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=ryiiCfs0ZlM A great country for art Qatar has become one of the great countries in the world for art. The capital, Doha, is marked from the airport to the desert by an extremely ambitious public art program, with a series...
Monument of architecture First of all it’s a new monument to architecture. But it’s also a new monument to culture. In New York, on 30th Street in between 10th and 11th Avenues, you may have noticed the glass edifice christened “The Shed” which resembles a huge...
About colonialism The issues surrounding African tribal art have never been so pressing. This is because as time has passed and awareness has grown, people have realized the extent of the damage inflicted by the colonial project on culture in these countries, once...
Paul Cézanne father of all “Everything in nature is modelled on the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One has to learn to paint from these simple shapes”. It’s 1904 and the artist writing these words, the Aix-born Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), has been doing a lot...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTJYVDMXfow The French language is facetious. In order to provide an emphatic and worthy name for amateur artists, for those who practise a hobby, it has found a unique description that’s even entered international usage:...
Certain figures take their place in the art history pantheon because they’ve invented something new. These rare artists have looked at the world with unusual acuteness and have been bold enough to convey a new message through their art. Within this hall of fame...
In Japan, the designation of “national treasure” is the highest honour to convey the exceptional value accorded to cultural property of universal significance. In Paris, with relatively little publicity, there are currently no less than six Japanese national treasures...
The Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris is staging an exhibition dedicated to Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), the hero of contemporary American painting, comprising 120 works that are emblematic of the artist. The ensemble of paintings and drawings presented here,...
The American businessman Mitchell Rales (born in 1956) can’t be said to be wanting for money. Forbes values the wealth of this man, who started out in real estate in 1983, at 3.5 billion dollars and ranks him 652nd in their list of the world’s richest people in 2018....
One woman has her breasts showing through her white, nearly transparent shirt as she hacks away with a sword amid great spurts of blood at a man who only moments earlier was perhaps her lover. The other’s neckline dips low to reveal a milky-white neck, her head tilted...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXETztMZjZI Pablo Picasso lived to the age of 92. His total painting output is estimated to number over 4000 works. It’s conceivable that he could have produced 120 paintings between the ages of 20 and 25. At that time the...