Author: My World of Interiors
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Giotto: The Painter Who Opened the Window of the Renaissance
When Giorgio Vasari published his Lives of the Artists in 1550, he began the history of Renaissance painting not with Leonardo or Michelangelo, but with Giotto di Bondone. For Vasari, Giotto was the one who “translated painting from Greek to Latin” — that is, who moved art from the flat hieratic conventions of medieval iconography…
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Ted Turner, the Last Great Madman of Television
Ted Turner, who has died aged 87, was one of the last media titans who seemed less the product of a boardroom than of a novelist’s imagination. He was loud, reckless, brilliant, vulgar, idealistic, impossible, visionary. When he founded CNN in 1980, he did not simply launch a television network. He altered the nervous system…
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Steven Meisel: The Eye of Fashion’s Modern Age
In fashion, there are names that decorate the mastheads and those that define eras. Steven Meisel belongs firmly to the latter category. For more than four decades, his lens has not only chronicled fashion but authored its mythology. His images—precise, provocative, and relentlessly transformative—have made him both a magician of surfaces and an architect of…
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Bob Dylan: The Making of a Voice, 1962–1970
Bob Dylan’s early career is one of the most compressed and transformative arcs in 20th-century music. Between 1962 and 1970, he released ten studio albums that altered the landscape of popular song, expanding it from entertainment into poetry, prophecy, and provocation. In less than a decade he moved from a Woody Guthrie–inspired folk troubadour to…
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Brutalism: The Concrete Truth
Born in the mid-twentieth century, Brutalism’s structures rose in raw concrete, monumental and uncompromising, shaped by ideals as much as by materials. To its defenders, Brutalism represented honesty — a moral and aesthetic rejection of ornament in favor of truth-to-material. To its critics, it was a dystopian imposition of weight and severity. Few architectural styles…
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Elvis and Marilyn: The Alchemy of Superstardom
In the mythology of the twentieth century, two figures stand as the defining icons of modern celebrity: Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. They are not simply stars, nor even merely “legends.” They became something more elusive and enduring: cultural deities, objects of near-religious devotion whose fame transcends their work, their lives, and even their deaths.…
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The Voice That Didn’t Live to Hear the Echo
Venice · Art · 2026 The 61st Venice Art Biennale opens on May 9th under the title In Minor Keys. Its curator, Koyo Kouoh, died a year ago. The show goes forward entirely as she conceived it — and it may be the most important Biennale in a generation. By Bergotte · Preview, May 2026…
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Henri Matisse: Color, Form, and the Invention of Joy
In the long arc of modern art, Henri Matisse (1869–1954) stands as the painter of joy. Where Picasso dramatized conflict and Cézanne wrestled with structure, Matisse dedicated himself to the pursuit of lightness, radiance, and serenity. His career spans from the dawn of Fauvism at the turn of the twentieth century to the radiant cut-outs…
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In Minor Keys
The Venice Biennale opens on the 9th of May. How to go, how long to stay, and why the city is as much the point as the art The Venice Biennale is the largest and oldest contemporary art exhibition in the world — 131 years old, held every two years in the city least suited…
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Sant Ambroeus Paris: The Iconic Milanese Café Opens in Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Sant Ambroeus Paris has officially arrived on Rue Saint-Benoît, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés — bringing with it nearly 90 years of Italian culinary heritage. Founded in Milan in 1936, the legendary café-restaurant has expanded from Milan to New York, Aspen, and Palm Beach. Now, its first full Parisian restaurant marks a significant new chapter…
