‘I do not see art as an investment at all. That’s not to say that among the 5,000 works I own, some haven’t risen substantially in price—my Basquiat drawings for example—but that’s not my objective. After all, I’ve never resold anything.’ The celebrated French fashion...
He proudly announces that he celebrated his 80th birthday on 1 April and carts around an encyclopaedia of art inside his head (1). Born in Germany, Werner Spies has always been fascinated by France where he’s lived since he was 25. The director of the Musée National...
This summer in Venice the Biennale is stealing all the attention. Which is why contemporary art lovers might miss an exceptional Philip Guston (1913-1980) exhibition at Gallerie dell’Accademia. Guston, an American painter with a distinctive verve, is known for having...
Xavier Douroux tragically passed away on 28 June. He was one of the most influential and most astute figures in the world of contemporary art in France with Le Consortium in Dijon, which he co-founded with Franck Gautherot as well as a book publisher via Les Presses...
I’m no different to any other journalist covering the art market. I love writing pieces filled with exclamation marks that detail how an artist who was worth 3,000 has seen one of his works go for 300,000 less than a year later, is now represented by a major gallery...
There’s no denying it: the new map of wealthy nations is directly influencing the art market. In the field of modern art, even if Europe with Picasso at the helm (the record price for his work is $179 million, set in 2015) has represented the inner circle of...
The day before French businessman François Pinault unveiled his plans for his new museum in Paris, opening in late 2018, by chance I met Tadao Ando while sat at Café de Flore in Saint Germain des Près. The Japanese architect’s English is patchy, his French even more...
Hans Ulrich Obrist (Huo) is one of the most famous superstars of contemporary art. The artistic director of the Serpentine Gallery and self-described exhibition maker was generous enough to inaugurate our new video series: 10 times 50 seconds. -1 What is the first...
DOCUMENTA It attracts  serious attention in contemporary art circles but there isn’t an awful lot of love for it. Documenta, the legendary mega-exhibition, happens  every five years in the sad, small German town of Kassel. The show has always been intellectual and...
If there is one unmissable modern art exhibition this summer it has to be Portraits by Cézanne (1839-1906) at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GWacaEf4I0 In 60 paintings it proves many things, first of all the museum’s pulling...
While History shows as a whole, and the Renaissance in particular, that posterity has a predilection for works by artists afflicted by madness, the art market is far more rational agent. Artworks that are too large, too complicated, too noisy, in other words too...
Magisterial, beautiful and comprehensively documented. ' Primitive Picasso'  at the Musée du Quai Branly is pieced together like a police investigation and questions commonly held assumptions about the greatest painter of the 20th century,Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Or...