Robert Filliou — Optimistic Box n°4 & 5, 1968–1981

Across many cultures, pigs symbolise prosperity, abundance and good fortune. Considered a reserve for the future, pigs seem to have naturally lent their form to the savings bank, another vessel for deferred value. Robert Filliou adopted the piggy bank for his Optimistic Boxes, a series of unlimited editions conceived as New Year’s gifts by artists. Most of them invite viewers to discover their contents by opening them. This box, or piggy bank, however, places its message on the surface. One side of the piggy bank reads “one thing I learned since I was born”; the other, “that I must die since I was born”. Together, these two inscriptions form Nos. 4 and 5 of the series. They give the work Filliou’s characteristic irony by treating mortality as the one certainty accumulated over a lifetime.

At the core of Robert Filliou’s practice are ideas of language, play and exchange. Trained in economics and associated with Fluxus, he conceived art as a continuous, collective activity embedded in everyday life. His work challenges conventional notions of authorship, value and production, favouring openness, humour and participation. Through gestures that blur the boundaries between art and non-art, Filliou redefined creation as an ongoing process of thinking, making and sharing, an approach that continues to shape the understanding of art as a space of exchange.