He’s an arch-narcissist, his teeth are falling out, he’s unattractive, provocative, intelligent, cynical, disabused and expresses himself spiritedly with his lapidary pronouncements. Michel Houellebecq, the runaway success of the French publishing world, a writer who...
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...
(take your time to watch it!) We expect our artists to be visionaries. But when they happen to naturally fit that mould we misunderstand them since they’re too far ahead of their times. It’s been a very long while that Alfredo Jaar (born in 1956) has been...
Every two years at the Grand Palais in Paris, Monumenta is an act of creative bravura and a truly colossal show in the international contemporary art calendar. It’s a battle of the titans, in which an artist has to struggle to assert himself inside and against a...
Imagine someone who grasped as early as 1910 the monumental importance of Picasso and Matisse on the history of art. Imagine a man who anticipated the role Cezanne’s painting would have in the dawning of cubism. A man who since Marcel Duchamp stopped painting in...
The art world, like the rest of us for that matter, likes pigeonholing artists into one category or another. Fortunately there are artists who manage to escape all categorisation. A case in point is Francesco Vezzoli, the Italian artist recognised by international...
The American legend Robert Longo (born in 1953), whose works can be found in the collections of major museums across the world, was in Paris a few days ago as he has two gallery shows, one at Thaddeus Ropac in Le Marais, the other at Cahiers d'Art in Saint Germain des...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00F0Wyw6vA She’s best known as the wife of John Lennon - one of the icons of 20th century pop music - and a fortiori as the heiress of his legendary group The Beatles. However, ladies and gentlemen, now Yoko Ono finds herself...
‘Each time you talk to your friends on Facebook, each time you buy a book on Amazon, each time you save for your  pension fund, you’re dealing with a company practicing tax  optimisation. We’re not talking drug trafficking. It frequently turns out that these...
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 a just short space of time La Monnaie de Paris, with its sumptuous 18th century salons, has defied to all expectations to become an important exhibition space for radical contemporary art. Hot on the heels of the solo exhibition by Belgian artist Marcel...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNudBHEsAlI Some painters have an overwhelmingly intellectual relationship to their work. For others it’s more physical. Ask one of the most famous among the latter group, Gerhard Richter, born in 1932, who his greatest inspirations...