Contradictions Right now the art world is caught between two powerful cross-currents that are utterly contradictory. One the one hand there are artists seeking to explore what we’d describe as virtual realities through digital art, now often...
Bruno Latour’s Biennial, from Taiwan to Metz with artists who act as whistleblowers
Turning inwards In the art world, the most evident consequence of the public health crisis has been a geographical turning inwards. Sao Paulo Biennal While in the past, and for some time now, the flourishing of biennials has resulted in...
The Lee Ufan experience in Arles: “Death transformed by nature lives on discreetly”
https://youtu.be/ybfy9DPWkAg Van Gogh In 1888 Vincent Van Gogh brought his friend Paul Gauguin to Arles. He dreamed of creating a community there, a communion even, of artists captivated by the colours of the Camargue region. It was...
Carsten Höller: in Lisbon inside the belly of the whale, the artist plays with light and science
https://youtu.be/ZWpomNj3mrQ Phytopathologist Carsten Höller is a man of experiences. That’s not to say he is particularly old, since the Swedish-Belgian-German artist – who speaks French very well – was born in 1961. But from his...
Pissarro, Signac: their major roles in the history of modern art are re-examined in Basel and Paris
Changing mind A good exhibition is one that enables you to change your mind about an artist. Pissarro There are all sorts of reasons why this should happen at the show staged by the Kunstmuseum in Basel dedicated to Camille Pissarro...
Anselm Kiefer: forever in search of the ideal painting
https://youtu.be/yQS91FsimQ4 The same painting Across kilometres and kilometres, since the very beginning, or almost, Anselm Kiefer (born in 1945) has been making the same painting. This is not to say that he’s repeating himself, that...
Edvard Munch in Oslo: the new XXL museum showcasing the extraordinary modern painter
Oslofjord On the banks of the Oslofjord in the all-new cultural district of Bjorvika, located in a former container port set amid the maritime landscape that was so beloved by the famous Norwegian native Edvard Munch (1863-1944), there’s a...
Jeff Koons and David Beckham: the unexpected encounter in Doha
Soft power In the early French Renaissance when King Francis I assembled the greatest artists of the time, such as Leonardo da Vinci, in the West, or closer to the present day during the postwar period when the United States extended its...
Picasso, his mother, the French police and the Légion d’honneur
France filters In his introduction to the history of French art, the historian André Chastel writes: “France filters. It receives and it sifts.” The best demonstration of this is one of the most talented Spaniards of the 20th century, who the...
Al Thani collection: a new little museum in Paris housing an exceptional cabinet of curiosities
Place de la Concorde To travel through time all you have to do is go to Paris to the Place de la Concorde. You will first arrive in the 18th century, visiting the building designed by the King’s architect, Gabriel, sumptuously restored by...
Botticelli: the serial production of grace shown in Paris
Autorship Not a year goes by without some controversy over the authorship of such and such an old master, as in the case of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Salvator Mundi (See here and here the last reports about the Salvator Mundi and here about...
The Albers, an ultra-modern couple united by abstraction. An exhibition in Paris and a testimony from Sheila Hicks
To think as a couple There are artists – and they are in the majority – who think as an individual, and there are others who think as a couple. This is the case, for example, of Christo and Jeanne Claude who created and authored their huge...