In his Fluxus performances, Vautier used his own body as the primary medium for his art. His events in the streets of Nice included gestures and actions that were surprisingly literal. While writing on a wall, for instance, he inscribed on a large placard “Ben ecrit sur les murs” (Ben is writing on walls). In another performance, he seated himself on a chair in the middle of a street, with a placard at his feet that read “regardez-moi/cela suffit/je suis art” (look at me/that’s enough/i am art). In a later performance, titled Mystery Food (1963), Vautier—dressed in a suit, overcoat, and bowler hat—opened and ate the contents of a can of food whose label had been removed, then ceremoniously brushed his teeth. In subversive disregard of any conventional approach to art, Fluxus humor resided in the incongruities between expectation and presentation. His self-exhibitions abandoned conventional aesthetics, mocked the self-importance of the artist, and encouraged laughter at the self.

In the late fall of 1962, Fluxus-associated artists Daniel Spoerri and Robert Filliou organized an event in London called the Festival of Misfits. During the weeklong festival, Vautier presented himself and his environment as the ultimate Duchampian readymade—a living aesthetic object for the viewer’s contemplation. Calling his work Living Sculpture (1962), he took up residence in the small display window of London’s Gallery One, where he lived for fifteen days, putting himself on view and offering himself for sale for £250. Acting on “the stage of life,” he surrounded himself with everyday objects, including a bed, a table and chair, a gas cooker (for heating food), a television set, a wine glass, a meat grinder, a hand drill, and a teddy bear, along with created objects such as a “potatoes on a wire” sculpture and numerous plaques with Ben’s text. In his trademark cursive handwriting, these text panels consisted of rhetorical questions and whimsical comments, giving equal importance to everything from the kitchen table to a container of dirty water. “Everything that I touch and look at is a work of art,” reads one of his plaques. As the artist engaged in a direct exchange with the audience, this quintessential Fluxus piece bypassed the elitism of the museum and gallery system and blurred the lines between art and everyday life.

“It was real life,” he wrote about Living Sculpture more than thirty years later. “When I did the window, Fluxus was supposed to turn into life and fun. Today, it is art archaeology.”² In 1993, the Walker Art Center mounted the exhibition In the Spirit of Fluxus. Invited to re-create his Gallery One window, Vautier found a number of vintage objects from the original piece, to which he added numerous replicas based on old film footage and photographs of the 1962 event. He also inserted several new objects, including a boombox and a slide projector that displayed original and updated texts in the window, such as “Does anybody have an idea?” and “Art is a dead story.”

A number of the objects and ideas for objects presented in Ben’s window were later produced by Maciunas as Fluxus multiples, and the Walker’s collection includes key examples of many of these publications as well—from his books and broadsides to the multiplicity of small things such as his Flux Mystery Food (1967), Flux Missing Card Deck (1967/1969), and A Flux Suicide Kit (1967/1969). Taking the notion of Duchamp’s readymades to its logical conclusion, Vautier made up certificates that could authenticate as art such mundane objects as empty wine bottles, dirty water, dust, blank postcards, holes, and even himself. As produced by Maciunas in large editions from inexpensive, easily obtainable materials, these objects reflect one of the most distinctive aspects of Fluxus, the “free license” that artists gave one another in interpreting their work. In the process, they undermined the status of art as a valuable commodity and rewrote the notion of artistic sovereignty and originality.