The court decision came like a thunderbolt. Guy Wildenstein, the heir to the world’s largest dynasty of art dealers, was accused in France of a massive tax fraud (‘The most sophisticated and longest tax fraud of the Fifth Republic’ (1)) but on 12 January, before the...
Let’s be frank. Among the art lovers of this world – that vast group of individuals that loves flaunting its coffee table books and haunts Moma, the Centre Pompidou and the Tate Modern – how many can tell you why Carl Andre is an important artist? Why exactly should...
In the pantheon of poets, the most prized names are those collectively known as the maudits – the cursed ones. Literature, like art, has been partial to its martyrs, the ones who died too soon, or who were marginalised by society and who appear to have died at the...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxv2qthiSYg As a young boy Subodh Gupta lived in Bihar, one of the poorest states in India. Everyone in the small city of Khagaul where he grew up worked for the Indian railways. The young Indian boy with the very common...
Gold is the only thing that piques his interest. Firstly, he tasted professional success by investing in the precious metal (1). Subsequently, gold allowed him to immerse himself in what’s commonly known as the Golden Age. The New York businessman Thomas Kaplan (born...
There is not one surrealism, but in fact many surrealisms. Proof if required is to be found at the Centre Pompidou where that most Belgian of surrealists, the painter René Magritte, is in the spotlight until 23rd January. Also at the Pompidou until 17th January is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjt94eyY0ag To my knowledge, there are only two words of certifiably Venetian origin bequeathed to the world by La Serenissima: one is ghetto, and the other is biennale. -Ghetto, which initially makes its appearance in the Middle...
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Ernest Hemingway. A moveable feast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrIJjB_dyP0 When Paul Gauguin went...
There is a unique sensation one feels at sight of a rare few old master drawings, to be found more often than not in museums. It is a beguiling emotion born from the impression you have of a life pulsating behind those drawn faces. They’re by Leonardo da Vinci, or...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2slfSt8OJYw For the past few years, it’s been a thing for museums to show artists in pairs. This often involves some stylistic affinity that shines a light on their respective works. For the new major exhibition at the Picasso...
The world’s most prestigious museums, the likes of the Louvre and the Metropolitan, fill entire rooms with uncommonly intricate works of art from the Medieval and the Renaissance period. For a long time the great European and American families, banking dynasties such...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaHUv_Ytr2g If there's one artist you have a hard time equating with sequins, bikinis, fake boobs and Miami beach parties it’s Mark Dion. This American artist (born 1961) is known all over the world for his cabinet of...