It has become customary in the world of politics (with one glaring exception) for voters to elect leaders who are reasonably good looking, comfortable in their own skin, and well dressed. France has recently provided us with such an example. Michael Govan (born in...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpiHClll00 “I am Madame Bovary”. These vague words are attributed to Gustave Flaubert, but they do express a truth of paramount importance in terms of creativity. The raw material for artists is the artists...
If there is an ultimate narcissistic being, it is surely the artist. Yet when the artist turns to evoking his fellow artists’ work, provided that it consumes him with passion, it becomes exceptional. Currently showing in Antwerp at the MHKA, the city’s museum of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkclGz3JOgc Bruce Nauman is a towering figure in the art world but Bruce Nauman is also a mystery, for he is a complex artist. From 21 October, Moma in New York is dedicating its entire sixth floor as well as its PS1...
It is altogether highly unlikely. 660 km from Paris, deep in the heart of Aveyron in the South of France, there’s a town that cannot be accessed by motorway or by the TGV – neither of them travel through here – where you can visit the most substantial exhibition in...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DftPH89bSyg In his youth, before earning his living as a painter, he taught drawing but he also worked as a psychic medium. This is a way of situating the figure of Frantisek Kupka, born in 1871 into a modest family from...
When we were little, one of the most exciting activities proposed to us during summer camps or as one of our extracurricular activities was to go on a treasure hunt. These days, the only kinds of treasure hunt on offer to us poor adults with boring schedules are...
You won’t escape Van Gogh in Arles. While he has indeed been buried since 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, he has never been so present in the Camargue city where he stayed for little over a year. Never mind the sunflowers growing in the surrounding fields, as though designed...
There’s nothing “politically correct” about this exhibition. Here the women often tend to be nude, they smoke, and they pursue their own pleasure. And it’s an American painter-voyeur by the name of Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004) who portrays, against a seaside background,...
She told me: “If I were you I would think twice before you decide to go to Tehran. The Grand Bazaar is on strike. The last time that happened the Shah was overthrown”. She’s an American-Iranian friend who receives daily news from Tehran via her family who live in the...
It’s a revelation. The Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is presenting an exceptional exhibition dedicated to the large-scale works (up to 6 metres in length) of the painter Zao Wou-Ki, a practice he started in the 1950s. Born in China in 1920, he died in Paris...
Curiously, in an age like our own marked by creative profusion and profound upheavals, one of the strong tendencies when it comes to art consists of looking to the past to rediscover artists who might have been unjustly forgotten. This is the case for Gordon...