Successful art fairs These days every successful contemporary art fair, from Miami to Hong Kong, takes place on a city-wide scale. La Fiac And this week that point is being made by the Fiac, the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, which is held between 17 and 20...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv1Nvn4Gc34 Everything must change “For things to remain the same, everything must change.” This now-legendary line, uttered by the dashing Alain Delon in Luchino Visconti’s film The Leopard, could actually be reclaimed by...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGflH-iHA_Y 9 reconstructed spaces A great woman. A great exhibition. Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) is the subject of an exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton comprising no less than nine reconstructed spaces, which give...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV6v3d0hX0A A pilgrimage destination Because New York has long been the global centre for art, and because New York is in all likelihood still to this day the global centre for collecting contemporary art and the art...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZYJmPfmdNY The weeping woman As far as art history is concerned, Dora Maar (1907-1997) will always be the “weeping woman” as named by her portrait, painted so many times by Picasso as a kind of fury with tears streaming down her...
Surrealism and Dada Surrealism and Dada were movements that radically revolutionized not just the art world but also our general ways of thinking, dreaming and writing. Intellectual revolutions If you want to possess testaments to this kind of human...
Paul Cézanne The story begins in the pine forests of Aix. Imagine the cicadas, the hot sun beating down, and Paul Cézanne coming to this spot every day to paint, in an old quarry where stones were cut in the 18th century and used to construct the majestic...
Selling less The art market is one of those rare places where selling less can also involve selling for higher prices. What I mean by this is that following a long period when younger artists were overwhelmingly considered to be the market’s raw materials,...
Classical exhibitions The Venice Biennale has become such an important moment in the global art calendar that countless events now congregate around it. They tend to be of a more classical nature than those at the national pavilions and the...
Paul Gauguin “How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Don’t be afraid to paint it as blue as possible”. During the summer of 1888 in Brittany at Pont Aven, Paul...
Death Who wants to part with their masterpieces? No one. That’s why the biggest art market records, generally obtained for absolutely outstanding works, are the fruit of forced and unhappy circumstances: death and divorce. This is primarily the way in which the...
Specialized in nudity Young boys and girls disrobe to dance a graceful saraband in a composition over six metres long. In 1884, the then famous French painter William Bouguereau (1825-1905), who specialized in nudity under mythological pretexts, created what he...