https://youtu.be/w2a4_K2Yfm0 Famous Jeff Koons is one of a small number of contemporary artists of whom the general public often says “I know them” and frequently follows up with “I don’t like them.” Money But people don’t tend to be familiar...
In Venice at the Prada Foundation, Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grimani: the three most beautiful exhibitions on show
https://youtu.be/6MAhlc0J7Uc Not the architecture Biennale No, it wasn’t the architecture biennale that made me rush to Venice. I initially found it intellectually stimulating, with all the societal and ecological questions it...
Les Lalanne in Versailles and Williamstown. The prodigious rise of their ostriches, cabbages and sheep at auction
Stephan Zweig “It was a doll’s house, this Little Trianon (…) This ‘Anglo-Chinese garden’ was to represent, not merely nature, but the whole of nature. In the microcosm of a few square kilometers, there was to be a quasi-microscopic...
Paolo Roversi: a sale that’s like a glimpse of the famous fashion photographer’s inner world
https://youtu.be/umK1ESHSBeI Snapshots with a soul Photographing a top model is all well and good, but having the ability to infuse these beauty snapshots on glossy paper with a soul is nothing short of miraculous. Those who can do this...
Contemporary art like a beating heart. Luma Arles by Maja Hoffmann is impressive and exhilarating
A lineage of collectors The Swiss billionaire Maja Hoffmann comes from a lineage of remarkable collectors. Her grandmother, Maja Sacher, was one of the founders of the art museum in Basel (See here the video interview of Maja Hoffmann)...
Kunsthaus Zurich: The great landscape of Gerhard Richter’s extraordinary landscapes
https://youtu.be/B4sqjQECVgk Great painter It’s generally taken as a given that Gerhard Richter is one of the great painters from the latter half of the 20th century. But for anyone who may still have doubts on the subject, it’s worth...
Masterpieces from a secret French collection of tribal art are auctioned at Christie’s
To travel gloriously “What is the good of moving when a man can travel so gloriously sitting in a chair?” The great decadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans offers a good description of the state of immobility conducive to savouring one’s...
Lacaton and Vassal: the 2021 Pritzker Prize winners in their own words
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOcPjIvN450 Ego Are they starchitects? On 16 March 2021 the famous Pritzker Prize was awarded to a French couple: Anne Lacaton (born in 1955) and Jean-Philippe Vassal (born in 1954). Partners in life and in...
Bazille: artworks by the legendary impressionist painter who died at 28 miraculously appear on the market
A legendary artist For those who are truly interested in impressionist art, Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870) is a legendary artist. He only painted for a period of seven years, before dying aged 28 after enlisting in the French army in 1870 during...
The Black artistic renaissance. The phenomenon takes different forms in the United States and in France
Heritage of the traumas https://youtu.be/okH5n9CZbx0 For some time now colonialism, slavery and the heritage of these traumas has been at the centre of an unusual kind of attention, giving rise to what was once called “history painting” up...
David Hammons: the latest New York monument is an extraordinary ghostly structure stretching over the Hudson
https://youtu.be/cjT53b6qXHw Strange and glorious The American artist David Hammons (born in 1943) is a strange and glorious figure, frequently absent, yet always seeming to appear where he’s least expected. The drawing center The...
Francis Bacon and Peter Beard: an unlikely friendship that takes the form of an exhibition in London
https://youtu.be/ELj2brIz4OA An Irishman and an American dandy Take an American dandy who liked women, wild animals and photography. Then take another dandy, an Irishman who loved men and made paintings depicting torment and suffering with...