Kim Gordon has been making music for thirty years. Still, when she blesses hordes of ecstatic young people in a Berlin gay bar with the neck of an electric guitar (almost taking out the chandelier in the process) – it is easy to understand why so many people… Read More >
The South of France, or as it is commonly called today, the Côte d’Azur, is little more than a cultural invention of the twentieth century. In fact to be ‘common’, in its far less eloquent Dantean volgare or vernacular, might well become its future epithet given the trashy and often glitzy lifestyle-led environment it has created over the last fifty years. Increasingly, Saint-Tropez has become a brassy Benidorm for the rich; less glamour than clamor. In effect it owes part of its… Read More >
Ultramarine is a pigment that for hundreds of years had a very special status among artists’ materials. Traditionally ground from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, it can produce the most intense, deep, cool shades of blue. It also has a particular translucency that gives paintings a brilliance that no other pigment can provide, and, crucially, it is a stable, which means that it does not deteriorate or fade easily. This exotic pigment has been used by European artists since the thirteenth century and for a long time was the most extensive and desirable blue. Read more >
Yue Minjun’s first big solo show in Europe at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, is for all intents a Western debut, but goes far beyond an introduction to this accomplished Chinese artist. Instead, running for four months through fall 2012 to spring 2013, the show is a major retrospective. For the first time his main works are shown in one place, so the visual force – the evolution of his work since the 1990s, and the differentiated aesthetics – are presented in one single time and place. Read More—
