https://youtu.be/1eDs__BVvQg Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin, the unparalleled theoretician of photography, found the perfect words to describe, since the 1930s, our fascination with images from the past. He wrote: “For the last time the aura...
The colossal Sharjah Biennial : an inventory of new world futures
Global South If anyone mentions Sharjah, the contemporary art fans say: that’s where the Biennial is. People generally don’t know much about this emirate, which is part of the UAE, apart from the fact that it is wedged between the riches...
NFTs are entering Centre Pompidou and Lacma: what it teaches us. Cozomo de’ Medici explains his choices
https://youtube.com/shorts/Wol5yiNvQSo?feature=share Crash in cryptocurrencies The world is changing at a rapid pace, and its artistic values are changing with it. The first chapter of this story starts in November 2022 when we witnessed...
Thomas Demand in Paris: immersive conceptual trompe-l’oeil trickery
https://youtu.be/7hcG_sptgfI Like a little dead The German artist Thomas Demand (born in 1964) is a strange kind of photographer. He creates images that are all based on the same principle. In actuality, he has always created illusions of...
The new Ambani cultural centre: Mumbai the ‘maximum city’ and contemporary art
Big numbers The Indian Ambani family is famous for various reasons. Firstly due to the father, Mukesh, an astute businessman who is largely responsible for growing his own father’s textile business, to the point of turning it into a...
Warhol/Basquiat: the Paris exhibition that does justice to the collaboration between two geniuses
https://youtu.be/JUWPy3kMnGA Once upon a time in New York Once upon a time there were two New Yorkers of different ages, races, and careers, who would produce over a short time period – between 1984 and 1985 – extraordinary paintings made in...
Raza: the first substantial exhibition of a great figure in modern Indian art at the Centre Pompidou
Centre of the art World For a long while it was Europe, then the United States, that were at the centre of the art world’s preoccupations in terms of modern artistic creation. But gradually, spurred on by new, less self-centred notions, and -...
Art Basel Hong Kong: the great return to the international market
Draconian isolation Times have been hard. For three years draconian isolation measures have been imposed in China and, to a lesser extent, in its commercial forward base, Hong Kong, while the effervescent city has also been the site of marked...
Marcel Proust: how the cult around the author of La Recherche has produced a booming market
I used to go to bed early “Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure” (“For a long time I used to go to bed early”) … So begins the extraordinary story of a young boy on the verge of falling asleep, immersed in darkness, having to wait for his...
Faith Ringgold and Picasso: little-known connections, excellent exhibition
https://youtu.be/-4Stf0ELfDU Moma, October 2019 In October 2019, when Moma reopened after carrying out extension works, the most striking gesture in the vast rearrangement of the permanent collections was to place right opposite the treasure of...
Tefaf Maastricht: Adam and Eve in 1500, Chagall in 1917, Annette Giacometti in 1966… When art history meets the art market
Disruption There’s disruption across the entire planet. China-US relations are tense. A war has been raging for the past year on European soil, social movements shake the continent. The climate threat is closing in on all sides... But the art...
Art Dubai: a fair with promise in a buzzing city
Covid impact If Covid has had a positive impact on any country in the world it is surely Dubai. In the city in the United Arab Emirates, famous for its leisure and entertainment, life didn’t come to a standstill during the public health crisis....