In Spain they love to eat. And when the most famous modern Spaniard, Picasso, sits down at the dinner table it would be easy to imagine it as an excessive affair. For the Malaga-born painter was a glutton. He consumed women one after another and seized upon images...
Two of the greatest artworks of the twentieth century were almost conceived in a brothel. The masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”, Picasso’s cubist manifesto now on display at Moma, doesn’t depict pretty girls from the south of France but rather creatures...
Being a homosexual and a successful writer at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could lead to dangerous situations. In France it wasn’t until 1982 that homosexuality was decriminalized. In England one of the most skilled wordsmiths in the land, Oscar...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiYqoZrZJ8E An exhibition doesn’t need to be large for it to be sublime. Right now, the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris is staging an exhibition of this kind. It is in this institution, the setting for what could be called...
“Don’t bite off more than you can chew”. The danger when one possesses many artworks lies in wanting to display them all, in seeking to make a show of strength. In contemporary art, taking into account the diversity of forms and the scale of the artworks, ultimately...
He is always slightly grouchy. His slow manner of speaking is characterized by a strong Belgian accent and his physique has remained the same all the time I have known him. He is Sylvio Perlstein, a true character, an atypical collector who is rather wild by nature,...
Every time a snippet of a notable collection is unveiled it naturally engenders an emphatic flood of reactions in the vein of “I like this” or “I don’t like that”, grimaces, “oh”’s and “ha”’s, enthusiastic exclamations and harsh words. Take, for example, in...
The history of art can be unjust. But we quickly find the reasons for certain anomalies. Take Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973). Does her name sound unfamiliar to you? That’s understandable. She presents two major disadvantages. She’s a female painter who was also...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mAt6S_zdWY Imagine an artist who would become a legend within the first decade of his career. What would he do with the rest of his life? In the contemporary period, we could say that Damien Hirst (born in 1965), who was...
The greatest painters are those who have paid very close attention to their predecessors. Just look at Picasso, steeped in knowledge from a very young age thanks to his father who was an art teacher. Similarly, these days a major artist such as Scottish painter Peter...
In the Parisian district of Le Marais, the Tornabuoni gallery is exhibiting 24 paintings until 24 February by one of the most famous yet also most controversial artists in the history of twentieth-century art: Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). They are on sale for...
“My love I think of you always. But the 14 hours a day I don’t spend with you are a torment to me” (30 June [1949]) “I thus accept the situation as it is and will seek a miracle no longer. I am happy when I think of you” (25 October [1949]) “It is...