https://youtu.be/GukeCQhqTxI Paris memories Cities carry within them the memory of the filmmakers, painters and writers who have inhabited them. For they play a key role in their creation. Paris is one of those magical places that allows us to...
Rem Koolhaas: the architect’s great cultural revolution fills the whole Guggenheim in New York…Finally
There was a very short window of opportunity to visit the Countryside , the future exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York last February, thanks to Covid. The show, which is more theoretical than aesthetic and is overseen by the Dutch...
Where does the myth of the cowboy fit in a racist America? Cowboy: the book
World afterwards again Since the start of the coronavirus crisis there's been too much talk about what the world's going to look like afterwards, to the point of rendering the expression meaningless even if it's true. No doubt mankind will still be pursuing...
Larry Bell: Watch the great Californian artist talks about light, minimalism and honesty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL7tm-4pfMc Artists are seekers It’s always helpful to classify an artist in terms of a school, to put them in a box. But good artists can’t be pigeonholed. They’re seekers, and in the words of Picasso in fact they don’t seek,...
Louise Bourgeois: a major biography contains many revelations
Art super star It was only after her death that the American artist Louise Bourgeois (1910-2010) became a contemporary art superstar, thanks to a proliferation of exhibitions around the world and a large-scale promotion campaign on the part of, among others, the...
Books: how to predict that a certain kind of art is guaranteed to have zero success?
Ever since Marcel Duchamp presented an upside-down urinal which he called “Fountain” and the artistic community decided this was an act of significance, ever since artists began distorting silhouettes to imprint upon them their personal feelings and impressions while...
At Sotheby’s in Paris: the letters that reveal Marcel Proust’s love for the composer Reynaldo Hahn
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...
Marina Abramovic: 5 times 50 seconds. God, sex, money and her.
One beautiful, sunny, late-summer morning, I arrived at the chic, minimalist New York studio of Marina Abramovic (her neighbours in the building include, among others, Cindy Sherman) located round the back of the Meat Packing district. The large loft was bustling with...
In Brazil, the story of the first great black artist, acclaimed since the 18th century
Sublime. Ouro Preto. Perched on a cluster of slippery hills is a city of white, blue and gold, of sloping streets paved in large rough-edged stones, of fountains and churches, of rockeries, of Jesus and Mary. We’re in Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais ('the General...
Werner Spies: a human encyclopaedia of modern art speaks about Max Ernst, fakes and Kahnweiler
He proudly announces that he celebrated his 80th birthday on 1 April and carts around an encyclopaedia of art inside his head (1). Born in Germany, Werner Spies has always been fascinated by France where he’s lived since he was 25. The director of the Musée National...
Marcel Duchamp and Jean-Jacques Lebel: what was it like meeting the creator of the ‘Fountain’ aged 7?
Because in this early part of the 21st century, Marcel Duchamp (born in 1887) is the patron saint of contemporary art. All artistic practices poking fun at the world take the works of this facetious artist as a springboard (and Picabia's too). Every artist who...
Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith and David Croland: when the artist came out
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...