https://youtu.be/JNewZIS3RjU?si=uHz98K2vdQkVb176 The Nobel of Architecture Every year at the beginning of March, a piece of news makes waves across the globe: the announcement of that year’s recipient of the Pritzker Prize. In common parlance,...
Musée Picasso, Paris: What Was Once Called “Degenerate Art”
https://youtu.be/nQP6SzCMsGM?si=m-P4w3ULbJUfj1EB Worst enemies of humanity If you think that art is frivolous or that the concerns of the avant-garde are trivial, you should know that, before you, the worst enemies of humanity in the 20th...
Hamish Bowles in Marrakech: The Magical Charge of Yves Saint Laurent’s Couture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWBBr4LFLL0 Objects of memory When it comes to ancient African art, the idea of an immaculate object is meaningless. They are works that bear the traces of experience, of ritual, of hands passing over...
The Remains of the Lagerfeld and Saint Laurent Collections
Global elegance https://youtu.be/wJTfJ8AeCjg?si=TYIBI3YQnZZZ6WH1 For a long time, the ecosystem of global elegance was driven from Paris by two rival clans. On one side was Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008), founder of his eponymous fashion house...
Azzedine Alaïa: “As we pass through in this life we must leave a mark”. An homage to the self-taught sculptor of women.
Azzedine Alaïa passed away on 20 november in Paris. In 2010 I interviewed the great couturier who opened up about his native Tunisia where he is now buried and about his desire to leave a mark. The couturier Azzedine Alaïa is a sculptor of the female...
Pierre Bergé: A tribute to the long-time partner of Yves Saint Laurent as two museums dedicated to the couturier open
I first met the French businessman, man of letters, and famous art collector Pierre Bergé about 20 years ago at a dinner organized by Sotheby’s in Paris, where we found ourselves sitting next to one another. We spent the whole evening discussing literature, and the...
Christian Dior: Did you know that the couturier began as an art dealer for Duchamp, Dali and Man Ray?
One of the most spectacular exhibitions in Paris right now is at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The grandiose set design by architect Nathalie Crinière provides the backdrop for what are mainly gowns, since this is a retrospective of fashion designer Christian Dior...
Agnes B: the fashion designer who is opening an art foundation in Paris finds art market prices obscene
‘I do not see art as an investment at all. That’s not to say that among the 5,000 works I own, some haven’t risen substantially in price—my Basquiat drawings for example—but that’s not my objective. After all, I’ve never resold anything.’ The celebrated French fashion...
The Koons-Vuitton Project: The Mass Tourism Look Shocks the Fans of so called ‘Good Taste’
Jeff Koons (born 1955) is one of those artists who inspires fascination and revulsion in equal measure. On the occasion of his 2014 retrospective at the Pompidou Centre, I was astonished to find myself subjected to vitriolic online attacks after I defended his show,...