Art by authors is the big thing right now. The Palais de Tokyo in Paris is placing Michel Houellebecq's uneven photography in the spotlight. Galerie du Passage is exhibiting the french writer Francoise Sagan's deliberately out-of-focus photographs, albeit poorly...
The Rencontres d'Arles photography festival stages forty exhibitions dotted around the small Provençal city best known as the place where Vincent Van Gogh cut off a small piece of his ear. But let’s leave Van Gogh to one side today, even if the brand new foundation...
The whiff of scandal seems to follow Andres Serrano (born 1950), but as an artist he’s so much more than that. Of course there was ‘Immersion (Piss Christ)’ from 1987, a highly stylised photograph of a crucifix submerged in a multi-coloured liquid that we know to be...
In the big market for new names that the small contemporary art world spends much of its time oohing and aahing about before quickly forgetting again, there are nonetheless those sincere individuals who often know not what to make of an artist through lack of...
He’s an arch-narcissist, his teeth are falling out, he’s unattractive, provocative, intelligent, cynical, disabused and expresses himself spiritedly with his lapidary pronouncements. Michel Houellebecq, the runaway success of the French publishing world, a writer who...
There once was a Swiss businessman who became the world’s biggest collector of Chinese art before giving almost all of it away to a Hong Kong museum... This is the remarkable story of Uli Sigg, the famous art world personality, as told in a new documentary by German...
On paper it was the best news from the European art world this season. Tate Modern, the epicentre of modern and contemporary art in Britain, is tightening its grip by adding 60% more exhibition space in a new extension designed – like the original gallery, which...
'Basel is the Wimbledon of art. It’s the fair where you find the highest quality in the world and where the most sophisticated collectors make an appearance. Even those further down players (galleries) in the rankings are happy to be included in the credits.’ Chris...
He’s one of the most interesting and intriguing sculptors of our times. Thomas Houseago, born in 1972, gives his three-dimensional works a highly original form. It’s hard, however, to refrain from seeing them as a way of revisiting the history of art. He revisits...
Here in France, where people have a new habit of vandalising artworks, the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson arrives to face-off against the opulence of the Sun King but also, alas, against reactionaries of every stripe. Until 30 October he’s taking up residence in...
There’s no doubt about it: at the June and December auctions in Paris, where the most beautiful lots of the season are all concentrated, the trophy works tend to be snapped up by foreign buyers. In fact, some of the leader auction houses Sotheby’s, Christie’s and...
It was the famous collector from Miami Mira Rubell who first told me about Hank Willis Thomas. Born in 1976, he’s a talented American artist dealing with popular culture, gender and racial stereotypes in contemporary consumer society, and the perception of ‘African...