There once was a Swiss businessman who became the world’s biggest collector of Chinese art before giving almost all of it away to a Hong Kong museum... This is the remarkable story of Uli Sigg, the famous art world personality, as told in a new documentary by German...
On paper it was the best news from the European art world this season. Tate Modern, the epicentre of modern and contemporary art in Britain, is tightening its grip by adding 60% more exhibition space in a new extension designed – like the original gallery, which...
It’s the most beautiful sculpture park in France, if not Europe. In the golden light on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence, not far from the mountain of Saint Victoire that Cezanne loved so much, Chateau La Coste’s 230 hectares are an abundance of pine...
I sometimes wonder if those men dressed head to toe in leather, chains strapped across their bodies, showing off those muscular bodies achieved through hours spent in the gym, their look finished off with peaked cap, and who instantly bring to mind police or army...
France is a nation of great wealth, at least when it comes to art. And one of the most beautiful modern collections outside Paris is in Villeneuve d’Ascq, on the outskirts of Lille, in a  museum called Lille Art Moderne or LAM. From Picasso (25 paintings) to Leger (20...
Since in New York there are modern and contemporary auctions every day this week featuring emotion, Â why not go along and see some genuine masterpieces that are not for sale. Â The curatorial world is shaped, in varying degrees, by its trends. The most recent trend,...
Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) is true a giant of painting from the second half of the 20th century but has yet to receive the full credit he deserves. This is especially apparent when compared with his fellow countryman Gerhard Richter (born 1932) who can properly be...
In art there are those mythical places believed to have changed the course of history. Until the nineteenth century, if you considered yourself a serious painter you were obliged to make an initiatory journey to Italy on the trail of the Renaissance and Ancient Rome....
It’s always something of a disappointment when visiting the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to see the size of the exhibition spaces. After all  for exemple Getty owns one of the finest photography collections in the world. But in fact as Glenn Phillips, Head of Modern...
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) was a great artist, not just a great photographer. He will forever be etched in memory as someone who  immortalised in black and white those perfectly formed, statuesque naked male bodies in highly constructed environments. The numerous...
This story takes place in a land known as the world’s top gas producer, the owner of the Paris Saint Germain soccer team, the 2002 World Cup Soccer organizer (and attendant controversies), and as the place from where Al-Jazeera’s Arabic- and English-language programs...
There are a few of this type in the world, very few, who devote part of their obviously substantial assets to contemporary art. Women of a rather warrior type who are independent and, above all, motivated by a precise vision. In France, Maja Hoffman comes to mind: The...