fetch to create a new theme by grouping several drawings together.

Yves Derai : You specialise in contemporary drawings. Why not take an interest in the sketches of the great masters, for example?

D.G.: Because the prices are skyrocketing! A Victor Hugo is very beautiful but very expensive. Prices start at 30,000 euros and can go up to 300,000 euros. They’re falling a bit at the moment...

Yves Derai : How do you choose your works?

Florence Guerlain: I keep a close eye on what’s being produced, but at the moment I’m struggling to find anything of interest. I see doodles, forests of very colourful trees, a few nude women... It all looks the same. You have to search.

D.G.: We need to be moved. We have abstract drawings, figurative works, but they all speak to us. We donated 1,300 to the Centre Pompidou and kept 700 for the Foundation, that makes about 2,000 in total.

Yves Derai : Is buying drawings addictive?

F.G.: Oh, yes! We find them at the Salon du Dessin in Paris, which is a very important event, and sometimes at other fairs. But we also buy them from the artists taking part in our prize. We remain very selective.

Yves Derai : Do you both have the same tastes?

F.G.: Generally speaking, yes. But we had a bit of a mishap recently at the Basel Art Fair. There were some marvellous drawings by Miquel Barcelò. Daniel liked one, I liked another. We said, ‘We’ll think about it, we’ll be back…’ Twenty minutes later, Daniel’s had been snapped up, mine was still available – we had no choice.

D.G.: I think if they’d still been there, we’d have bought both!

F.G.: The moral of the story is, when you want something, you mustn’t hesitate. At the start of our collection, at an exhibition in Rouen, we were blown away by a fantastic series of 50 drawings by Javier Pérez. We suggested buying four of them, and the gallery owner replied: ‘It’s all or nothing.’ We took the lot.

Yves Derai : Have you set yourselves a limit?

D.G.: Sometimes we have regrets, especially Florence.

F.G.: Well, yes. The other day, you brought home a really ugly little bearded bloke. He’s staying in the basement – he’ll never make it upstairs!

Yves Derai : Do you sell any of them on?

D.G.: Paintings, sometimes; drawings, never. It’s our collection, and we’re very attached to it. The idea is to bequeath them to a museum one day.

F.G.: Ideally, we’d give them all to the Centre Pompidou because we buy a lot of series. When we like an artist, we like to follow their work.

Yves Derai : Do you know the artists you buy from personally?

D.G.: Yes, a good half of them. Some have become friends. But we don’t acquire works to help the artists. We love what we buy.

Yves Derai : Do you sometimes commission works from artists?

F.G.: No, never. We want to discover works, to be struck by them. We don’t put ourselves in the spotlight. I have a bust of myself in the living room, but I was only five at the time…

Yves Derai : What does your Foundation do?

D.G.: Initially, we organised exhibitions at our country house. We invited artists to come and work at our place, providing them with the necessary resources. That was from 1997 until the 2010s. Then we sold the house and moved to Paris in 2012. We’ve held around ten themed drawing exhibitions. Above all, the Foundation has established an award that is presented during the Salon du Dessin. We also organise trips with a few friends to visit exhibitions in France and across Europe. Recently, we exhibited 300 drawings at the museum in Issoudun, in central France.

F.G.: The museum is beautiful; it has a magnificent collection of apothecary jars and a lovely chapel.

Yves Derai : Have you valued your collection?

D.G.: No, not really. We could work out a figure based on the purchase prices.

Yves Derai : What do you think of street art?

D.G.: It’s beautiful when it’s genuine street art. But auction houses get artists to produce works that are no longer street art. We adore Ernest Pignon Ernest.

F.G.: Oh yes, it’s so beautiful it brings tears to your eyes.

Article written by Yves Derai, featured in issue 11 of Oniriq Magazine

Translated by Bethszabee Garner