‘I am a modernist at heart. I look for art that makes things go further. When I see someone painting like Matisse I wonder how it will stand in history. That said, sometimes they are very good. So it raises many questions that I don’t have any answers to...’
It is an unexpectedly sunny spring afternoon and perfume publisher FreÌdeÌric Malle has asked to meet for lunch at Chucs, an eight-table bistro on Mayfair’s Dover Street where we’re now tucking in to chicken Milanese (me) and roasted Var salmon (him). It’s a flying, two-night visit for New York-based Malle, having been announced as a juror on The Evening Standard Arts Prize panel the day prior. Still, he has wasted little time in escaping his hotel and has passed the morning visiting After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art at the National Gallery. ‘I loved it... and this weekend I was in Turin. I still see that little Van Eyck painting and I’m like, “Wow.”’
