Porquerolles Last year saw the opening of a contemporary art foundation on the island of Porquerolles, a nature reserve off the coast of Hyères, the brainchild of Parisian financier Edouard Carmignac whom we met last year (cf report) Sea of desire...
People refuse to see me “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. (…) When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.” Invisible man In 1953...
Theaster Gates in public To understand Theaster Gates (born in 1973) you must first have the opportunity to see him in public. He’s charged with electricity, volcanic. A star in Chicago A compact form propelling itself through space. The Chicago-based artist,...
the race towards gigantism In a world where the offerings of various contemporary art festivals are flourishing across the globe, there’s one way to stand out from the crowd, and that is in the race towards gigantism. To fill the spaces This quest would suggest...
Part of the cinema history Whatever our areas of interest, we can agree that Wim Wenders (born in 1945) is now a part of the cinema history. There are flashes of Wenders inscribed in our collective memory, like the red mohair dress matching Nastassja...
Brad Pitt's poetry The story could begin with a few poetic sentences from Brad Pitt: “He walks right by, though he doesn’t see (me)- Shapes and obsessions block his view. He disappears into his cavern, for yet another round. (…) What does it mean to lay oneself...
A certain tension A slight imbalance. Some kind of disturbance… Great artists don’t create unforgettable works by envisaging perfection so much as by establishing anomalies. Along with the exceptional jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, who wore large rings on all...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryiiCfs0ZlM A great country for art Qatar has become one of the great countries in the world for art. The capital, Doha, is marked from the airport to the desert by an extremely ambitious public art program, with a series...
Don't stop at the subject When Cézanne painted his wife or a still life of some apples he didn’t just stop at the subject: a portrait of an unprepossessing woman or fruit arranged on a table… He portrayed his universe, composing a union of colours and shapes to...
Bill Viola and video art A single exhibition is not enough to form a definitive opinion of an artist. The American artist Bill Viola (born in 1951) is known as one of the major figures and the great pioneer of video art. Yet his retrospective at the Grand...
Sharjah Do you know Sharjah? It’s a city in the United Arab Emirates that doesn’t get much media attention. While it may not be as bustling as Dubai with its ski run and flashy nightclubs, nor as moneyed as Abu Dhabi with its Louvre and its oil wells, Sharjah, a city...
The good Impressionnism The word “Impressionism” may be ringing in the ears of the twenty-first-century man like a deterrent. Some people no longer want the endless greenish landscapes of late Pissarros,even though the artist was the great theorist of the movement,...