France is a nation of great wealth, at least when it comes to art. And one of the most beautiful modern collections outside Paris is in Villeneuve d’Ascq, on the outskirts of Lille, in a  museum called Lille Art Moderne or LAM. From Picasso (25 paintings) to Leger (20...
Since in New York there are modern and contemporary auctions every day this week featuring emotion, Â why not go along and see some genuine masterpieces that are not for sale. Â The curatorial world is shaped, in varying degrees, by its trends. The most recent trend,...
Imagine someone who grasped as early as 1910 the monumental importance of Picasso and Matisse on the history of art. Imagine a man who anticipated the role Cezanne’s painting would have in the dawning of cubism. A man who since Marcel Duchamp stopped painting in...
In times past, the great European museums were founded around royal collections. In more recent memory, in the US particularly, it was through the largesse of business moguls that the finest museum collections were assembled, a trend that continues right up in the...
The art world, like the rest of us for that matter, likes pigeonholing artists into one category or another. Fortunately there are artists who manage to escape all categorisation. A case in point is Francesco Vezzoli, the Italian artist recognised by international...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00F0Wyw6vA She’s best known as the wife of John Lennon - one of the icons of 20th century pop music - and a fortiori as the heiress of his legendary group The Beatles. However, ladies and gentlemen, now Yoko Ono finds herself...
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...
 Though he’s a towering figure in the history of French art, it’s the Prado in Madrid that is currently exhibiting almost his entire catalogue of works. Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) was a painter from the Lorraine region whose work was highly regarded in his time....
It’s the most eagerly anticipated exhibition this season in Paris. 230 works dedicated to an unclassifiable, singular and exceptional artist, and a major figure in German modern art: Paul Klee. The show’s curator Angela Lampe has pulled off a small miracle, creating a...
Who would possibly make a comparison between Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) also called Le Douanier Rousseau, the retired Paris customs officer considered by the critics of his days as a harmless weekend painter, and Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), one of the foremost figures...
In art there are those mythical places believed to have changed the course of history. Until the nineteenth century, if you considered yourself a serious painter you were obliged to make an initiatory journey to Italy on the trail of the Renaissance and Ancient Rome....