Anish Kapoor (born in 1954) is not just an artist, he’s also a great illusionist. He is helping to set in motion the blurring of mankind’s perception and in doing so touches on a mystical part of us that makes us pleasantly uncomfortable. He makes our heads spin....
Two of the greatest artworks of the twentieth century were almost conceived in a brothel. The masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”, Picasso’s cubist manifesto now on display at Moma, doesn’t depict pretty girls from the south of France but rather creatures...
On Friday 8 June, Christie’s is auctioning a group of 62 artworks estimated at 800,000 euros owned by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. They all share the distinguishing feature of having once belonged to a Milanese dealer, Arturo Schwarz (born in 1924). Schwarz has now...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn0JqAumE5c Marcel Duchamp was most certainly unaware that in inventing the principle of the “ready-made”, the transformation of the everyday object through the sheer will of the artist into a work of art, he was opening...
Let’s be frank. Among the art lovers of this world – that vast group of individuals that loves flaunting its coffee table books and haunts Moma, the Centre Pompidou and the Tate Modern – how many can tell you why Carl Andre is an important artist? Why exactly should...
There is a new very good space in France for international contemporary art – the Van Gogh Foundation in Arles. You can look for all the similarities you want between Vincent Van Gogh, who is almost the adoptive son of this region, and the artists programmed here (Yan...
He’s one of the most interesting and intriguing sculptors of our times. Thomas Houseago, born in 1972, gives his three-dimensional works a highly original form. It’s hard, however, to refrain from seeing them as a way of revisiting the history of art. He revisits...
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...
It was a 73,000-cubic-meter (2,578-cubic-foot) blood-red belly—the original matrix—and you could enter it. Those who were in Paris in spring 2011 haven’t forgotten the crimson resin membrane that occupied the entire nave of the Grand Palais for during Monumenta. The...
The landscape is pure Cézanne. In any case, Sainte-Victoire isn’t too far away. The light is golden, as it always is this time of year in Provence. The estate is pungent with the scent of pines growing all over the property, surrounding 130 hectares (321 acres) of...