Among all the personalities we interviewed on the topic of the Art de Vivre à la Française meeting Guy Savoy was a truly revealing moment. It is this very revelation that the Académie des Beaux-Arts is honoring by naming him an Academician, the first Chef ever to receive this distinction.
It is not only his talent as a Chef (his restaurant at La Monnaie de Paris has been named the World’s Best Restaurant seven times by La Liste), but also his open-mindedness, artistic curiosity, and humanism that the Academy wanted to celebrate.
“His intellectual curiosity and the long-standing camaraderie he shares with numerous artists will be very useful to us in fulfilling our mission,” adds Laurent Petitgirard. “By electing Guy Savoy, the Academy has not only honored one of the most distinguished representatives of French cuisine, but also a humanist and contemporary art enthusiast who contributes to the international influence of our country, as demonstrated by his efforts toward the inclusion of the gastronomic meal in UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage.”
Because in the French Art of Living, individual excellence always goes hand in hand with a permeability to other “arts,” understood as ways of doing (from ars-artis). Blending, drawing inspiration, reinventing, this is what makes the Art de Vivre à la française so distinctive. Any field can be touched by it, from gastronomy to rap, from lace-making to tech.“When you put soul into beauty, it becomes art, but it’s still up to the guests to judge whether my recipes and dishes rise to that level,” says Guy Savoy.