I first met the French businessman, man of letters, and famous art collector Pierre Bergé about 20 years ago at a dinner organized by Sotheby’s in Paris, where we found ourselves sitting next to one another. We spent the whole evening discussing literature, and the...
We are all familiar with the Galeries Lafayette, established in 1893, which have become synonymous with luxury consumption beneath that great cupola adorned with Art Nouveau glasswork. Less familiar for an international audience perhaps is that the French family-run...
Paris is having a New York moment. As the Fondation Louis Vuitton prepares to pull out all the stops this October with an exhibition of 200 works from Moma telling the story of the institution, and as the Grand Palais exhibits 250 artworks by Irving Penn in a...
There once was a curious character, a guru of sorts by the name of Joséphin Péladan, who succeeded in assembling around him in the Paris of the late 1880s an inspired and visionary coterie composed of painters, musicians and writers. While listening to Wagner and...
An American flag. A target. A sequence of numbers. Are these simple subjects for a simple painter? Not at all. Since the 1950s, when Jasper Johns (born in 1930) develops a unique language using familiar themes, his vision is so powerful that paintings of targets,...
Chantilly is the name given to a sublime variety of whipped cream, for which France is envied the world over. But it shares its name with another French speciality: a Renaissance château, home to a long forgotten art history treasure trove. The Château de Chantilly...
One beautiful, sunny, late-summer morning, I arrived at the chic, minimalist New York studio of Marina Abramovic (her neighbours in the building include, among others, Cindy Sherman) located round the back of the Meat Packing district. The large loft was bustling with...
Old habits die hard in the art market. Tradition dictates that the beginning of the month of September in Paris is a time when antique dealers and auction houses put on special events seeking to display their most beautiful wares. They wish to profit from the...
On 14 September an exhibition is due to open at the Marmottan Museum in Paris dedicated to the private collection of one of the greatest modern masters, Claude Monet. Featuring works by Renoir, Manet and Cézanne that belonged to the Giverny master, the collection was...
One of the most spectacular exhibitions in Paris right now is at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The grandiose set design by architect Nathalie Crinière provides the backdrop for what are mainly gowns, since this is a retrospective of fashion designer Christian Dior...
Every two years, Istanbul is the destination for one of September’s major contemporary art events. This year it’s Elmgreen & Dragset, the Berlin-based Scandinavian artists, who were chosen to fill the curator’s shoes at the event, which opens to the public on 16...
Sublime. Ouro Preto. Perched on a cluster of slippery hills is a city of white, blue and gold, of sloping streets paved in large rough-edged stones, of fountains and churches, of rockeries, of Jesus and Mary. We’re in Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais ('the General...