Posted inArt

Poliakoff and the Russian Connection

The retrospective of Russian-born painter Serge Poliakoff, which just closed at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, was both a welcome surprise and something of an anachronism. One would be hard pressed to find clues in the current international art scene, or even in the secondary market, to explain the royal treatment lavished by a well-funded institution on an artist almost forgotten today.

Posted inArt

Simon Hantaï’s Discontent

In 1983, at the height of his career, Simon Hantaï (1922–2008), then sixty years old, decided to withdraw from the art scene and stop exhibiting his work, if not to stop painting altogether. He would not show again until 1998, a fifteen-year hiatus and self-imposed silence that echo with more force as time goes by. Why, we may wonder, would an artist at the top of his game, especially someone of Hantaï’s stature, do such a thing?