https://youtu.be/7qy3KJRXkS0 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. He isn’t affiliated with any one...
Rencontres d’Arles: There is no hierarchy in photographic genres. There are only good, bad or boring photos
An augmented Provence Arles is first and foremost an unusual place, a kind of “augmented” Provence. It is here, for example, that we find exceptional Roman ruins such as the recently renovated site that tourists always forget to visit: the...
Tacita Dean at the Pinault collection: a new milestone in the history of art and film
https://youtu.be/lcQghJQVwRw The extraordinary new production of Video art Video art, like painting or sculpture, is an extraordinary mode of expression and one that is widely explored in the contemporary period. Two great artists have created...
Cy Twombly: some secrets revealed about the gestation of his works
https://youtu.be/_p31N7P2xJk Burden of classical painting Over the course of the 20th century artists have sought to cast off the burden of classical painting. Forget the figurative, forget western painting, forget “flat” painting that only...
Elmgreen & Dragset: the remarkable big show of anxiety and mischief
https://youtu.be/uuXfYPW7Fp0 Four eyes Four eyes open wide onto our current age. For close to 30 years Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen born in 1961, Ingar Dragset born in 1969), two Scandinavian artists who live in Berlin, have been...
Art Basel: changes in the market at the world’s foremost art fair
Slow down The art market always has a few surprises up its sleeve. While at the New York auctions in May prices showed a certain degree of slow-down - naturally enough, given the global context - at the opening of the Art Basel fair on 12 June...
Three disappointments that reveal new contemporary art market trends in New York
https://youtu.be/X9D_UNm5uDA Disappointments always There are always disappointments at auction: idolized artists whose works sell for lower prices than expected, or even go unsold. It’s this element of uncertainty that lends everything its...
Basquiat is still the star of the New York contemporary sales but so is Rubens…
Increasingly expensive Against all odds the market for 20th and 21st century art is becoming increasingly expensive. This is what we learn from observing the recent results in the auction rooms of New York and London. We recall that in November...
The Marcel Broodthaers sale: the artist who has challenged the value principles of contemporary art
https://youtu.be/EHhigM53ILw Anton Herbert “It was in 1968. We were very conventional. We didn’t understand much at the time. Thanks to Broodthaers we received an electroshock. He was a fascinating man, a poet. He gave us his vision. He...
Berlin: Ulysses Jenkins, the first African American video artist. History’s missing link
The history of African American art https://youtu.be/DRwS_JCxbl0 He’s the missing link in the history of African American art: Ulysses Jenkins (born in 1946). We could locate him within this chronology between Charles White, a chronicler of...
Venice: The melancholy of the 20th century told in 407 images at the Pinault collection
https://youtu.be/1eDs__BVvQg Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin, the unparalleled theoretician of photography, found the perfect words to describe, since the 1930s, our fascination with images from the past. He wrote: “For the last time the aura...
The colossal Sharjah Biennial : an inventory of new world futures
Global South If anyone mentions Sharjah, the contemporary art fans say: that’s where the Biennial is. People generally don’t know much about this emirate, which is part of the UAE, apart from the fact that it is wedged between the riches...