This is the story of a man who in 1969 opened a store selling jeans and ended up with a ready-to-wear empire spanning 3,100 outlets across the globe. It’s also the story of the simple son of a cabinet-maker from San Francisco who accumulated a collection of...
Art by authors is the big thing right now. The Palais de Tokyo in Paris is placing Michel Houellebecq's uneven photography in the spotlight. Galerie du Passage is exhibiting  the french writer Francoise Sagan's deliberately out-of-focus photographs, albeit poorly...
The whiff of scandal seems to follow Andres Serrano (born 1950), but as an artist he’s so much more than that. Of course there was ‘Immersion (Piss Christ)’ from 1987, a highly stylised photograph of a crucifix submerged in a multi-coloured liquid that we know to be...
Have you heard the one about the former chairman of Sotheby’s Europe who loved electronic music so much that he took part to a video music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uYV3gRbl4U Or the one-time chairman of Phillips who agreed to star in a reality TV show for US...
In the big market for new names that the small contemporary art world spends much of its time oohing and aahing about before quickly forgetting again, there are nonetheless those sincere individuals who often know not what to make of an artist through lack of...
He’s an arch-narcissist, his teeth are falling out, he’s unattractive, provocative, intelligent, cynical, disabused and expresses himself spiritedly with his lapidary pronouncements. Michel Houellebecq, the runaway success of the French publishing world, a writer who...
'Basel is the Wimbledon of art. It’s the fair where you find the highest quality  in the world and where the most sophisticated collectors make an appearance. Even those further down players (galleries) in the rankings are happy to be included in the credits.’ Chris...
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...
Here in France, where people have  a new habit of vandalising artworks, the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson arrives to face-off against the opulence of the Sun King but also, alas, against reactionaries of every stripe. Until 30 October he’s taking up residence in...
It was the famous collector from Miami Mira Rubell who first told me about Hank Willis Thomas. Born in 1976, he’s a talented American artist dealing with popular culture, gender and racial stereotypes in contemporary consumer society, and the perception of ‘African...
It’s the most beautiful sculpture park in France, if not Europe. In the golden light on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence, not far from the mountain of Saint Victoire that Cezanne loved so much, Chateau La Coste’s 230 hectares are an abundance of pine...
There's one thing that both wine and art have in common. In countries with long wine growing traditions like France, the wines considered the best have a ‘long finish’. In other words the flavour lingers, it takes time to fully appreciate. On the other hand American...