The filmaker There are certain rare people who seem to have two brains. This is the case of the English filmmaker and artist who lives in Amsterdam, Steve McQueen (born in 1969). Turner Prize In 1999 the video artist was awarded the Turner Prize, Britain’s highest...
( From Velvet Buzzsaw: "A bad review is better than sinking into the great glut of anonymity.) Art and entertainment industry Los Angeles may be a city rich in art, but it is first and foremost the city of what Americans refer to as the entertainment industry. Here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe5XsVzwOwo Trends in contemporary art There are trends within contemporary art. Mexico It’s been several years since Mexico started to become an attractive country for fans of current artistic creation. Firstly because certain...
In the Oval Office It was Barack Obama who, during his presidency, chose to hang two paintings in the Oval Office, one above the other. We recognized them as two views of Cape Cod, the coastal area which was a favourite of the Kennedys. More generally, they were two...
Pilgrimage in Montauban Picasso didn’t wait for the invention of the high-speed train or the arrival of airliners when he specially embarked on the interminable journey three times to the little town of Montauban, situated 54 kilometres outside of Toulouse in the...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1pKj2F8cU What he is not This is an artist of whom it’s easier to say what he is not, as opposed to what he is. Peter Saul (born in 1934) is not a pop artist in the true sense, as you will often read. Extreme distorsions...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlbMXLQWvfg Walter Benjamin The visionary writer Walter Benjamin once said of Marcel Proust (1) that he admired “his astounding way of using the great poets’ method of taking their metaphors from everything that is close at hand...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIJbqjc3GxM 91,3 million euros It’s one of the most breathtaking results of 2019: 4100 bidders from 43 countries. 100% of the 244 lots were sold for a total of 91.3 million euros. Global wave A success that took the form...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHryRqArlg The theme of movement They say that what best characterizes the work of Gabriel Orozco (born in 1962) is the theme of movement. Impatient This may well be true, because he himself can’t keep still. It was hard...
Leonardo in Paris As the whole world descends on Paris to see the masterpieces at the magnificent Leonardo retrospective, there is another very important exhibition also taking place in Europe: in Vienna. The giant of the German Renaissance It has the advantage of...
USA as China We are living through an age of dispersal and multiplicity. There’s no longer a global centre for art and it may well be the case that the United States is as rich a melting pot in this respect as China, for example. Nor is there a single prevailing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PwFht9Ua1c Pastiche, nostalgia, nihilism In history there are moments of great fruitfulness that are, however, described as decadent. These occur when what is believed to be the high point of a civilization begins to all decline...