One evening in October 2024, in a well-known restaurant in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Charles-Henri Filippi takes the floor to comment on the inauguration of the Art Absolument gallery, located across the street. Among his guests, well-known politicians (Laurent Fabius, Jean-Pierre Jouyet), financiers (Serge Weinberg), auction house administrators (Jérôme Clément)…, so many relationships and friendships established during a plural career in the high spheres of public and private. And yet it all started badly: “In high school I was very mediocre, I didn’t work much and I even repeated my first grade. After painfully obtaining my baccalaureate, I returned to university where I did nothing all year. » And then comes the click in the form of an attaché case, a sort of rigid satchel which is to today’s city backpack what the minitel is to the laptop. One evening, his father comes to see him in his room to alert him to the need to finally invest in his studies and offers him the briefcase as an amulet.
From then on, Charles-Henri Filippi would race in the lead, very often with the support of mentors. At Science Po, it was the future Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres who encouraged him, then he passed the ENA competition from which he graduated in 1979. “It’s not very good to be major in your class, those who have been most successful are rarely majors,” he says today in that mix of mischievous coquetry that characterizes him. Still, as a major, this allows you to enter the former elite corps of the financial inspectorate and to be spotted. François Mitterrand has just been elected and the government needs friendly senior officials. Labeled left-wing at the ENA, without being included in the PS, he entered the cabinet of Laurent Fabius, then Minister of the Budget. Then he moved to the office of Jacques Delors and finally to that of Georgina Dufoix, in Social Affairs. As such he is indirectly concerned by what was called at the time “the tainted blood affair“. Indicted a few years later, like many other senior officials, he benefited from a dismissal of the charges. He quickly passes on this episode, conceding that it was very hard, but that in general he is rather resilient.
A “slightly complex” relationship with money
It was at this time that he decided to leave the civil service for the bank. “The right had returned to power and I felt that it helped me a little”he explains. After a short stay at the Stern bank, he joined CCF (Crédit commercial de France). “In the 1980s, we began to feel that economic power was moving away from the State towards the private sector, and as I was interested in economic affairs, I joined the bank. » A long career in finance followed: the CCF, whose sale he managed to HSBC, then HSBC where he managed the French subsidiary before joining Citigroup, Lazard, and most recently, at the age of 72, Evercore. But this youthful-looking banker is tormented by “his somewhat complex relationship with money” and its social utility. “I am very happy to earn a good living, but I am not at all a hoarder,” he pleads. He begins to think about the power of money, to read very scholarly works like Philosophy of money by Georg Simmel (1858-1918) and himself published books with explicit titles such The 7 Sins of Capital (2012, ed. Descartes & Cie), where he analyzes the crisis of subprimethe bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and denounces the financialization of the economy.
To better understand the personality of Charles-Henri Filippi, we must also delve into his unique history with Corsica. He is a Corsican from the diaspora, his ancestors left the island in the 1830s while maintaining a link with the family cradle of Vescovato. In 1950, the general councilor of the canton asked Filippi Sr., who had a brilliant career in ministerial offices and the senior civil service, to run for succession. Jean Filippi was even a senator for twenty-five years, from 1955 to 1980. “As we do in Corsica, he asked my mother to be mayor of the village, which she remained for thirty years, doing many useful things: she was a committed social Christian. » He confesses great admiration for his mother, to the point of symbolically handing over his Legion of Honor to her and never wearing it. Here is the Parisian from the beautiful neighborhoods who spends most of his vacations in Corsica and even presents himself in the cantonal elections of 1982. Defeated, he will be elected a few months later to the first Assembly of Corsica within a list led by a local figure, Nicolas Alfonsi. Its relations with Corsica are as complex as with the bank. “I was very bad at politics, he concedes. Being a continental who doesn’t speak Corsican makes relationships more difficult. And then I was very techno, I wanted to do things rigorously, which doesn’t always work there. » In Delors’ cabinet at that time, he was suspected by the Corsicans of not “serve the interests of the region, but (to) serve the interests of the state against (them)”. He abandoned local politics, which allowed him to reflect more freely on the situation on the island and later wrote a work with the provocative title, Corsica and the French problem (ed. Gallimard, 2021). He rejects the cliché of an island plagued by the mafia, while recognizing that thugs, corrupters and entrepreneurs exercise monopolies there. “But it’s not Marseille, there are no child killers aged 14; the reconquest of Corsican identity creates a kind of cement that goes beyond social fractures. » Adding, a bit disillusioned: “The policies that should be implemented are quite easy to identify but no one is doing the work: the speech is more important than the action. » He wants to contribute to local development by chairing the committee of patrons and partners of Bastia’s candidacy for the title of “European Capital of Culture” for 2028 – with the mixed success that we know. He recounts the oral session before the jury with great verve, concluding lucidly: “ When we left, we knew we had failed. »
It was also his father (definitely!) who introduced him to art through collecting. “My father was obsessed with auctions and very often took me to the Versailles auction house where we had a country house that he filled with crusts. » Later, working at the Ministry of Finance on rue de Rivoli, he enjoyed buying paintings from the Paris school at the Hôtel Drouot, then located in what would become the Musée d’Orsay. He also frequented galleries and became friends with Yvon Lambert from whom he bought Sol LeWitt. He likes to tell the story of a painting by Miquel Barceló which he really liked in 1982 but which he was unable to acquire because it was too expensive. Surprised by life, he recently saw Yvon Lambert again in a salon, and spoke to him about this painting. The merchant then takes him to his reserve and shows him the painting in question. This time he bought it! “My collection has no particular logic, but when I am interested in a movement, for example in English pop, in London, I study the subject thoroughly and I become quite serial. » He confesses to an addiction to collecting. But he has contrasting memories of his mandate as administrator of the Center Pompidou. “I went there with a certain pride, but we talked more about budget and social issues than about art and, above all, I didn’t really have the feeling of being of use to anything. » Which is not the case for Piasa, an auction house that he bought in 2011 from François Pinault with a group of friends including Laurent Fabius to distract the latter at a time when his political career was on the decline. The reception in the profession was colder: “What is this caviar left that gets involved in auctions? » After difficult years, the operator is doing rather well under the direction of Frédéric Chambre, “a guy who has character and is super talented”, and his wife Marie Filippi, who takes care of the management.
An art collection, an auction house and why not an art magazine and a gallery? In 2009, he became an associate of the bimonthly Art Absolutely founded by Teddy Tibi. The magazine relies on the gallery located on rue Louise-Weiss in the 13th arrondissement to balance its accounts. But his friends came to please him because “Frankly, it’s too far”. He moved to rue Monsieur-le-Prince (6th arr.) while maintaining his atypical model: the works were deposited by other galleries. “I think I’m going to lose just a little more money there than on rue Louise-Weiss”admits the banker with the knowing air of someone who will do everything to ensure that this does not happen.
