Resilience Resilience. Since the onset of the public health crisis sweeping the entire planet, this is a word that has been used extensively – and not always correctly. But if there’s a field that truly merits this label, it’s the art market. Not just online Because against all the odds the largest modern and […]
J’ai deux amours “J’ai deux amours” … On 18 September a new gallery space is due to open across 400m2 at 18 Avenue Matignon, in Paris, run by the French-Somali art dealer Mariane Ibrahim, with an inaugural exhibition that takes its title from the most famous song by Josephine Baker, star of […]
https://youtu.be/RLKOwokicu4 Son of a giant How to exist in your own right when you’re the son of one of the giants of 20th century painting? To put it another way, how do you “kill your father” when your father is Henri Matisse (1869-1954)? An ocean between them The tried and tested solution, as […]
Stephan Zweig “It was a doll’s house, this Little Trianon (…) This ‘Anglo-Chinese garden’ was to represent, not merely nature, but the whole of nature. In the microcosm of a few square kilometers, there was to be a quasi-microscopic reproduction of the entire cosmos (…) North and South, East and West, all that […]
Snapshots with a soul Photographing a top model is all well and good, but having the ability to infuse these beauty snapshots on glossy paper with a soul is nothing short of miraculous. Those who can do this are few and far between, and belong in the category of some of the most […]
To travel gloriously “What is the good of moving when a man can travel so gloriously sitting in a chair?” The great decadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans offers a good description of the state of immobility conducive to savouring one’s surroundings, in a world of ultra-refinement like in his famous novel “A rebours”, published in […]
A legendary artist For those who are truly interested in impressionist art, Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870) is a legendary artist. He only painted for a period of seven years, before dying aged 28 after enlisting in the French army in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war. Prior to this he mixed with, was inspired by, and […]
Emerging from the crisis New York is emerging from the public health crisis. And the art market is following suit. At a time when those who had been vaccinated were permitted to walk around without masks in the United States, the Frieze fair in New York was held from 5 to 9 May, […]
No foreigners No foreign visitors, or only very few… Frieze New York, the first fair to effectively take place on American soil since the outbreak of the pandemic, is receiving very few – if any – foreign visitors between 5 and 9 May 2021. The show, which up until now has been based in […]
The colonial past While the world re-examines its colonial past and condemns the occupation by former empires of vast swaths of distant territory, while supporters of “cancel culture” topple through the sheer force of their voices the statues erected in the names of formerly great men who are great no longer, there is an […]
https://youtu.be/cGAPJhvLlA4 30 years old He’s thirty years old and he’s in a hurry. It’s been scarcely six months since NFTs were created and already Justin Sun, the Hong Kong-based Chinese founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron, states in an exclusive interview that over the next 12 months he plans to invest no less […]
The ultimate art-market star Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is the 20th century’s star painter, but he is also the ultimate art-market star of the early 21st century. Looking at the numbers, according to the Artprice database 100 euros invested on average in a Picasso work in 2000 would be valued at 190 euros in December […]
A physical fair It’s almost miraculous. In Dubai, the most commercial city in the United Arab Emirates, where restaurants are open and tourism is flourishing even when it’s coming from Israel (1), the first physical contemporary art fair to be held since the world entered lockdown last year is taking place from 29 […]
Technological progress and art history Contrary to all commonly held assumptions, art history is closely linked to the history of technological progress. It is said, for example, that Vermeer made use of the “camera obscura”, an optical technique that involved a pierced hole in a small, darkened room through which the viewer could see […]
The scream “The Scream” by Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is a bit like the tree that conceals the forest. Or the story of how a painting conceived in four versions – which has become a cultural touchstone in global collective memory – has long overshadowed the rest of the output of this Norwegian artist, […]
Art and Life “Art is what makes life more interesting than art.” People tend to slightly overuse this quote by the great Fluxus artist Robert Filliou (1926-1987), but it perfectly articulates a desire for an existence driven by the pursuit of aesthetics in the broad sense. The French illustrator Pierre Le Tan (1950-2019) was […]
Daft Punk In electronic music, people often refer to a unique genre known as “French touch” which enjoyed great international success by liberating itself from its traditional musical heritage, and whose frontrunners were the now defunct Daft Punk. While the duo announced their separation on 22 February 2021, the idea of a “French […]
Nex A result of Brexist We are living through times of scarcity in the contemporary art trade, and yet they all keep coming. As a result of Brexit, the likes of Zwirner, White Cube, Continua and Levy-Gorvy are all descending on Paris. Long after Thaddaeus Ropac and Gagosian, these multinational galleries are now all […]
