Out of the Shadows

For as long as he can remember, Arthur de Villepin has lived with paintings by the Korean artist Myonghi Kang.

“Her art was always hanging in my family’s homes,” says Arthur, who last year opened a gallery in Hong Kong with his father, former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin. “And in 2010, when I was leaving home to move to Hong Kong, my parents said to me, ‘What do you want to take?’ I chose three African masks and a small Myonghi drawing. It has some gold in it—in certain light it sparkles.”

Arthur still owns that drawing, which he now keeps in his bedroom next to another painting by Kang. Downstairs, a large canvas dominated by vivid splashes of green that hangs above his dining table. Every morning, he admires it while he eats breakfast. Across the world, in Paris, a painting by Kang is one of the first things his father Dominique sees when he wakes up. Dominique