At auction in Hongkong Despite what Sotheby’s is shouting from the rooftops, the Hong Kong sale from 5 October 2023 of a small part of the collection from the Long Museum in Shanghai – China’s most famous private museum – which acted as a test...
Warhol, the big comeback with the Shot Marilyn from the Ammann collection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgoz9L5WZqQ To shoot It’s all a question of language. In English people employ the same verb to mean “taking a photo” and “firing a gun”: to shoot. The scene took place in the autumn of 1964 in New York...
Tribute to Etel Adnan, poet and painter
https://youtu.be/eLoob9CzooM Recognition in Art can be belated. It was only in 2012, at Documenta in Kassel, that Etel Adnan(born in 1925) was honoured. Since then this woman warrior whose weapons were poetry and painting, this woman of magnificent sensibility...
Alex Katz: the video interview with the 94-year-old painter who hates being bored
https://youtu.be/ewBKSBa7aoc Same since the 1950s Imagine an artist who – since the 1950s – has always painted in the same style, with more or less the same subjects, using very similar colours. This is the American artist Alex Katz (born in...
An homage to Christian Boltanski
14 July 2021 All his life Christian Boltanski was obsessed by death. At his final large-scale exhibition, a retrospective conceived as a single artwork in 2019 at the Centre Pompidou, with its premonitory title “Faire son temps” (“Life in the making”), he spoke...
In Venice at the Prada Foundation, Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grimani: the three most beautiful exhibitions on show
https://youtu.be/6MAhlc0J7Uc Not the architecture Biennale No, it wasn’t the architecture biennale that made me rush to Venice. I initially found it intellectually stimulating, with all the societal and ecological questions it...
Thomas Ruff: “China is fulfilling all of George Orwell’s predictions”
https://youtu.be/ylCsjeUQVo8 Conceptual artist The first thing you might say about the legendary German artist Thomas Ruff (born in 1958) is that he is a photographer. And instantly, with that initial phrase, you would be wrong. With...
Paris, Berlin, Shanghai: the fascination with the young painter Xinyi Cheng
https://youtu.be/axefSbjy6mw Art history and 21st century How does one invent a new way of painting in the 21st century? There are few artists who belong to this small group who have managed to come up with new alternatives, to...
Lockdown: Francesco Clemente has reinvented himself in an extraordinary way
https://youtu.be/nVEw7ivxy_g A star in New York With enough experience, if not years, in the art world, one will inevitably have heard of Francesco Clemente since the late 1970s. He is a famous exponent of the Italian art movement known as the...
Lee Krasner at the Guggenheim Bilbao: the rediscovery of an extraordinary painter eclipsed by the creative power of her husband
https://youtu.be/giE0LqylYOA Heroes who die young In art history, posterity favours misfortune and heroes who die young. We love Van Gogh, who died at 37 without having sold a single artwork. We love Nicolas de Staël, who killed himself due to...
Palazzo Butera: one of the most beautiful palaces in Sicily is all about Art and … immigration
City of migration Palermo is a fascinating city, and one that’s sparked a lot of conversation in recent years. Firstly, this is due to its current international relevance as it’s one of the major sites of migration from Africa to Italy, where its mayor Leoluca...
Rirkrit Tiravanija: the new exhibition “featuring” Marcel Duchamp, John Giorno, Jasper Johns and the shadow of Donald Trump
Heir to Marcel Duchamp https://youtu.be/X-HI9Kl7qAA He’s one of the most natural heirs to Marcel Duchamp. Rirkrit Tiravanija (born in 1961) is an extraordinary free and playful artist. Dematerialization of art In a world overwhelmed by...