Overview
Journalist, former editor in chief at Nouvel Observateur, Jean-Gabriel FREDET is the author of a caustic book, midway between pamphlet and investigation.
After "Dans l’ombre de Le Pen" and "Fabius, Les brûlures d’une ambition", the journalist returns with an investigation into the secret and very closed milieu of contemporary art, in "Requins, caniches et autres mystificateurs " ("Sharks, poodles and other mystifiers").
Cynical gallery owners, greedy artists and other megalomaniac or self-serving collectors, Jean-Gabriel FREDET points out the excesses and abuses of this world of speculators.
In New York the famous artist Maurizio Cattelan recently exhibited his latest masterpiece: a toilet bowl in solid gold. In the spring of 2017, Jeff Koons shamelessly hijacked classic masterpieces to launch a line of bags for a major luxury brand. In Venice, Damien Hirst made his big comeback with a Hollywoodesque exhibition:
200 pieces supposedly recovered from a sunken wreck; pieces actually made entirely in his workshops, sold for between 400 thousand and 4 million dollars!
In this faithless, lawless art world, sharp managers manipulate prices behind closed doors and dictate their will to the market to the indifference of both critics and museum curators, who avert their eyes, paralysed by the fear of missing out on the "new impressionists". Contemporary art, which should be helping us to understand the world, is completely oblivious to it!
Jean-Gabriel FREDET will come and talk to us about this vanity fair, this golden bubble of contemporary art: price bubble, ego bubble, bubble of suckers ...
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