Eins. Un. One… (1984) is a flagship work in the MAMCO collection and the last great work by Robert Filliou (France, 1926–1987). It consists of 5,000 dice in various sizes and colors—blue, red, yellow, black, white and unpainted wood—with a single dot on each face, scattered randomly in a circle measuring nine meters in diameter.
This publication includes a foreword by Michel Collet on the conceptual power of Filliou's oeuvre, while Sophie Costes, surveys the artist's works held in the museum's collection—from Poï-Poï, his first exhibition catalogue published in 1961, through Eins. Un. One… She reveals how Filliou consistently used play, action, philosophy, and language as vehicles for humorously questioning the fundamentals of artistic creation.
This book also reminds us that Filliou, who saw himself as a "genius without talent," rubbed shoulders with Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, John Cage, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Daniel Spoerri, and even the Dalai Lama, but that he also shunned the limelight and favored dismantling the established hierarchies of the art world—something that sets him apart within the Neo-Dadaist sensitivities of the Fluxus movement with which he is associated.