“Blending different fields of knowledge and practices that are normally completely unrelated is at the heart of my artistic exploration. It can, for example, create connections between artistic concepts and winemaking methods, or even bring together minimalist artforms and forms of cheese. The Specific Cheeses Guild was founded in this way, in order to celebrate the eponymous project that I’ve been leading since 2010 on the formal relationships between minimal art and cheesemaking : a conference, the production of cheese from moulds based on the 12 forms outlined in Forms Derived from a Cube by Sol Lewitt, print runs, and a guild united in costumes and hats constituted this project,” explains Nicolas Boulard. The word “form” and the word “fromage” derive from the same etymological family, just as the forms of cheese and the recurrent forms of minimal art (the circle, square, and pyramid) share similarities. Proceeding from this assessment, twelve cheese moulds were designed based on the drawings of Sol Lewitt’s 12 Forms Derived from a Cube (1982), and emmental Specific Cheeses were presented by the guild during this conference. 

“The essential quality of geometric forms lies in the fact that they are not organic, unlike all other forms considered artistic.” Donald Judd, interview with Lucy Lippard, 1967.