Average and exceptional art There isn’t just one art market but many – and they meet different demands. They are stratified with distinct ways of being and rules of functioning. It is common to say, for example, that during times of crisis only...
Tefaf Maastricht: the museum where anything can be bought
Rare quality For some time now each new edition has provoked the same reaction. Against all odds, Tefaf Maastricht is of a rare quality. Through the standard of artworks displayed it induces a kind of state of stupefaction. This year, from 9 to...
Lacan at the Centre Pompidou Metz: the owner of Courbet’s “Origine du monde” was also a great psychoanalytic theorist
https://youtu.be/5D4kTB8rfiA Supernatural powers of the artist We have a tendency to endow great artist with quasi-supernatural powers. The most illustrious theorists of psychoanalysis claim that certain painters and other sculptors have, in...
A tribute to architect of the future Richard Rogers, in one of his buildings, suspended in the air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJroTSJock&feature=youtu.be Grand history of architects The grand history of 20th-century architects is made of cross-pollinations and collaborations. Take Norman Foster (Pritzker Prize 1999). He was the...
Albertina: In the drawings of Michelangelo even warriors become graceful
Corporeal quality There’s only a handful of artists capable of giving drawings an almost corporeal quality in their works on paper. In Ingres we don’t just see portraits in black and white, but rather figures whose eyes sparkle with life. In...
Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Titian… A great Renaissance show at the Louvre
https://youtu.be/LF_wYDcCHnw La Grande Galerie How long has it been since you walked through the permanent collections, the holy of holies at the Louvre, the Grande Galerie? Across 460 metres stretches a display of one of the grandest episodes...
Poussin obsessed: an exhibition reveals the erotic side to the 17th-century painter
https://youtu.be/K8ekvjgV9MA No taboos Super-erotic and without taboos. Nicolas Poussin(1594-1665), an artist’s artist favoured by art historians, considered to be the most austere of his era, had a period that was decidedly risqué. The...
Vermeer in Amsterdam: the beautiful record-setting exhibition
https://youtu.be/BxboiI3WV3E All about intimacy Talking about the great Dutch painter Vermeer (1632-1675) in terms of numerical data seems like a misinterpretation. This art legend, all delicacy and detail, known for his descriptions...
Tefaf Maastricht: the fair of extraordinary objects
You are rich Imagine that you are rich, very rich, and that you love art. Another possibility: imagine you are a curious die-hard fan of things created by man, without boundaries of time or space. If you recognize yourself in one of these two...
Boilly: the 19th century artist who fascinates the 21st century
It's just an illusion Seeking to create illusions is one of the great virtues of art. It is a process that is often practiced in current creation. Without mentioning the entire hyperrealist school, we might think for example of Gerhard Richter,...
The story of a portrait long exhibited at a museum in Dresden now auctioned in New York
How to leverage flattery Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) is a French painter who enjoyed huge success during his lifetime thanks to his portraits, in which he knew how to leverage flattery. La belle strasbourgeoise His body of work, spanning...
Fondation Beyeler : Goya is a contemporary artist
https://youtu.be/hpLbQbGgiR8 The fascinating Duchess of Alba There exists not one but two Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828). He has gone down in collective memory as a portraitist to the Spanish royal family, where he...