'Art' was born to Yasmina Reza from the inspiration of her friend Serge, a dermatologist. Like the character of the same name, Serge had bought a white painting for 200 grand. Reza's reaction? "I laughed and said you must be mad and then we both laughed." That evening at home, Reza pondered the question, "What if he hadn't laughed?" So became the springboard for 'Art', a play about a friendship and, well, art.

French-born Reza was a person of the arts long before the success of 'Art'. She immersed herself in theatre as an actress and playwright. After spending a good deal of time on stage and in the company of a lot of wonderful actors, Reza started to work off stage on a craft that soon brought her prestigious recognition. At age 28, Reza received the Moliere Award (the French equivalent to the Tony Award), SACD New Talent Award, and the Johnson Foundation Award for Conversations after a Burial. The following year brought Reza a Moliere nomination for her translation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis for Roman Polanski and quick to follow was another Moliere Award for Winter Crossing (Best Fringe Production). 'Art' came to the stage in 1995, with a succession of prizes: the 1994 Moliere Award for Best Play, the 1996 Olivier Award for Best Comedy. the Evening Standard Award, and the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play.

The recognition of 'Art' as a comedy initially shocked Reza. "They laugh the minute they see it, everywhere. That's what's odd," said Reza in an interview with Mary Blume of International Herald Tribune. "It is the destruction of a friendship, after all." But no matter what audiences label it, 'Art' - now translated in 20 languages - has universal appeal as does Yasmina Reza's gift for writing. Most recently. her penmanship has led her into the worlds of screenwriting (See You Tomorrow and Lulu Kreutz's Picnic) and fiction (Hammerklavier). Yasmina Reza, like minimalist artist Robert Ryman, doesn't stop at the corners of her canvas; her craft expands over the edges into new forms.
 

Marc: I had to take three pellets of Gelsemium 9C which Paula recommended -- Gelsemium or Ignatia.

Both are herbal remedies used for a wide variety of symptoms including anxiety and sleeplessness.

Serge: It's a seventies Antrios. Worth mentioning. He's going through a similar phase now.

Although Antrios is a fictional artist in 'Art', he could well have been born from the inspiration of other minimalists from the sixties and seventies who were experimenting with "white-on-white" forms.

Serge: You have to come back in the middle of the day. That resonance you get from something monochromatic, it doesn't really happen under artificial light.

This is the reference to artwork which is made from only one color or in black and white only.

Serge: ...it's just a picture, we don't have to get bogged down with it, life's too short...By the way, have you read this ? (He picks up De Vita Beata). Read it it's a masterpiece.

Of the Happy Life by Seneca was written for his brother, Gallio. Seneca accepted the Stoic premise that the happy life is in harmony with its own nature.

Marc: What's Flemish about it? It's a view of Carcassonne.

This is a city in Southwest France known for its medieval structures and walls.

Marc: What is it, adhesive tape?

Serge: No, it's a kind of Kraft paper...Made up by the artist.

This could be another possible reference to minimalist artist Robert Ryman who was known for incorporating adhesive tape into his artwork and for letting his work extend over the edges of his canvas.

Serge: You know how many Antrioses they have at the Pompidou?.

Famous modern art gallery in Paris also known for its architecture.

Serge: You know what Paul Valery says?

French poet, critic and man of letters (1871-1945). What did he say? Here's a sample:

"Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and - crowning injury - inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself."

Modernism is typically defined as the movement in art and literature since WWI which involved a deliberate and radical break with traditional styles of Western culture and art. The intellectual precursors to this movement were such thinkers as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Freud, in particular, questioned the certainties that had provided a support for the conception of the human self. A major feature of modernism is the "avant-garde" (from the military metaphor: "advance-guard"). A small group of artists and authors under this label undertook to "make things new" by violating accepted conventions and decorums and creating new artistic forms and styles.

Dada - During the height of WWI, artists and writers of this movement protested the insanity of war, rationalism and the values of middle-class society. Tristan Tzara, the principal spokesman for the movement established the standards of Dada in his seven manifestos on the movement. Dada is a French word for a child's hobby-horse, said to have been chosen at random from a dictionary by artists in Switzerland. It was later absorbed by the surrealists in the 1920s. Other Dada artists include the sculptor Arp and the painters Ernst and Duchamp.

Surrealism - 1924-World War II. Launched in France by Andre Breton, surrealism was defined in his Surrealist Manifesto as a type of psychic automatism through which artists intended to express the true functioning of thought. Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Rene Magritte and Max Ernst used such "automatic" techniques as rubbing, scratching and catching candle smoke on paper. Dali in particular created disorientating realist imagery often based on dreams, hallucination, and paranoia.

Minimalism - Characterized by the use of primary forms or structures, etc. Artists from this predominantly 60s movement gave up claims to illusion or raw expression in favor of an impersonal timelessness. Artists include Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt and Robert Ryman. In the 1960s many minimalists experimented with whites. Ryman, who was said to be the inspiration of the fictional Antrios in 'Art', said "White enables other things to become visible."

wildly funny, naughtily provocative (The New York Post)

a non-stop crossfire of crackling language, serious issues of life and art expressed in outbursts that sound like Don Rickles with a degree from the Sorbonne...ART sounds like a marriage of Moliere and Woody Allen (Newsweek)

Anyone who is looking for a play that is funny, sophisticated, stylish, stimulating and moving should go to ART (The Independent - London)

'Chic, short, and wickedly, perceptively funny (London Evening Standard)

'Art', like the form itself, is universal and all encompassing (India Times)

...filled from first curtain to ending with a dazzling array of language (Christian Science Monitor)

It's a winner (France Today)

['Art'] moves like the wind and leaves you exhilarated. It's theatre, pure and elegant. (The New York TImes)

Dazzlingly quick and funny (Entertainment Weekly)

The must-see play of the Broadway season has arrived: ART, tart and thought-provoking, is an undeniably hilarious ride...guaranteed to provoke a spirited conversation afterwards. (Gannett Newspapers)

Winner of the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play

Winner of the 1996 Olivier Award for Best Comedy

Winner of the 1994 Moliere Award for Best Play

Art happens when anyone in the world takes any kind of material and fashions it into a deliberate statement. (Thomas Hoving, former Director, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. (Stella Adler)

What garlic is to food, insanity is to art. (unattributed)

An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it. (Paul Valery)

He who knows a thousand works of art, knows a thousand frauds. (Horace)

Art is something made with form and beauty (Victorian definition)

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of Art. (Oscar Wilde)

There are two ways of disliking art...One is to dislike it. The other is to like it rationally. (Oscar Wilde)

...we're such good friends. It's time-consuming, it's exhausting, it's exhilerating and a pain in the ass. (Stuart Miller, Men and Friendship)

Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other. (Honore Debalazac)

A true friend stabs you in the front (Oscar Wilde)

Friendship may be the surest source of satisfaction in a fickle world, better than sex, money, or power. (Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man)

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. (Anais Nin)

I've noticed your hostility towards him...I ought to have guessed you were friends. (Malcolm Bradbury)

Every friend should have a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends. (Henry Brooke Adams)

God defend me from my friends; from my enemies I can defend myself. (Friendship proverb)