The question of proper noun in contemporary art allows the opening of a debate whose terms had not been set out until now, even though they govern contemporary creation. The proper noun has been present in all artistic movements and all works by major artists since the avant-gardes: as a work of art, as a questioning on identity, as a legitimizing entity in a crisis of image, as a transfer operator from one visual code to another, as an instrument of role exchange, as a strategy of self-glorification…

The proper noun is no longer an extrinsic element, it has been absorbed within the very building-up of the work where it sets the question of the subject and his or her identity.

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