The fourth panel of the 15th Anniversary Edition of the Istanbul International Arts & Culture Festival — IST.FESTIVAL — brought together Flavin Judd and Benjamin Paulin in conversation with Josh Hickey, titled Inheriting the Real: Legacy, Memory, and the Present. The discussion examined artistic legacies, archives, and family histories, exploring how memory can remain vital without becoming a static relic. Together, they reflected on how interpretation shapes the present and how historical material can continue to resonate meaningfully today.
Josh Hickey We’re talking about inheriting the real with Flavin Judd and Benjamin Paulin. I’m Josh Hickey. I’m a writer and a publisher. I’m very happy to welcome these two friends, both of whom have taken on the crucial and very complex task of stewarding two of the 20th century’s most important legacies in art and design. Both are also committed to the real, through material, space, and heritage, in a world that is becoming increasingly less governed by these same measures of quality. You know, there were sort of two things that were coming up. There was Jeff Koons’s thoughts on care and the mandatory AI question. So I’m going to latch on to the care theme rather than the AI one. Thank you, Jeff. You’re both caring for a legacy, but there’s also care between the two of you. You’re both friends and you’ve recently collaborated. I’d like to start with that project, that project that brought your work into your environment. Tell me about the project and what it was about the two of you and your relationship and friendship that made that possible.
Benjamin Paulin So we met a few years ago and became friends, and honestly, I would have never asked Flavin, “Oh, can we do a Paulin exhibition at the Judd Foundation?” One day, after a few years we knew each other, he proposed to me, “Oh, we should do something in the Judd Foundation,and I was like, “Oh wow, it’s crazy.” So I was super happy to do it, and then Flavin had an amazing idea for this exhibition focusing on the modular project my father developed in the late ‘60s for Hammond Miller, but that was never produced at the time
Josh Hickey Right, this was the very first time you produced something that had never been produced before.
Benjamin Paulin No, this is actually all our story is producing the dream that never came true, right? So I grew up on the you know, the rejected pieces or the prototypes, and I’m doing the first late edition. So, it’s not technically a re-edition. It’s like the first edition. So it was amazing to be able to talk about it with Flavin and to present it In the context of this wonderful place that’s the Judd Foundation.
Josh Hickey And Flavin, that 101 Spring Street iconic space in New York is also very well known for its sort of rigorous purity. How was it to sort of have these different creations within that space?
Flavin Judd Well, it’s the one space in all of the foundation that we can have exhibitions because everything else is taken up, basically. And so we’ve had quite a few exhibitions and it’s very, very loosely curated. Like, we like that, okay. So there’s no contradiction. I vaguely knew of Benjamin’s father’s work before I met him, but obviously learned much more after we met. And it just seemed like a really interesting fit. And it’s actually hard to have exhibitions of furniture because it’s just furniture, and you put it around and you’re like, well, okay, it looks like a table. So this particular project was interesting because it was a whole office based on a grid. The carpet and the sofa and the tables, and everything worked together, and that’s what was interesting. So that visually, you had this much more immense effect than just, again, putting some tables out in the middle of a room. So that’s made it interesting for a show.
Benjamin Paulin It’s funny because when we started, I remember I proposed to you, “Let’s do this modular piece that would take the whole room”. But then he went, “But people will think it’s art and it needs to be designed.” And yeah, he was totally right about that.
Josh Hickey There were still two very different vocabularies, right? Working together. How, I mean, you know, you’re very, sort of, The Paulin vocabulary is very sensual. And you said this is more like 101 Spring Street is a little freer for you. What role did that sort of sensuality come into?
Benjamin Paulin Yeah, very sensual.
Josh Hickey You see where I’m going with this.
Benjamin Paulin I think my father would have hated to be called sensual because it was absolutely, I promise it was really accidentally sensual, because he really was into functional design, and accidentally it was very kind and sensual, but it was not intentional.
Josh Hickey Okay, unintentional sensuality.
Benjamin Paulin Exactly.
“We as observers or participants in our consumers of art or design, we are bringing our attention to those objects and our attention into those spaces. Flavin, I think that you’ve been quoted a few times saying that, telling people to put their phones away, that you strongly advocate that the experience of real art should be not through a screen.”
Josh Hickey Perhaps that’s the next on our list of things to discuss. Jeff Koons cared, and our unintentional sensuality that we’re sharing with you right now. Don’t laugh, Lou. I’d like to talk about attention for a moment. This is something that’s also a very current idea. We’ve been touching, or the other speakers have been touching on it a little bit. We, as observers or participants in or consumers of art or design, we are bringing our attention to those objects and our attention into those spaces. Flavin, I think that you’ve been quoted a few times saying that, telling people to put their phones away, that you strongly advocate that the experience of real art should not be through a screen.
Flavin Judd You should be there. Otherwise, then you’re not there, so it’s self-evident.
Josh Hickey It is self-evident, yeah. So, do you feel the mediated message is a barrier to understanding?
“You can’t learn much. So that’s kind of an indication that there’s more going on there than just an image. That’s not to say that, you know, images aren’t great. It’s just that they’re received in a different way.”
Flavin Judd Yeah, and I mean two dimensions are nice. It’s okay, but a really good artwork, you can’t take a good photograph of it. You can’t learn much. So that’s kind of an indication that there’s more going on there than just an image. That’s not to say that, you know, images aren’t great. It’s just they’re received in a different way.
Josh Hickey That’s right. But what about accessibility? Would you agree that a digitalization or like maybe a 3D visit of a space?
Flavin Judd It’s the wrong way to go.
Josh Hickey You do? Okay.
Flavin Judd You shouldn’t do that.
Benjamin Paulin Don’t do a 3D visit.
Josh Hickey I’m not endorsing that, I’m just saying that.
Benjamin Paulin When it comes to design, it’s very evident that you need to try it, so it’s great. There are a lot of people who are doing interiors with 3D apps and everything, and it looks very nice and amazing in a picture, but it’s impossible. And also, you cannot try it. Design has to be experienced. It’s not just visual.
Josh Hickey So how do you encourage people to then, in real life, experience? Furniture in your case, space and artwork.
Benjamin Paulin By doing furniture, so they have to try it, I guess.
Josh Hickey It’s a very simple and direct answer. Thank you. Okay, but there’s something about maybe things becoming too easy these days, and I think you’re both stating that you’re ambassadors of a non-easy route, so not making everything available to visit or consume via a digital manner or via screen, but to do that in real life, It’s like. How do you find that difficulty, or do you think that making things easy diminishes the experience?
Flavin Judd It just depends on what it is. Movies, you can watch on an iPad, it’s not terrible. So, but you’re not gonna figure out a room from an iPad. You won’t learn anything. So, you’ll learn much more in space. You’ll figure out how it smells, the way the traffic comes in through the windows, all these little details that are the thing that have to be experienced. So, it really depends.
Benjamin Paulin And also the old context, like for example, for the Spring Street, you have to discover that the old building is not the same thing if you do the visit with Google.
Josh Hickey Is there a – I want to say fetishization of analog, where these days when we’re confronted with this ease, or maybe like a crappier version of the real thing, and it’s also sort of trendy to collect vinyl records. I work in print media. I’m a big ambassador of the importance of maintaining print media, but do you find that sometimes we’re fetishizing the past and maybe not accepting new versions of things because we’re stuck a little bit?
Flavin Judd I think that’s possible, but I think also the culture is in some ways going backwards. And I mean, for instance, Jeff’s art when it came out was super radical. Nobody had seen it. And you’re hard-pressed to find some art that has the same effect now. I mean there are a lot of painters, bless their hearts, that are doing acrylic paintings. And… That’s OK, but we’ve seen that. So what’s next? So I think there’s some connection between the fetishization of the past and not making radical work that’s going on. But I don’t know what it is. But in our case, we’re in the past anyway, so we don’t have to worry about it.
Josh Hickey That’s true, but how do you navigate that, the line between nostalgia and maybe current relevance?
Flavin Judd I just don’t worry about it.
Josh Hickey You don’t.
Flavin Judd In our case, we have a lot of buildings in Texas. We have a building in New York. And the job was to leave it as it is. And so that’s pretty simple. There’s not a lot to decide. And once that decision was made, it was like, okay, let’s just try to do that. And the interpretation of that, I leave to somebody else. Oh my gosh, that’s not my job. It’s hard enough keeping entropy at bay. I don’t need to worry about the semiotics of everything. And Benjamin, how do you? We need to be.
Benjamin Paulin We did a bit of the opposite, because we were working on the part of my father’s career that never happened in the real world. So we are producing, like I said, the dream that never came true at the time. So based on the rejected pieces, we are projecting in the world a new iconography of my father’s design that was never really shown. And it’s, I think, very interesting because a lot of creators are very well known for a period of their work when it comes to design and we talk about re-editions because we think, oh this was so famous, we will go re-addition on those pieces but we are not expecting all new collections of pieces that nobody knew and in my father’s case this is what happened and I’m glad that he now knows a new Pop era somehow with those pieces that were rejected at the time.
Josh Hickey Right, your navigation of that point kind of comes naturally in a way because you’re creating new pieces from a legacy design.
Benjamin Paulin I wouldn’t say creating, but yes, producing, yeah.
Josh Hickey Producing. Producing, okay. Beyond the foundations, with the foundations or archives, you both are your own people also. You’re not, you know, your sole purpose on this earth is not to maintain your family’s legacy, but you have your own. Benjamin, I know that you’re also a musician. And you’re doing a project now, which I believe is called Sounds Like Paulin, which is a music listening room.
Benjamin Paulin Well, a bit more.
Josh Hickey Well, that’s why we would love to hear about it in your words.
Benjamin Paulin Actually, I was a bit bored. You know, we did like a few exhibitions talking about some ways to look at Paulin’s furniture and like, for example, the previous exhibition we made was focusing on the tables my father designed from the 50s to the 90s. And then during the exhibition, we made it also with a lot of dinners because we wanted to use the table, not just to show it as a statement, but also to use it in the function. And so,making all those dinners, I thought about how we should do a restaurant. And now, every time I’m thinking of doing an exhibition, I want to have a continuation in real life after the exhibition, not just to be an event, but to become a project. So Sounds Like Paulin started as an exhibition. And now is a music label project, with many projects around the Sounds Like Paulin projections. It started because probably, I was coming from the music myself. I was passionate about a lot of artists, and at some point, when I started to work on my father’s legacy, they wanted to meet me, and I was super happy because I wanted to meet them before. And so it created an amazing connection between us, and then I started to work for a lot of them and to go a lot in studios, and so at some point I wanted to transform part of my house into a studio also to welcome them when they are in Paris. And now we are recording a lot of projects, and we are about to launch this label project very soon.
Josh Hickey And so this is also like another, let’s say, friendship-based project.
Benjamin Paulin It’s always very organic.
Josh Hickey How do the two of you see your friendship evolving in the future and is there a connection to be made again beyond what you’ve just done at 101 Spring Street?
Benjamin Paulin I don’t know, I hope.
Flavin Judd He hasn’t heard my guitar playing yet.
Benjamin Paulin Yeah, yeah, let’s do some guitar.
Josh Hickey Flavin, what’s your musical talent?
Flavin Judd I don’t have one.
Josh Hickey Nor do I.
Benjamin Paulin You’re a very good listener.
Flavin Judd Maybe.
Josh Hickey Okay, what else should we talk about right now? I think that, you know, you both show us that there’s this sort of living aspect to heritage, that whether you’re preserving it or doing new projects, I think you sort of ensure this bridge between past and future. So what’s your take on AI?
Benjamin Paulin I tried it a lot, I used it sometimes, like for boring emails, like immediately. And, but I played a lot with all the, you know, those music apps also, like Suno or all those things. And honestly, it’s amazing because it works like crazy. But I think some people are afraid of it. And I personally think that now all the mediocre things, you can listen to on radio, and you can do it like that. You can do it in 30 seconds. So it will kill mediocrity. And it will help good artists or good creative people. And so I think it’s a blessing, somehow.
Flavin Judd I’ve never used it, I have no idea.
Josh Hickey So you’re at the Lou Doillon ”School of AI”.
Flavin Judd I’m with the pens and paper.
Josh Hickey And I’m like the ambassador of print media with my notes on an iPad. It’s, you know, we live through contradiction. How about we get some questions?
Audience How do you find your place in the affiliation of your father’s work?
“I really went into the archives and got passionate about it. And I realized that. Of course, because I grew up in his world, I understood everything very quickly and in a very easy way and I started to get passionate about discovering his life as a creative and I never really chose to work on my father’s design. It was not the choice, I just did it and it worked and so I never, really, had the moment to say,
“Oh, do I really wanna do that?”
Benjamin Paulin You know, I grew up of course with my father, but he was just my father. I really didn’t care about design when he was alive because I was doing music, and he hated my music, and I didn’t care about his design, but I loved him as a father. And then when he passed, I missed him so hard that I really needed to find a way to create a new connection with him. So I really went into the archives and got passionate about it. And I realized that. Of course, because I grew up in his world, I understood everything very quickly and in a very easy way and I started to get passionate about discovering his life as a creative, and I never really chose to work on my father’s design. It was not the choice, I just did it, and it worked, and so I never, really, had the moment to say, “Oh, do I really wanna do that?” I know, it just happened, and it was like a tornado, like so I just went. And so now I’m very happy to do it, because it’s an amazing family project, and my mother is still part of it. And my wife, she also was in fashion, and she left this, and she’s working with me. And our daughters are very happy with it. So, I mean, I love it. And it’s amazing also to work on this period, like the 50s, 60s, 70s. First of all, because we are recontextualizing it. We are not attached to the vintage visual and my father was not, neither. I’m the biggest Paulin collector, so I bought a lot, a lot of pieces in the last 10 years, and I’m building a museum now in the mountains in the south of France. But I’m not selling those, I am not in this business. I’m more into projecting the dreams, and I don’t think vintage design has more value than produced. So it’s not my belief. Yeah, no, I mean it’s what is amazing is that the positivity from this moment of time, like from the 50s, 60s, 70s, it’s like something we are living with like every day and and yeah, I mean it’s really a blessing. Honestly.
Flavin Judd In my case, I was 25 when my father died, and I always knew that he wanted a foundation. We talked about it, we discussed it, and I thought it was something that lawyers did. But then after he died, you know, the lawyers don’t know anything at all. And his assistants were not ethical, so we had to get rid of them. So it turned out my sister and I were the only people who could do it. And like Benjamin, we knew the language already, so it was very easy for us to, like, look at projects and buildings and know what was supposed to happen. We didn’t have to teach anybody. So we made a decision when he died that, okay, we have to try. You know, what he wants is insane, like preserve everything forever with $10 million in debt. You know? I mean, it’s a contradiction. But we said, we have to try. You know, you can fail later, but you try first, not the other way around. So yeah, 30 years later, we’re still trying.
José Parlá Your father passed away when you were 25 years old. Prior to that, you’re growing up in the heart of New York, heart of Soho, and what was going on all around you, all of those energies was really different than your father’s work in the sense that, your father, in a sense, let’s say, was more minimalist, where New York and the art forms that were kind of evolving out of the 70s, the 80s, even up to the 90s, there was a lot of this hectic, urban, grimy. It’s always really grimy at the time.
Flavin Judd I was a graffiti writer.
José Parlá I was coming to that.
Flavin Judd Again, there’s no contradiction in any of these things; they’re just different things.
José Parlá And I love that. I was about to go into you being a writer. How did your personal influences and all of that energy that you absorb help you and your sister to go into the foundation?
Flavin Judd I don’t know, because we were really thrown in the middle of a tornado. And there’s only so many times you can talk to an accountant and try to ask questions. So, yeah, it was very much learning on your own as you go kind of thing. And at that time, 1994, there were no art foundations. There was just the negative model of what happened to the Rothko family and how everything fell apart. So there were no actual positive models anywhere. So we didn’t really talk to anybody, so it was very much kind of make it up as you go.
Josh Hickey Did it ever seem like a burden?
Flavin Judd Yeah.
Josh Hickey Like the burden of responsibility?
Flavin Judd Yeah, like “What? Where is the $50 million I’m supposed to use for this?”.
Josh Hickey You were saddled with this somehow. But then, I mean, in your case especially, and I think in yours also, it’s become a gift.
Flavin Judd It’s, well, I agreed to do it. You know, I was like, “What are you gonna do?” We still, you know, I’m older now at 57. My sister is 55. You know, we’re getting on. So we have to think of a succession plan and how this keeps going. So that’s interesting. That’s a new problem, because we’re not going to be around forever to do it by ourselves personally. But also at the same time, I see how hard it is. Artists talk about care, artists care a lot about certain things. And that is manifested in everything they do. And if you change one little thing of theirs without knowing it, you’ll fuck it up. So it’s interesting trying to pass that kind of viewpoint on to somebody else who doesn’t necessarily, who hasn’t grown up with it. Because to me, it’s very clear and very reflexive.
Josh Hickey It’s a very risky, risky passing on of the responsibility.
Flavin Judd Yeah, I mean, you can mess up a lot with just putting like, you know, grass in the wrong place.
Benjamin Paulin In my case, it’s a bit different. My father did not see himself as an artist. So we don’t have the same approach, like I see what he did more as a language. And like the project we created is called Paulin, Paulin, Paulin. So it’s from Pierre Paulin but it’s like echoes of Pierre Paulins. So it could transform in music and any other direction because we take this energy, we are producing some pieces of furniture exactly as he decided, but we can also build from this spirit in a different direction. I’m not interested in being an industrial project and producing shares for everybody. There are already many very cool brands that are doing it. We just want to, I don’t know, take this spirit and to share it with people. So music is one way we use to do that. And, of course, furniture is always central in what we are doing, but the project is not to sell a lot of furniture. It’s just to continue to exist and to share the spirit.
Josh Hickey So it’s somewhat freer. Is there another question? Stefan.
Stefan Sagmeister You spent most of your time in New York or in Texas or both? Back and forth? Back and forward, yeah. Do you see one project more important than the other?
Flavin Judd They’re the same. Yeah, the building, Marfa is 20 buildings, New York is one building, and they’re the same thing, they’re just different locations. There’s a little more variability in Marfa because of all the different spaces. We have three ranch houses.
Josh Hickey No more questions?
Flavin Judd Don’t touch the sculpture.
Josh Hickey Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. Thank you.