“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...
It’s the major event in Paris: the opening of Lafayette Anticipations, the Galeries Lafayette foundation at 9 rue de Plâtre in Le Marais. I was granted an exclusive visit to the impressive old building last autumn, which has been hollowed out and completely renovated...
Jacques Grange is the french superstar of interior design. He has worked for the joint heir to the cosmetics empire and prolific art collector Ronald Lauder, the businessman Leon Black who is just as famous in New York for his elitist taste in art (he is the owner of...
I first met the French businessman, man of letters, and famous art collector Pierre Bergé about 20 years ago at a dinner organized by Sotheby’s in Paris, where we found ourselves sitting next to one another. We spent the whole evening discussing literature, and the...
We are all familiar with the Galeries Lafayette, established in 1893, which have become synonymous with luxury consumption beneath that great cupola adorned with Art Nouveau glasswork. Less familiar for an international audience perhaps is that the French family-run...
On 14 September an exhibition is due to open at the Marmottan Museum in Paris dedicated to the private collection of one of the greatest modern masters, Claude Monet. Featuring works by Renoir, Manet and Cézanne that belonged to the Giverny master, the collection was...
‘I do not see art as an investment at all. That’s not to say that among the 5,000 works I own, some haven’t risen substantially in price—my Basquiat drawings for example—but that’s not my objective. After all, I’ve never resold anything.’ The celebrated French fashion...
There’s no denying it: the new map of wealthy nations is directly influencing the art market. In the field of modern art, even if Europe with Picasso at the helm (the record price for his work is $179 million, set in 2015) has represented the inner circle of...
The day before French businessman François Pinault unveiled his plans for his new museum in Paris, opening in late 2018, by chance I met Tadao Ando while sat at Café de Flore in Saint Germain des Près. The Japanese architect’s English is patchy, his French even more...
In the '90s HBO aired ‘Dream On’, a US series where the lead character at key moments had flashbacks of clips from TV shows he’d watched in his childhood. It was a way of saying that all adults born since the '60s are TV babies, shaped by its images, its theme tunes,...