Would you buy a used life from this man for £110k?

Nick Curtis
30 Jul 2009

Maybe it's just me, but Jasper Joffe seems awfully pleased with himself. He's the 33-year-old London artist selling off all his possessions, including 10 years' worth of paintings, at an East End gallery for £109,989.

The five-day Sale of a Lifetime is, he says, a valid “art project” and a grand, cleansing gesture aimed at winning back the girlfriend who dumped him — “probably because I'm egocentric” — in December.

That's not all. His “stuff”, including designer clothes, family keepsakes, kitchen equipment, books and his collection of teddy bears, has been divided into 33 lots, each priced at £3,333, signifying the death and Resurrection of Jesus at the same age Joffe is now.

The idea of a new beginning, he tells me, also alludes to the artistic Renaissance after the Dark Ages. “I'm not literally comparing myself to Jesus,” Joffe says. He's a calculatedly bohemian figure in his flip-flops, flyaway afro and Jay Jopling specs. And, I suspect, a bit of a mickey-taker.

For a start he talks about breaking up with his girlfriend, Rose, after five years, in a blandly complacent tone. “Basically, at Christmas I woke up with no girlfriend and no representation, having left my old gallery, Sartorial Fine Art,” he purrs. “I'm quite a self-confident person but I don't think I've ever felt quite so cut loose from everything.

After a long grieving process, the idea came to me of putting on display an artistic survey of all my work and my life experiences to date, and selling everything. Because once you've lost everything, you can start again.”

Fair enough. But he doesn't want to give out Rose's last name in order to protect her privacy, which seems strange when he's making such showy public atonement to her. (For the record, she is Rose Gibbs, a ceramicist.)

Further digging reveals that they had been “living separately for quite some time”, but since they have a four-year-old daughter together, they have been in regular, co-parenting contact since their ostensible split.

“I am serious about wanting to win her back and she has told me there is cause for hope,” he insists. “In some ways I think she's impressed at the lengths I'm prepared to go to. Although I suppose it could also just be another example of me being self-obsessed.”

Narcissism, Joffe suggests, is the natural condition of the artist: it is such a demanding, often unrewarding calling that monomania is a prerequisite. I find myself increasingly in sympathy with his girlfriend.

When I ask if he owns any property that's not included in the sale, he tells me he once owned a house in Leighton but lost it when his marriage broke up. Turns out he has an ex-wife and another daughter, aged but it's difficult because they live in Slovakia. He sees me doing the maths, the relationships so nearly overlapping and the births of his daughters so close together. “There was more of a gap than there seems,” he says. “My life is messy, as indeed my painting is somewhat messy.”

He doesn't want to identify his ex-wife either but anyone curious enough to find out can buy her letters as part of a sale lot. Joffe tells me she wanted to buy them back herself but he has put them in the exhibition. (There are paintings of Rose and his family, too.)

He says letting go of possessions is “really not that hard” although those who gave them to him are often upset. His mum's “a bit annoyed” that he's selling off the piece of South African amethyst she gave him when he was 10, and the silver charm she used to put in the family's Christmas puddings.

The items Joffe himself will find hardest to relinquish will be his paintbrushes, “because they are the things I make art with. Anyone else touching them would be a violation.” How has he explained the fact that he's selling off his life to his daughters, I ask. “I hope I'm setting them an example,” he replies. “As a father, I say: You really don't need all this stuff.' ”

Having dealt with the emotional dimension of the sale, we turn to the artistic aspect. It's not an original idea. Artist Michael Landy destroyed all his possessions in a defunct C&A in Oxford Street over the course of a fortnight in 2001. Several people have sold, or tried to sell, everything they own on eBay. “In the City they say that the second mouse gets the cheese,” Joffe says.

“Besides, people have done paintings before and I have continued to paint.” Landy's act was “nihilistic, whereas I am trading my possessions for some sort of opportunity, in the form of money”. And it's not the same as selling everything on eBay, because he's put everything in the Idea Generation Gallery in Shoreditch, where people can draw connections between his paintings and his lead soldiers and teddy bears. Because it's in a gallery, he suggests, it must be art.

Joffe doesn't mind if people dismiss Sale of a Lifetime as a publicity stunt. “I am always trying to get people to think about things, and I suppose that does cross over into the way PR works, in that you're trying to get people's attention,” he says.

His first show after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1999 was the self-explanatory 24 Paintings in 24 Hours. In 2007 he set up the Free Art Fair during Freize, where he and other artists gave away their work, in a protest against the rampant commercialisation of art.

In 2008 he sold a painting of Himmler to Charles Saatchi but insists that he didn't paint it to shock: his father is Jewish and Nazis have always figured in his work. Also last year, he exhibited a series of huge paintings contrasting images of the royal family with scenes of hard-core porn. No one bought those, not even Saatchi.

“I also think they might have been the final straw for my girlfriend, my huge porn pictures,” Joffe says. “She is quite a feminist and I was — I am — quite supportive of feminism. I wanted to do a show about porn, a show saying, What do you think of these images? What do they mean?' But I think it just came across as, Ha ha, here's another lascivious guy who likes looking at porn so he paints pictures of it.' ”

Anyone who does want a huge carnal image on their wall is in luck. He says he rarely sells a small canvas for less than £3,000, so anyone buying one of his painting lots can pick seven for the price of one.

Of course, although he thinks he must be “in the top percentage of artists”, there have been years when he's scraped by, and the £100,000 he hopes to get from the sale would represent a remarkable income for most artists. But it's not that huge a sum, especially if he has to purchase new brushes, canvas, kitchen equipment and clothes.

That said, he's not sure if he will paint again. He thinks he might use the money to go on holiday to Italy, having enjoyed a scholarship at the Italian School in Rome after graduating from the Royal College of Art.

Since he has joked about his family buying back his stuff for him, I ask if he has a financial safety net. Absolutely not, he says. His family isn't rich. He's not related to Lord Joffe. Or the film-maker Roland Joffe. His South African-born parents are divorced, his father a retired psychologist, his mother a retired amateur painter who spent most of her life raising Jasper and his three sisters (one of whom is the artist Chantal Joffe).

He had a thoroughly middle-class upbringing in Highgate and attended a “bog-standard” Hampstead comprehensive. Yes, the possessions he's selling include hand-made Ducker & Son shoes, a Richard James suit and an Armani coat, but these were bought with student loans, on credit, or with the profits from paintings.

When his exhibition-cum-sale ends on Sunday, Joffe says he really hopes to be left with nothing but the clothes he's wearing, his wallet, passport and mobile phone. Ideally, he'd like one person or organisation — maybe Saatchi or even his old gallery — to buy all 30 lots and exhibit them as a “collection”.

But this is a sale, not an auction. And it's questionable whether his 800-odd books, or his flatscreen TV and sundry other electrical items, are worth £3,333. He'll have to lug any lots that do not sell for their marked price back to his rented flat or his rented studio, both in Hackney.

Surely, I say, this defeats the integrity of the “art project”. Better to give unsold stuff away or destroy it. “Well, I've already organised the Free Art Fair where I and 50 other artists gave away £100,000 of work, so I feel I've done my bit,” he huffs. Hmm.

As a publicity stunt, Joffe's Sale of a Lifetime clearly works, but as an artistic happening I find it highly suspect. Let's hope it wins Rose back, eh?

Jasper Joffe: The Sale of a Lifetime is at the Idea Generation Gallery, 11 Chance Street, E2 until 2 August, www.ideageneration.co.uk