_COLETTE ENVIRONMENT (1981), edition of 150, 11 x 16in digital C-print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper_
The artist Colette, later Justine, then Mata Hari, Countess Reichenbach, the House of Olympia, Lumiere, and now Victoire, is most known for her big break artwork _Transformation of the Sleeping Gypsy without the lion (after Rousseau),_ or for being a club regular in NYC in the 70s and 80s, and inventing the idea of ‘Victorian Punk’, influencing artists and musicians like Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Madonna.
Many cities, artworks, and parties later, she and her People of Victory have launched a [Kickstarter campaign](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/living-environment/save-colettes-legendary-new-york-living-environment/description) to save _Living Environment (1972-83),_ one of her first, and greatest artworks.
_Flaunt_ talked to the artist about the campaign and the artwork, her time as a NYC club regular, and her names.
**Can you tell us about the Kickstarter campaign?**
Well, I have my angelic team, the People of Victory. My studio, my atelier, whatever it is, either at the moment, was called Laboratoire Lumiere, and then we all came up together with this new name: People of Victory, which is really the meaning of my name, my real name, Colette. So the People of Victory set it up for me because, number 1: I can’t do that stuff, and number 2: I’m uncomfortable making my own fundraiser. So they did it, and I think that they did a beautiful job, and it is important, it’s about an old work, and saving my old works. And I do like to look in the present and the future, but it’s also an important work because it’s the opposite, it’s the source of many ideas, not only for me, but for other artists, and for popular culture, so it should be saved. Every year I have to move it, and the price goes up, and if you don’t pay they throw you out. And it’s been decades of me storing this work, and other large works, and I was beginning to destroy them, I said ‘enough already.’ Too many decades. Museums almost took this work, it was almost a done deal decades ago, and it’s still here in storage and it’s falling apart, and I’m sick of paying for this. So ‘I am gonna destroy my babies’. I told a few friends and they stopped me and they said ‘just get some help’, there’s nothing wrong with that. Long story short, I was unable to do it and I found my People of Victory and they set it up for me.
**Can you talk about the work you're trying to save, _Living Environment_ (1972-83)?**
Yes, so it’s very old. God, I can’t believe it was that many years ago. I started creating a space where there was an inner sculpture, I came to call it. And I became part of that sculpture. It was a vision. It was an inner sculpture and I was a sculpture within it. It was a room covered entirely with white silk, at the beginning, sometimes soft satin colors, and it would continuously evolve. I would be doing the same artwork, in a way. So at a certain point, for many reasons, but also because I thought I was done with my sculpture. You know, it had its life, and my statement is living in artwork. I thought I had taken it to the extreme, it had been written about, I went as far as one could in terms of art in life, so it was time to end it. Castelli was a very prominent art gallery, he’s like the king of the kings. He took on the project of getting it to a museum, and it didn’t come through. There was another chance a few years later, but that didn’t go through, and in the meantime this thing is falling apart, and it’s getting moved around… And, you know, the People of Victory set up this Kickstarter so I can take care of moving it, storing it, and preserving it, till the next thing, and hopefully the next thing will be getting it into a museum so I don’t have to take care of this baby anymore.
**How did you first start performing and doing art?**
I started when I was born. I really did. I had visions when I was very little, and I always set up a new area, wherever we lived, a private space for myself, and there I had my own little theater. I decorated it and dressed up, and I didn’t let anybody in. I incorporated everything I knew how to do. But I did start as a painter, and little by little it took on its own life. It was very organic. I moved into a space near wall street, and I had this studio, and I just started decorating. I started draping things around the space, and then I became part of it. At the same time I would still make art, in different ways. Then, a couple years later, a prominent gallery that was opening, came to see me. It was kind of accidental. It was late at night, at a club. I was with a girlfriend and she was with these people and we didn’t know where to go, so they came \[to my studio\] and they were totally amazed and they said ‘that’s it. That’s what we need for our gallery. We want you to do something like that.’ So there I did one of my big, most well known installations, it was called Transformation of the Sleeping Gypsy without the lion (after Rousseau), and in another room I had these larger than scale women that were really self-portraits. That was my big beginning. Then I would create these rooms in museums and galleries because I got quite well-known, and everybody wanted a room, and I would be in it. It would be my style but it would be like having a different canvas.
That’s how that started. Then I always made art objects, and actually even the artifacts on the wall panels and the photographs of myself would be artworks on their own. So I continued to do that, my whole life, in different ways. Sometimes I would do more or less of one thing. I created different personas that were inspired by my life, and what was going on in the world, and it led up to now.
**You also were in a band, Justine and the Victorian Punks…**
\[Laughs\] Yeah. I created a band of my own. It was MTV before MTV, because I was more interested in the visual, it started as a visual, but it didn’t take long for me to perform, although I am not at all a musician. So yes, I did that in ‘78. I invented my own death, because, even though I was young, I felt like I had already influenced popular culture and art and artists, and I was still struggling as an artist, and so I figured I am going to stage my own death and be famous and rich like all the dead artists. And so I became Justine, Justine of the Colette company, Justine of the Victorian Punks. It was a very specific look I created, and I was the head of my state, I was an interior designer, a fashion designer, and I made products - Justine created all these products, she was ripping off Colette, basically. She was very inspired by Colette’s vision, who was dead. You get it? It was also a statement on the contradictions of our culture, and so on and so forth.
**You were also known as the inventor of "Victorian punk”, where did the inspiration for that style come from?**
That was very organic. It was not premeditated. I would go to Canal street and find these old corsets, you know I love the Victorian era, so I said ‘well I’m gonna bring it up to today, give it something new.’ I also thought punk sometimes was a little bit boring because, as much as I love the spirit, everyone was just wearing black all the time. So let’s fix this up a little bit, let’s give it some umph. It’s a contradiction, in a way, Victorian Punk. I am also a bit Victorian Punk, I have a little punk in me, but I also have a lot of softness, so it was the marriage of both.
**How was your time as a NYC club regular in the ‘70s and ‘80s?**
Everybody I talk to probably wasn’t born yet. \[Laughs\]. It’s so weird to me because I don’t feel like it was so long ago. But okay, let’s go back there. It was a great time. I am kind of sad that you don’t have what we had. But it was really a special time. We had special places to go to, and very few of us were well off, we lived on very little, and we managed, and we had a great time. But, for me, I had my own difficulties, because, even though, I never liked to dwell on it, or even called myself a feminist. Now I am considered a big feminist. I was just doing my thing, I was not trying to be a feminist. Of course it was much more complicated for a woman in those days. It was a man’s world, more than now. It has completely changed. When women complain to me I just want to laugh, if they only knew what it was like then. And I was well-known right away, but I was also an object of criticism. ‘What is that?’ kind of thing. Because I didn’t quite fit in in anybody’s school, or thought, or vision. And I really manifested femininity in my work, as that having its own power. And it was a time when that was not acceptable, in a way. But somehow I made it.
**What has been your favorite project that you’ve done?**
That’s a very tough one. My future one, it hasn’t come yet, how is that? The result of all my blood, sweat, and tears.
**When have you felt the most invincible?**
In a strange way, I am the most vulnerable right now that I’ve ever been in my life, and I feel the most victorious. That’s why I just changed my name.
**Can you explain your name?**
Colette is my real name. My birth name. There was a french writer, who died a long time ago, who was named Colette, and she was very well-known and very liberated, and I was named after her, like I am sure a lot of french girls were. It’s always Colette the artist. In case somebody doesn’t know what to call me because I’ve changed my name so many times. I can’t believe I am doing it again. It’s like I’ve lived all these lives. They are created because of a need somehow. A personal need, but also a global need. Justine was about getting my do, like an artist should be able to. Then Justine died because I was invited to Berlin, and I became Mata Hari, which was inspired by the war, we still had the Berlin Wall, and Berlin was mysterious. It was kind of an absurd name, Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes. Then I went to Munich and the Countess Reichenbach was born. That’s a whole other story because in Munich you still have aristocracy. They always compared me to King Ludwig but when he was alive they gave him hell so they didn’t quite make it easy for me either. Then I decided to come back to New York, that’s my permanent home, and the House of Olympia emerged, and it was not influenced by the Victorian era but by the 18th century, which I was also very inspired by. And then came Lumiere after 9/11, and now in this time of darkness, I need Victoire. Somehow these personas influence my life. First I create them, then they create my life.
