Strong impact Venice’s impact during the period of its Biennale is inimitable. These days the 60-year-old art showcase attracts visitors in such large numbers over the course of its vernissage that all the various strata of the art world now...
Venice Biennale (1): looking at human history differently to discover some new art
330 artists, 82 offsite exhibitions This year the Venice Biennale is a very "serious" show. Serious because the world is in crisis and contemporary art is reflecting this. The most colossal global showcase of contemporary art, which this year...
Sugimoto/Giacometti: a meeting in the land of the great spirits
https://youtu.be/l7qyp412eE8?si=WlLIiKJNgqHyevMF Here’s a little gem of an exhibition, all delicacy and spirit. Moma sculpture garden The story starts like this. There was once, in 2013, a famous Japanese artist who spent most of his time...
Nathanaëlle Herbelin at the Musée d’Orsay: a marriage of love between the young artist and the Nabis paintings
https://youtu.be/QhVRXoLlB9s?si=PLUioEweUbp4cvry True love There are practical marriages and there are love marriages. The second category includes the exhibition by the Franco-Israeli artist Nathanaëlle Herbelin, born in 1989, whose forty-odd...
Art Basel Hong Kong is back in force with Chinese artists in fashion as far at the West
Political context Since Covid, the art world has changed. 2024 is the first year that Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK) has readopted its habitual format following the pandemic, featuring 242 exhibitors who are showcasing their finest wares at the...
Richard Serra: death of a giant of contemporary sculpture
https://youtu.be/7uMTM02GFTI?si=ra6dXYWo9XBtRPxp Brancusi's studio At a time when the Centre Pompidou is organising a retrospective of the great sculptor of the first part of the twentieth century, Constantin Brancusi, just after closing the...
Pierre Huyghe at Punta della Dogana invents a technological romanticism
French touch The story often goes (in France) that French artists aren’t internationally successful. But there are at least two artists who contradict this theory. They represent a contemporary “French touch” that’s as ambitious as it is...
Arco Madrid: making a case for less expensive contemporary art
Average and exceptional art There isn’t just one art market but many – and they meet different demands. They are stratified with distinct ways of being and rules of functioning. It is common to say, for example, that during times of crisis only...
The Dubai bubble in the Middle Eastern art market
The mosque, synagogue and church https://youtu.be/8MK6v8slhag?si=w0Z8hthHfbb-PzLD The United Arab Emirates exists within a privileged bubble, a long way from the concerns of the world. While the Israel-Palestine conflict rages not far away, in...
Wim Delvoye’s comeback is in Geneva: he smashes statues and cuts holes in paintings
https://youtu.be/TC461eDvzWU?si=Ix8_jaQRP35S67A9 Contemporary art star Around the 2000s, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye (born in 1965) was one of the contemporary art stars who loved to cause controversy. He ran a farm in China where he reared and...
Bijoy Jain in Paris: the extraordinary architect who creates sensations , spaces and sometimes buildings
https://youtu.be/NoGANqQNVvA?si=Kz_70c8Zc7W4YK3h Breath of an architect It is a true experience. This exhibition stirs in the visitor an unusual sensation of tranquillity and harmony. “Bijoy Jain. Studio Mumbai. Breath of an Architect” is on...
Jeff Wall at the Beyeler Foundation: photographs as monuments
https://youtu.be/cucsu8EMJ6k?si=tOD37TZHBwCoANT2 Between painting and cinema In the 1970s, when photography had yet to be seen as a “noble” art, he invented a new kind of artwork. The Canadian photographer Jeff Wall (born in 1946)...