https://youtu.be/hVWBw7EqwaM?si=PSrya_3OwH4-AUXO It's a masterpiece! “Recently I was at a Parisian dealer’s and I saw a beautiful Dogon mask, crowned with a woman with arms outstretched. I passed on it… Later I went back and my heart stopped....
The Dubai bubble in the Middle Eastern art market
The mosque, synagogue and church https://youtu.be/8MK6v8slhag?si=w0Z8hthHfbb-PzLD The United Arab Emirates exists within a privileged bubble, a long way from the concerns of the world. While the Israel-Palestine conflict rages not far away, in...
Wim Delvoye’s comeback is in Geneva: he smashes statues and cuts holes in paintings
https://youtu.be/TC461eDvzWU?si=Ix8_jaQRP35S67A9 Contemporary art star Around the 2000s, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye (born in 1965) was one of the contemporary art stars who loved to cause controversy. He ran a farm in China where he reared and...
Can you feel the love tonight? Elton John sells part of his collection of photos
https://youtu.be/UHw0EDH6rl4?si=AJsuozn83Uz6dsPb The biggest selling single in the history of music Conventional wisdom dictates that people who excel in one area are excluded from any other kind of talent. Take Elton John, the pop singer who...
Bijoy Jain in Paris: the extraordinary architect who creates sensations , spaces and sometimes buildings
https://youtu.be/NoGANqQNVvA?si=Kz_70c8Zc7W4YK3h Breath of an architect It is a true experience. This exhibition stirs in the visitor an unusual sensation of tranquillity and harmony. “Bijoy Jain. Studio Mumbai. Breath of an Architect” is on...
New York, Paris: the collection of the man who made Picasso a millionaire
Vulgar money For a long time money had a sulphurous smell as far as art historians were concerned; a vulgar reputation that prevented them from examining the artist’s preoccupations and market. People just liked to talk about the genius...
Jeff Wall at the Beyeler Foundation: photographs as monuments
https://youtu.be/cucsu8EMJ6k?si=tOD37TZHBwCoANT2 Between painting and cinema In the 1970s, when photography had yet to be seen as a “noble” art, he invented a new kind of artwork. The Canadian photographer Jeff Wall (born in 1946)...
Lacan at the Centre Pompidou Metz: the owner of Courbet’s “Origine du monde” was also a great psychoanalytic theorist
https://youtu.be/5D4kTB8rfiA Supernatural powers of the artist We have a tendency to endow great artist with quasi-supernatural powers. The most illustrious theorists of psychoanalysis claim that certain painters and other sculptors have, in...
Artgenève: scandals and good surprises at the little Swiss fair
A little niche Over the past eleven years the Artgenève fair has slowly but surely grown into a key event in the contemporary art world for this international city, famous for its free port among other things. Helmed by its director Thomas Hug,...
Joan Mitchell, Lee Lozano, Judy Chicago: three women artists in the spotlight along with their markets
Only women artists May 2009 marked a milestone in the history of contemporary art. That year, over the course of eight months, an exhibition took place at the Centre Pompidou which was the largest ever staged to showcase the work of women...
Huma Bhabha: the biggest exhibition ever staged by the artist is taking place in the South of France
https://youtu.be/0VAAjDI4Xzw Striking totems The first vision is striking. Entering the largest room at the Moco in Montpellier (3 hours and 15 minutes away from Paris on the fast train) is like discovering a celebratory space of some...
Lee Ufan: “Looking at Rembrandt’s self-portraits makes you feel insignificant”
https://youtu.be/_utYZdQf3V0 Korean living in Japan Lee Ufan (born in 1936), the Korean artist who lives in Japan, was the subject of a major retrospective which travelled all over Japan in 2022 and 2023 (see here the report I wrote covering...