‘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...
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...
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...
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,...
It’s a textbook case. In New York two major museums are currently showing two different artists exploring more or less exactly the same subject: the saturation of images in society and the omnipresence of surveillance cameras, tying in to our worries about security....
It’s always something of a disappointment when visiting the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to see the size of the exhibition spaces. After all for exemple Getty owns one of the finest photography collections in the world. But in fact as Glenn Phillips, Head of Modern...
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) was a great artist, not just a great photographer. He will forever be etched in memory as someone who immortalised in black and white those perfectly formed, statuesque naked male bodies in highly constructed environments. The numerous...
While the art world is in thrall to the latest fashions of contemporary art and the market, and while museums are ever more influenced (perhaps too much) by their generous patrons who keep these public institutions alive, New York has witnessed the birth a small...
The Armory Show is an event that is eagerly awaited in New York. The longest-running fair in the world capital of contemporary art, bringing together 205 galleries, appointed its new director, the former art journalist Benjamin Genocchio, last December just as global...
There are those who claim that the art market is globalised but as the Swiss dealer Ernst Beyeler used to say in the '90s, ‘The Italians buy Italian, the Americans buy American and the Germans buy German.’ Arco, which opened on Thursday, provides an interesting...