Crucial days There are crucial days that can change your life forever. Take the British painter Francis Bacon. On 26 October 1971 he was the subject of a major exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. Not only was it a marked success for him in Europe, accompanied by...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV6v3d0hX0A A pilgrimage destination Because New York has long been the global centre for art, and because New York is in all likelihood still to this day the global centre for collecting contemporary art and the art...
Multifaceted and ever-changing reality Besides the heat that extinguishes all possibility of articulated thought, today’s world is animated by extreme and evolving forces that make it very difficult to read phenomena and produce relevant creation. Incisive...
RMB city There is a before and after Cao Fei. Or at least there is a before and after RMB City. Chinese artist The Chinese artist (born in 1978) used the platform of the virtual online game Second Life to create a fictional city in 2007 which takes its name...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cuFG2ey17o Maja Sacher In the art world she is known as a powerful collector. In this area the inspiration most likely comes from her grandmother, Maja Sacher from Basel, who became a serious collector of Picasso, Max Ernst,...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z-iFQe64Rs The weather project Olafur Eliasson (born in 1967) came to public prominence in 2003 with his Weather Project at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, consisting of a spectacular giant sun that emitted no heat but which all of...
A limitless world There are certain people who are intelligent, but in their presence the future seems at the very least rigid and rectilinear if not dark and threatening. And yet there are others blessed with the same intellectual potential who have a...
50 years anniversary For exactly 50 years, the Rencontres de la Photographie have been held every summer under the hot sun in Arles. In the entire town Initially conceived as a small exhibition staged amongst friends, over time the show has radically evolved,...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rprylIsrdUg South Africa William Kentridge was born in South Africa in 1955. Apartheid He therefore spent 40 years living under the notorious apartheid regime. He describes how at the time the only way of understanding society...
On minute in front of a masterpiece How long does one spend in front of a masterpiece? For mere mortals who can’t claim to possess any, one minute maximum and often even less will be dedicated to experiencing this outstanding vision in a museum. Apart from in...
Selling less The art market is one of those rare places where selling less can also involve selling for higher prices. What I mean by this is that following a long period when younger artists were overwhelmingly considered to be the market’s raw materials,...
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...