47 years together They’ve lived together for 47 years. Those 47 years have fostered a shared interest in painting, sculpture, literature, and poetry. Simone Fattal (born in 1942 in Damascus) grew up in Lebanon. Etel Adnan was born in 1925 in...
Tribute to Christo: the art of gigantism and the impossible
Christo died on 31 May 2020 at the age of 84. He was one of the very first artists that I interviewed early on in my career. I went to meet him in 1993 at his studio in Soho in New York, where I made his acquaintance through the dealer Daniel Varenne, now also...
The world Afterwards (5): Oscar Murillo joint winner of the Turner Prize: “We have locally imagined some measures to mitigate the social collapse”
Between England and Colombia Oscar Murillo is a young artist (born in 1986) who lives between London and the village where he was born in Colombia, and he truly is a multifaceted figure. Sharing the Turner Prize There’s been a lot of talk...
The world afterwards (4) Lee Ufan: “the coronavirus is sending us a message of hope”
In Japan The Korean artist Lee Ufan (born in 1936), has lived in Japan since he was 20 years old. He has been the subject of various major exhibitions, such as the Guggenheim in New York in 2011 and the park at the Château de Versailles in...
The world afterwards (3) Albanian prime minister and artist Edi Rama: “It’s a major failure. The world is unable to be together”
Tirana in bright colors His first great exploit dates from the 2000s. Edi Rama (born in 1964) was the newly elected mayor of Tirana, the capital of Albania (a country with 2.8 million inhabitants), when he decided to have a number of the...
The world afterwards (2) Subodh Gupta: “what is happening to us now must not be forgotten”
To reinvent obsessions The main strength of artists lies in their ability to reinvent identical obsessions. We are familiar with Subodh Gupta’s work through his installations – accumulations of metal kitchen utensils that have become the...
Acute Art: augmented reality and virtual reality from Kaws to Ai Weiwei, how a new kind of art is invading our homes now
Seen by tens of millions of people The figure has been seen and shared on social media over the past few days by tens of millions of people. It’s what’s known as an “art toy”, a figurine now sold as a work of art – we can also see it as a...
Frieze LA: does art that appeals to the angels of entertainment run the risk of being too shallow?
( From Velvet Buzzsaw: "A bad review is better than sinking into the great glut of anonymity.) Art and entertainment industry Los Angeles may be a city rich in art, but it is first and foremost the city of what Americans refer to as the entertainment industry. Here...
Ingres: a treasure trove of 4500 drawings that inspired the best of Picasso. Do you know Montauban?
Pilgrimage in Montauban Picasso didn’t wait for the invention of the high-speed train or the arrival of airliners when he specially embarked on the interminable journey three times to the little town of Montauban, situated 54 kilometres outside of Toulouse in the...
Peter Saul: before his exhibition at the New Museum, a video interview with the artist who’s been caricaturing America for over 50 years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1pKj2F8cU What he is not This is an artist of whom it’s easier to say what he is not, as opposed to what he is. Peter Saul (born in 1934) is not a pop artist in the true sense, as you will often read. Extreme distorsions...
Francis Alÿs: video interview with the great nomadic artist on the occasion of his exhibition at Amsterdam’s Eye Museum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlbMXLQWvfg Walter Benjamin The visionary writer Walter Benjamin once said of Marcel Proust (1) that he admired “his astounding way of using the great poets’ method of taking their metaphors from everything that is close at hand...
Francesco Vezzoli at the Musée d’Orsay: a grandiose homage to decadence. A video interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PwFht9Ua1c Pastiche, nostalgia, nihilism In history there are moments of great fruitfulness that are, however, described as decadent. These occur when what is believed to be the high point of a civilization begins to all decline...