distribution of roles, which was the only guarantee of collective work running smoothly. Each person had to fulfill his or her assigned role so that everyone could express their individual qualities. It had noth-ing to do with respecting a symbolic pseudo hierarchy between art-ists and printers, nor did it have anything to do with a simple desire to remain behind the scenes. Seydoux, who was just as capable of working with Loustal or Dupuy and Berberian as with Shirley Jaffe, or with comic book illustrators as well as with famous or little-known painters, had no use for such distinctions inherited from a world that he’d long since left behind. The choice of screenprinting, a technique whose reputation in the field of fine arts had been tarnished by its industrial use, only confirms his inclination to cross and blur the boundaries between popular culture and high art, between the mul-tiple and the unique work of art, between reproduction and creation.

From then on, from his position attained through knowledge that had reached its most brilliant level, Éric Seydoux brought to each of the collective projects that he carried out a quality that he sums up in one word: modern. The mastery of technique should never lead to it taking control of invention: it should be the means for making invention possible, and even more so, provide access to innovation. In a speech that he wrote (and delivered) for Pierre Buraglio’s exhibition at the Fine Arts Museum of Valence in 2005, Eric expressed his ideas in these terms: “I still have the feeling that over the course of all these years, we’ve produced some genuinely innovative work. And we all know the importance of an innovative approach to artistic practice. All we need to do is look at art history. […] The artistic adventure that Pierre and I have shared thanks to screenprinting is testimony to its modernity.”8 Competence is the prerequisite that can lead to inno-vation, which is a sign of the modern. Here we’re at the heart of the Seydoux style: the expression of the conviction that from his position, he’s participating in the emergence of something new. Originality, a quality that we thought was missing from his early works, was in fact the real driving force behind his quest. As Matthieu Perramant, who apprenticed with him, has stated: “Eric told me that he chose to become a silkscreen printer because it was the technique he felt was the most modern and would allow him to express himself in an original way for the longest time.”9

Seydoux’s choices are elucidated by Perramant’s words. His adop-tion of screenprinting, a technique underestimated by the art world