‘Each time you talk to your friends on Facebook, each time you buy a book on Amazon, each time you save for your pension fund, you’re dealing with a company practicing tax optimisation. We’re not talking drug trafficking. It frequently turns out that these...
It's a story that has got the entire old master world talking. And it begins like the best art market myths: in 2014 a family in Toulouse, in the south-west of France, while doing work on their house, discovered a canvas in the attic which appeared to be from the...
Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) is true a giant of painting from the second half of the 20th century but has yet to receive the full credit he deserves. This is especially apparent when compared with his fellow countryman Gerhard Richter (born 1932) who can properly be...
In a just short space of time La Monnaie de Paris, with its sumptuous 18th century salons, has defied to all expectations to become an important exhibition space for radical contemporary art. Hot on the heels of the solo exhibition by Belgian artist Marcel...
Picabia, Duchamp, Bellmer... Major names in the history of modern art and, it would seem, completely out of most people’s price range nowadays. In Paris, however, the cradle of Surrealism and Dadaism, you can find highly specialised book and manuscript auctions...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNudBHEsAlI Some painters have an overwhelmingly intellectual relationship to their work. For others it’s more physical. Ask one of the most famous among the latter group, Gerhard Richter, born in 1932, who his greatest inspirations...
Though he’s a towering figure in the history of French art, it’s the Prado in Madrid that is currently exhibiting almost his entire catalogue of works. Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) was a painter from the Lorraine region whose work was highly regarded in his time....
It’s the most eagerly anticipated exhibition this season in Paris. 230 works dedicated to an unclassifiable, singular and exceptional artist, and a major figure in German modern art: Paul Klee. The show’s curator Angela Lampe has pulled off a small miracle, creating a...
-It’s a massive sale of photographs: 316 prints, the vast majority of them vintage. -It’s a sale devoted to a major photographer, Philippe Halsman (1906-1979), who holds the record for Life Magazine covers (he has 101 to his name), invented ‘jump’ photography (when...
There are some things that no one except an artist is capable of doing. So it goes with Oscar Murillo, born in 1986 in Colombia and presently also a British national, who initially succeeded in making quite a bit of noise in the art market. Critics and commentators,...
‘There was a lot of expectation and nervousness when the fair opened its doors. Sales figures at Chinese auctions have been underwhelming but the contemporary art market is establishing itself strongly in Asia.’ Its through these nuanced arguments that Marc Spiegler,...
Who would possibly make a comparison between Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) also called Le Douanier Rousseau, the retired Paris customs officer considered by the critics of his days as a harmless weekend painter, and Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), one of the foremost figures...