‘This is not a pipe’. It appears on t-shirts, mugs, and in advertising slogans and has become the biggest cliché  of modern art. René Magritte (1898-1967), who painted the pipe in 1929 accompanied by the famous line ‘ceci n’est pas...’  or 'this is not...' has earned...
At the turn of the 20th century, with Europe about to be shaken by a world war and a revolution, the world of painting was also in a state of extreme turmoil. The objective was to destroy the old order. In Paris, then global epicentre of the avant-garde, but also...
There’s no doubt about it: at the June and December auctions in Paris, where the most beautiful lots of the season are all concentrated, the trophy works tend to be snapped up by foreign buyers. In fact, some of the leader  auction houses Sotheby’s, Christie’s and...
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...
There’s a joke we like to tell in France, one you could imagine inspiring one of his  'Joke painting' by American  artist Richard Prince. A man driven to suicide jumps off the top of a skyscraper. On the way down, he says the same thing each floor he passes: ‘So far,...
Since in New York there are modern and contemporary auctions every day this week featuring emotion, Â why not go along and see some genuine masterpieces that are not for sale. Â The curatorial world is shaped, in varying degrees, by its trends. The most recent trend,...
Every May and November, Sotheby’s and Christie’s modern and contemporary art auctions in New York have become, rightly or wrongly, a shop window for the global art business and a bellwether for the market in the eyes of the general public. In a few lots, everything is...
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...
Picabia, Duchamp, Bellmer... Major names in the history of modern art and, it would seem, completely out of most people’s price range nowadays. In Paris, however, the cradle of Surrealism and Dadaism, you can find highly specialised book and manuscript auctions...
It’s the most eagerly anticipated exhibition this season in Paris. 230 works dedicated to an unclassifiable, singular and exceptional artist, and a major figure in German modern art: Paul Klee. The show’s curator Angela Lampe has pulled off a small miracle, creating a...
Who would possibly make a comparison between Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) also called Le Douanier Rousseau, the retired Paris customs officer considered by the critics of his days as a harmless weekend painter, and Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), one of the foremost figures...
In art there are those mythical places believed to have changed the course of history. Until the nineteenth century, if you considered yourself a serious painter you were obliged to make an initiatory journey to Italy on the trail of the Renaissance and Ancient Rome....