Roederer Foundation, Reims, Paris
If the name Louis Roederer evokes one of the most beautiful and illustrious champagne brands (founded in 1776)—a family brand proud of its independence—the name is equally associated with its foundation. Because of its energetic and dedicated patronage, the foundation is counted today among those philanthropic art organizations most sought after by museums, institutions, and cultural festivals. This autumn, the foundation awarded its Revelation Prize at the Deauville American Film Festival, as well as its Research Fellowship for Photography at the BNF in Paris, and it also renewed its support of the Grand Palais with its Toulouse-Lautrec retrospective, showing from October 9, 2019 to January 27, 2020. We speak to Frédéric Rouzaud, the Executive President of Louis Roederer and the president of the Foundation.
L’OFFICIEL ART : From its formal inauguration in 2011, the Louis Roederer Foundation has developed its roadmap for supporting the world of culture, whether photography, film, modern art, or contemporary art. How did this vision come about, and how did the foundation’s goals come to be defined?
FRÉDÉRIC ROUZAUD: On the whole, our blueprint developed over time, intuitively, and through friendships that developed naturally in the course of things. The beauty of these interactions with people in the art world is that they came about spontaneously, without fuss, from common values, and from a desire to discover new talent. It isn’t a concerted agenda, planned for decades: everything is done by steps, taking the necessary time to build. This project remains modest, yet steadfast, with a fixed budget and a small team: Michel Janneau, the Executive Vice President, leads the foundation’s work and Charlotte Llareus in charge of PR. Being interested in what’s going on around us has always been a part of the family, for generations this has been true. My great-grandfather offered property to the city of Reims so that hospitals could be established there. Then this precedent was followed up in the arena of culture by my grandfather, then by my father. For twenty years or so, our patronage has focused on photography, most notably at the BNF. The foundation’s creation in 2011 has brought about increased support for the Palais de Tokyo, the Grand Palais, the Deauville Festival, Rencontres de la photographie in Arles, and, since last year, the International Critics’ Week in Cannes. Ours is a family business; we always are led by an intuitive sense, while respecting a core set of values. For us, the human is fundamental.
You joined the business in 1996 and became Executive Director in 2006. The image of your foundation is forever being refined and reaffirmed as the foundation develops over time. What is the impact of this within the House itself?
This always surprises me. Because I feel as though we work on a rather small model. At the same time, it’s true that we have taken on a certain stature, which is felt in the realms of art, photography, and film. This pleases us immensely. It’s an agreeable balance, beginning with the wines that we produce: our values are what gives coherence to our project. It’s an alchemical reaction between our values, our interactions with others, and the time accorded to the task: it takes time to make a great wine, just as for building up a foundation. There’s no shortage of projects: I want to meet artists, it’s one of my passions, and it helps nourish our creativity, both mine and that of our teams, in a sort of ecosystem running along the edges of our wine-making. We aren’t artists but contemporary artisans working the
grand terroirs, which we work like a precious stone, year after year. Artists have more freedom than we do, who “only” make champagne. But there’s a similarity, a natural connection. Artistic patronage has contributed to how the people who work our vineyards find joy in what they hold in their hands, and has encouraged them to explore beauty and purity.
You support the International Critics’ Week in Cannes and the Deauville American Film Festival, and so you serve as an incubator for new talent. But in addition to this forward-looking perspective, you support the large institutions of French cultural patrimony, like the Grand Palais and the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition.
Film isn’t so different from photography—it’s the same dream that brought the two about. America is important for our business, it represents a historical market, so it was important that we were active in the Deauville Festival. We have a special love for the discovery and the support of emerging artists who have already produced remarkable work. And we’re never the ones who award the prize, we act on the recommendations of the institutions, the juries, the expert teams that have a rigorous selection process for these young artists. And if we have an interest in photograph and film, we’ve chosen to not participate in the deliberations and to leave the selection to the jury of experts. As for patrimony, it’s a notion at the core of our House. But also our support of the BNF and its remarkable collection of photography didn’t run crosswise of our support of young talented researchers through the bias of a research fellowship. We support as well the Palais de Tokyo and the Grand Palais, but we’re not art experts, and we’re not notable collectors, and so we don’t have, I don’t think, any legitimate basis through which to create our own contemporary art prize.
This convinced us that it was best to support institutions and to point out which exhibitions and which artists in their programming interested us in a very intuitive way. It comes about through a feeling, without any calculation: they are artists on the rebellious side, some more, some less famous, and sometimes hidden in the shadows a bit, like František Kupka, who lived at the beginning of the 20th century—a real pioneer, not well known, and yet someone with a profound influence. What we like about them is their character, their personality, the fact that they were overlooked by their time. This is also true of Toulouse-Lautrec.
Your choices and your methods make you stand out among patrons of the arts …
It’s a discrete form of patronage, even if we hope it to shed a positive light on the House. It’s respectful, and independent from the House itself. If the prizes bear the name Louis Roederer, there is obviously a desire for visibility, but we’re not involved in a narcissistic type of arts patronage: we rely upon art experts. We buy works from each exhibition in which we have participated, from each artist whom we have supported, with the idea in mind of putting together little by little a collection for the business, which today is still small, with only twelve or so works. It’s not always easy, but it’s our project …
At the 2019 Deauville American Film Festival, the Louis Roederer Foundation Revelation Prize was awarded to the film Bull, directed by Annie Silverstein. The Fondation Louis Roederer is supporting the exhibition “ToulouseLautrec: Resolutely Modern,” from October 9, 2019 to January 27, 2020, Grand Palais, Paris. grandpalais.fr