https://youtu.be/5ZQQ5IQ-UQQ Before everyone else It’s not a good thing to be right before everyone else. The artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) whose work is haunted by themes of trauma and femininity only started to gain recognition in the...
The Arco fair in Madrid with Joan Miro, Christian Boltanski, Thomas Schutte, Olafur Eliasson and Trisha Baga
Specialities Each fair has its own speciality. Some, like Frieze in London, New York and Los Angeles, are oriented towards novelties that tend to be very on trend. Art Basel in Switzerland and now Miami primarily displays the “blockbusters” of...
What can the Venice Biennale from the times of covid teach us? The artistic director Cecilia Alemani responds
https://youtu.be/a1VAviBtf5Y Finally the Venice Biennale Amid the great lethargy that’s descended on the world over the past two years, things have continued to advance, albeit at a slower pace and in a different way, including in art. This...
Charles Ray’s vanity of vanities : death, art history and humour at the Centre Pompidou and Pinault collection
https://youtu.be/OwcJ8lJnmVg Death's triumph In what is known as classical art, painters and sculptors used to amuse themselves by creating vanitas works: dead game lying on a table, flowers or fruit from different seasons arranged...
Oscar Murillo: The artist whose paintings allow him to infiltrate the world
https://youtu.be/RVCU9Qd68gg Romanticism Artists can have a kind of 21st-century romanticism, if we can call it that, which means that some of them aren’t satisfied with recognition. They’ll call into question all the signs that bring them...
The Book of Veles: It’s not a photojournalism masterpiece, it’s a masterpiece of fake news
https://youtu.be/i7NMTCqpnEA Magnum There can be no doubt that the photographer Jonas Bendiksen (born in 1977) is nothing if not audacious. This Norwegian member of Magnum, the press agency founded during the postwar period by names...
Levy, Gorvy, Dayan, Rohatyn (LGDR): the new global consortium of the contemporary art market
Paris again Paris is in the process of once again becoming, with dizzying speed, a major hub for the global art market. On 26 January 2022 an announcement was made by the organizers of Art Basel that they would be taking over as the...
The cult of Marcel Proust: three exhibitions on the great writer known for his taste for memory and for shining a light on homosexuality
https://youtu.be/GukeCQhqTxI Paris memories Cities carry within them the memory of the filmmakers, painters and writers who have inhabited them. For they play a key role in their creation. Paris is one of those magical places that allows us to...
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: historic star of African art, discovered in France, celebrated at Moma
African art in vogue There can be no doubt that African contemporary artists are currently in vogue. This is generating a rapid promotion not just of those who are truly talented but also of painters who are repeating a tried and tested...
Ceramics and contemporary art: a love story
Contradictions Right now the art world is caught between two powerful cross-currents that are utterly contradictory. One the one hand there are artists seeking to explore what we’d describe as virtual realities through digital art, now often...
The story of a portrait long exhibited at a museum in Dresden now auctioned in New York
How to leverage flattery Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) is a French painter who enjoyed huge success during his lifetime thanks to his portraits, in which he knew how to leverage flattery. La belle strasbourgeoise His body of work, spanning...
Bruno Latour’s Biennial, from Taiwan to Metz with artists who act as whistleblowers
Turning inwards In the art world, the most evident consequence of the public health crisis has been a geographical turning inwards. Sao Paulo Biennal While in the past, and for some time now, the flourishing of biennials has resulted in...