Pierre Le-Tan

Sic transit gloria mundi. The things of this world are fleeting, as Pierre Le-Tan is well aware; this is why he has decided to immortalise twenty eccentric characters he has encountered along the way. With an ironic yet delicate touch, he evokes the atmosphere of auction houses, the lavish parties in the villas of Tangier, or the unusual encounters in the confines of a railway carriage where, for the first time, he had the privilege of meeting them.Driven by the same impulse, individuals of refined taste and a passion for collecting have amassed objects bordering on the bizarre: from glass animal figurines to wax heads of criminals with real hair attached, to crumpled pieces of paper catalogued as if in a museum. The Princess of Brioni, Umberto Pasti and Le-Tan himself, much like those birds that decorate their nests with pebbles, respond to an ancient and primordial instinct, entirely alien to the market logic that drives the most illustrious and established collectors. Free from fashions and speculation, they explore and collect for the sheer pleasure of being surrounded by objects they have chosen and love.Of them, perhaps, the only testimony that will remain is in these pages, with the moving drawings of a curious Franco-Vietnamese artist, and in the fading traces of a bygone era imprinted on the walls of their homes.