About this episode

This episode discusses a major Matisse exhibition in Paris, the current state of the Hong Kong art scene, and features a conversation about a painting and dress by Dalí and Schiaparelli.

The Grand Palais in Paris this week unveiled an enormous exhibition focusing on the final 13 years of Henri Matisse’s life and work, a project conceived by the Centre Pompidou. The show includes abundant examples of the celebrated gouache cut-outs, his works for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, and his final paintings, drawings, and illustrated books, among much else. Ben Luke interviews the exhibition’s curator, the Centre Pompidou’s Claudine Grammont, in Paris. The latest edition of Art Basel Hong Kong opened this week amid much uncertainty about the Hong Kong art world after a prolonged downturn in the Chinese economy. Yet, some commentators are suggesting that Hong Kong has turned a corner. The Art Newspaper’s chief contributing editor, Gareth Harris, has been in Hong Kong this week and tells us what he discovered. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, we focus on a related painting and dress. The painting is Salvador Dalí’s Necrophiliac Spring (1936), which was owned by the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli; the dress is the Tears Dress with Veil, from Schiaparelli’s Circus Collection of 1938, made with a fabric designed by Dalí. The painting and the garment are in…

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