The Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Paris is showing the early works of Robert Mapplethorpe. Each is unique and made in his own hand. Some pieces incorporate photography, but not all of them. It’s proof – if proof is still needed – that Robert Mapplethorpe was not simply a...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJC9wbiKeV8 You can’t mistake her. She is coiffed like a contemporary Capuchin monk with her two-tone haircut, white at the roots, burgundy at the tips. She walks slowly but her spirit fizzes like lightning. Agnes Varda is...
‘Asia’s Precarious Rise’ was the headline the Wall Street Journal ran across its front cover not long ago (1). In fact, the eyes of the world are turned towards the great Chinese Leviathan to see whether this boom is not in fact a mirage, none more so than the art...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NLVDadpcQ The most powerful pieces of art are the ones that offer the potential for multiple readings. In the work of the French artist Annette Messager (born 1943) ambiguity itself becomes an art form. The winner of the Golden...
On 16 April of last year I posted an article about a fabulous exhibition by the Greek artist Jannis Kounellis at La Monnaie in Paris. He has just died at the age of 80. Here is a homage to an artist who created harmonious works from the most thankless raw materials....
True connoisseurs of Picasso will already know it well. In the village of Gisors, an hour outside Paris, the Boisgeloup studio is whispered about in hushed tones and is central to the work of the Spanish artist. It’s where he created a collection of exceptional...
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), a major artist from the dawn of modernism, both as a painter and a sculptor, died exactly 100 years ago this year. A hundred years is how long it took for a forgotten box containing 55 unseen drawings by this exceptional artist to appear on...
Switzerland is a unique blend of alpine culture, cows, rustic tradition, cheese, and world-class expertise in such diverse domains as watchmaking, banking and contemporary art. Every two years, in Gstaad, a show called Elevation 1049 perfectly incarnates these two...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-53EMSOgRQ Anyone who has visited Naoshima and Teshima, the art islands in the Seto Inland Sea in Japan which have been transformed by the visionary businessman Soichiro Fukutake into spaces that marry beauty and nature,...
It is not unheard of for museums, through their programming schedules, to inadvertently reprise entire chapters of art history. As I write, on one side of the Channel, in Paris, at Pompidou Center, is the fabulous Cy Twombly retrospective, showing until 24 April. (...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vInG1XY5GjE Philippe Parreno (born 1963) the French artist who lives in Paris (for an artist to remain in Paris after becoming known is a rarity) has filled the entire Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. The length of the...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxv2qthiSYg As a young boy Subodh Gupta lived in Bihar, one of the poorest states in India. Everyone in the small city of Khagaul where he grew up worked for the Indian railways. The young Indian boy with the very common...