Alexander Alé De Basseville

Origins & Punk Awakening

Born the 8th of July 1970 in Bordeaux by chance, Alé de Basseville’s life has been a journey of constant movement geographically, intellectually, and artistically. From a very early age, he was shaped by the cultural currents of Europe under the Cold War, raised with noble family values, Jesuit teachings, and the deep, ancestral memories embedded in European art and political history. At 13, he joined the revolutionary spirit of the 1980s punk and new wave scenes, embracing the motto: “No Future.” “Imagine a teenager arriving at formal family dinner with cut jeans, blue hair, and a leather jacket this was Alé’s rebellion.” As a teenager, he immersed himself in the Parisian bohemian scene, being part of the legendary venues like Studio 54, Café Vogue, Palace and later les Bains. He absorbed the influences of Malcolm McLaren and later Andy Warhol, who welcomed him into The Factory in New York City with the blessing of his grandfathers. There, Alé discovered a world where creativity was not confined to the studio but thrived everywhere in the city.

He moved between the worlds of Andy Warhol, Leo Castelli, and Richard Weidmeister Picasso. Following the guidance of both his family and Warhol, Alé went to Milan to pursue classical training at the Brera Academy, studying under Lucchi Renato Chiesa. He focused on the classics until a life-altering event: his uncle, a prominent Parisian figure, revealed his AIDS diagnosis. Shaken by this news and inspired by Elizabeth Taylor’s advocacy, Alé joined the fight against AIDS as an integral part of the Aids Foundation, staging live art performances in New York, Paris, and Ibiza as early examples of painting as a form of protest, a warning of the epidemic’s social violence.

Couture, Studio A, and the 1990s Photography Boom

Half a decade later, embracing couture, Alé learned from Claude Montana and began experimenting with fabric and leather. Having explored many facets of the art world at a very young age gaining early recognition, he withdrew from the commercial art scene, disillusioned by a system that treated artists as mere commodities. In 1991, he founded Studio A in New York at 25 West 26th Street, an innovative creative hub where brands came for ideas, concepts, and direction. Studio A was one of the first fully operational creative agencies of the 1990s, with photography studio production work accomplished for Elle, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, ID-magazine, Photo, Paper magazine and many others. He gave directions on collections and inspired in the underground fashion world many trends unknown for the wide public. It was also the birthplace of the iconic and controversial pictures of the today’s First Lady Melania Trump, Knauss at this time, as well as intimate portraits of emerging models and personalities as Diane Kruger, Rosanna Arquette, Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughters, Bridget Moynahan and many others. Around 200 000 photos taken throughout his lengthy 40 years career. The studio also envisioned as outsource creative studio for major fashion brands. Hello Magazine conducted an interview with Alé sparking the trend for equestrian boots and trousers.

Alé later moved to Los Angeles with the goal of opening a photo and film studio and fully stepping into his role as an art director. There, he collaborated with many figures in the film industry and helped produce the documentary “Searching for Debra Winger” with Rosanna Arquette, building a network and be part of projects that included Jane Fonda, Laura Dern, Salma Hayek, Tom Cruise, ZZ Top, and Slash. His advocacy for the empowerment of women and the protection of children was evident in his involvement with the Womanity Foundation, being it a cause that remains deeply close to his heart, today more than ever.

Art as Resistance: The Recent Years

Alé’s creative journey has taken him from Paris to New York, Milan, Buenos Aires, London, Ibiza, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Cuba, Punta del Este, Rio, China, and beyond, always forging connections with global cultural figures, always pushing the boundaries. In 2011, he launched a couture show under the brand Jarl Alé 8 in Paris during the Fashion Week 2011, and later that year he held two live painting exhibitions in the World Trade Center Ningboin and the City of Ningbo, China.

Between 2012-2014, he held the role of public relations and creative director for the private museum in Paris, Place de La Madeleine, le Musée de la Pinacothèque. He exhibited at Cube Art Gallery (Paris, 2016) and had a major retrospective at Raffaghello Gallery (Milan, 2017).

A New Phase: Fire and Flesh on the Blockchain

Today, after years of silence and personal health battles due to a double genetic disease, Alé has re-emerged with hundreds of new paintings, artworks, concepts and designs. His recent works (2021 and onwards) are a mature, unflinching synthesis of myth, philosophy and rebellion. His art is not just simply a mirror of the world, it is a weapon forged in the depths of Fire. Alé paints seated on the floor, immersed in the canvas, using a visceral technique: pigments mixed with water layered beneath vinyl paint. This method is a fusion of the primal and the synthetic reflection of his metaphysical exploration of existence and technology. It is also a return to origins: working close to the earth, embracing chance, gravity, and the body’s constraints, invoking resistance through art. His health, his body, and his mind, these are not obstacles but integral materials in his art, infused with blood, sweat and tears. The lost paintings, the stolen archives, Alé’s legacy is scattered across continents, in private collections, hidden vaults, and public silence. Yet he refuses to chase it down or market himself as a victim. That refusal makes his work dangerous. It resists the easy narrative.

He is not the artist who will be celebrated in polite retrospectives. He is the artist who makes the room uncomfortable, who asks:

– What is the cost of truth?

– What happens when you refuse the system of decaying?

– Can art still matter in an age of empty spectacle?

Six months, prior to this launch, his trusted collaborative Team of 8 carried out the first steps towards the Ordinals inscription of Alé’s artwork legacy on the Bitcoin blockchain. This inscription is not a speculative act, but a rather a sovereign gesture, archiving outside the market, where the work becomes now a signal of resistance encoded into the chain of time. Alé de Basseville’s life and works are forever inseparable. One is the other and both are the same. His legacy is a life of rupture and refusal, a body of work built from ashes and resistance through the renaissance of time.

“Par cet acte, nous avons voulu rendre à l’art ses lettres de noblesse, dans toute la portée que cela implique !"