Francesca von Habsburg, Patron of Gigantic Contemporary Art Projects

Francesca von Habsburg, Patron of Gigantic Contemporary Art Projects

There are a few of this type in the world, very few, who devote part of their obviously substantial assets to contemporary art. Women of a rather warrior type who are independent and, above all, motivated by a precise vision. In France, Maja Hoffman comes to mind: The...

The Confessions of Anselm Kiefer, the Star of Painting

The Confessions of Anselm Kiefer, the Star of Painting

Anselm Kiefer was born in Germany in March 1945, and he will never get over it. His entire oeuvre is steeped in the idea of war, ruin and violence, combined in clever doses with literature that ranges from Rimbaud to the Kabbalah. When he was a kid, Anselm Kiefer...

Just Air for Making Art: Tomàs Saraceno

Just Air for Making Art: Tomàs Saraceno

How do you recognize a true artist? He creates an entire universe that is unique and powerful. He dreams and turns his dreams into tangible objects that make you dream. Among the abundant projects of uneven quality realized on the occasion of Paris’s COP21 climate...

Adrian Cheng wants a Kunsthalle for Beijing

Adrian Cheng wants a Kunsthalle for Beijing

In a very short amount of time, Hong Kong businessman Adrian Cheng, 36, has become a ubiquitous character in the globalized art world. In the space of two years, he’s emerged as an important funder for New York’s Metropolitan Museum, where he financed an education...

Beirut: Among Chaos, Prada Bags and Contemporary Art

Beirut: Among Chaos, Prada Bags and Contemporary Art

Arriving in Beirut always makes a big impression. You’re told the road to the airport is dangerous because it’s the path along which Hezbollah settled. My driver discretely crosses himself before taking the wheel. A bad omen? Farther on, just outside a tunnel, a suite...

ArtBasel Miami: Both Frivolous and Serious

ArtBasel Miami: Both Frivolous and Serious

First and foremost, Miami is an atmosphere. The Floridian city is a strange combination of showboating, bling cars throbbing like Ferraris down Collins Avenue, girls in very short skirts struggling to walk in their very high heels and elderly people here to find...

Danh Vo’s Elective Affinities

Danh Vo’s Elective Affinities

He came up onto the international art scene just a few years ago, but Danh Vo is already one of the stars of the globalized art scene, visible everywhere from New York’s Whitney Biennial to a retrospective at Mexico’s Jumex Museum to, in 2013, one at Paris’s Musée...

Yayoi Kusama and the Japanese Psychiatrist

Yayoi Kusama and the Japanese Psychiatrist

What is it that drives collectors to accumulate works of art, to get into debt, to travel around the world to see the works of their protégés and, sometimes, to eventually present the fruits of their labors to the public’s gaze?   Back in 2008, I published Global...

Are Old Masters a Better Investment than Contemporary Art?

Are Old Masters a Better Investment than Contemporary Art?

The art market doesn’t do art justice. In other words, on one side of the ring are modes of art consumption centered on contemporary art, and on the other is art history, filtered by centuries of well-informed eyes. It’s become abundantly clear nowadays that...

At Beyeler Foundation: a Russian Art Revolution

At Beyeler Foundation: a Russian Art Revolution

In December 1915, something major happened in Saint Petersburg, which was then called Petrograd—a small revolution that would disrupt the course of art history all the way through to the 21st century. People have tended to forget these events, simply because Russia...

Olafur Eliasson, Master of Atmospheric Art

Olafur Eliasson, Master of Atmospheric Art

The first name to be exhibited in a major way at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Following are the demands and visions of this star of sensation-filled art on the occasion of a visit to his Berlin workshop.   His name sounds...

The Very Delicate Matter of the Rothschilds’ Rembrandts

The Very Delicate Matter of the Rothschilds’ Rembrandts

Once upon a time there was a man who spent every one of his nights sleeping under the benevolent gaze of two exceptional human beings. Mr. and Ms. Soolmans were born in 1634 under the brush of one of art history’s most celebrated painters, Rembrandt. And so every...

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