The French journalist Anne Sinclair has given an enlightening interview to our French sister paper Le Journal des Arts about her late grandfather, the influential art dealer Paul Rosenberg (1881-1959). A recent exhibition at La Boverie in Liège, Belgium, entitled 21 Rue la Boétie, featured paintings that passed through Rosenberg’s hands, with 63 works on display by artists such as Matisse, Braque and Picasso. In a controversial move, the show did not travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris as planned, but instead opened at the Musée Maillol in the capital (until 23 July). Sinclair says that Picasso hoped to paint her portrait but she resisted, fearing that she would end up as one of the artist’s “distorted faces”. She is also rather critical of contemporary art devotees, saying: “What my grandfather was exhibiting was already contemporary art, but he did not sell anything until 1925. The public seemed more difficult to convince in his day. Today, on the contrary, everybody is blindly prostrate before Koons or Hirst.”
