“The sexiest man I ever met was Zhou Enlai”

Interview The American artist dated Jackie Kennedy, sued Spielberg and married photographer Marc Riboud. Today, she publishes her letters to her mother: a real novel.

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It is first of all the story of a precocious child. Originally from Philadelphia, Barbara Chase-Riboud was only 16 years old when MoMA acquired one of her works. She entered Yale, traveled to Europe, where she met the famous photographer from the Magnum agency, Marc Riboud, married him, and met his rich and numerous family. Barbara seduces everyone of course. She is beautiful, lively, and puts these great bourgeois in her pocket. She even failed to become an actress, and played an unimportant role in “Ben-Hur”. All the while, Miss Chase wrote to her mother back in the United States. She tells him about her travels, her work, the children who will be born and the beautiful people she meets (from James Baldwin to Calder, from Jackie Kennedy to Cartier-Bresson, from Joséphine Baker to Mao Zedong).

These letters, which cover a period of thirty-four years (between 1957 and 1991), Barbara Chase-Riboud found them by chance. Packed with a light, mischievous and playful pen, they draw the portrait of an adventurer who is never satisfied, of an activist before her time, of an artist with a thousand talents. Because, in addition to sculpture, Barbara Chase-Riboud has published around ten novels and works of poetry, including “the Virginian…