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Richard Lord

One of the seminal works of French literature, “Les Fleurs du Mal” (“The Flowers of Evil”; 1857) contains most of the poetry of Charles Baudelaire.
Strikingly innovative and taboo-busting in both style and subject, it foregrounded dark, controversial themes, from sexuality to death to self-disgust.
Nicolas Chow, Swiss-born chairman for Asia and worldwide head of Asian art at auction house Sotheby’s, tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.
I was 13 years old when I read Les Fleurs du Mal for the first time, right in the throes of teen angst.
The Chinese text that helped Gay Games Hong Kong co-chair embrace being a lesbian
It was my neighbour, and then my favourite partner in crime, Sébastien, who lent me his copy, and I remember the event was filled with a certain sense of gravity.
This is, after all, a book, many will say a bible, that has been a rite of passage for generations of emo teenagers, poetry fans, artists and cultural icons alike, and its author the poster boy for bohemians and wannabe doomed poets of all sorts.

As I read the first poem, the words were immediately mesmeric and I was under the spell of Charles Baudelaire – a visionary poet and a melancholic, suicidal character often considered debauched, whose poems, like alchemy, transform his self-lacerating melancholy into beauty.
I was seduced by the intoxicating quality of the writing and that search for beauty in the darker corners of the human experience, whether death, unrequited love, substances or the oppressive power of the modern city.
The thrill of the forbidden – some of the more obscene poems were censored up until the mid-20th century – was no doubt a draw, too.

One of my favourite poems is titled A Carcass and it is unashamedly self-indulgent, in true Baudelaire style.
While taking a walk, Baudelaire and his lover come across a decomposing carcass, a perfect lead into many themes that are leitmotifs in The Flowers: the beauty that resides in all things, life that springs from death, and the death of love.
“The forms disappeared and were no more than a dream,
A sketch that slowly falls
Upon the forgotten canvas, that the artist
Completes from memory alone.”
I still get goosebumps reading these verses. The writing is so extra­ordinary, Baudelaire’s ability for abstract imagery so radical for his time.
The Flowers changed my sensibility entirely, whether my taste for literature, visual arts, cinema or music – and almost 40 years in, I still have not quite shaken off that penchant for slightly dark, edgier things and their unique emotional charge.
Why is this sustainable fashion marketplace founder rereading Shakespeare?
The Flowers is intimately entangled in my mind with another book which I discovered a few years later, Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933).
To me, Shadows is to aesthetics what Flowers is to the human condition. The short book – it barely takes an hour to read – is a manifesto in praise of Japanese traditional aesthetics, darkness, imperfection and impermanence, and embracing the fleeting nature of the beauty of all aesthetics: the decayed, the flawed, the modest.
Those two classics continue to guide me in my personal explorations, and pretty much every single object, painting or photograph, that I have ever acquired, whether ancient or contemporary, comes as an extension of ideas that germinate in them.


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Books and literature

‘The thrill of the forbidden’: how Charles Baudelaire’s dark, taboo-busting poetry changed the life of a Sotheby’s executive

A representation of French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) for his 1857 book “Les Fleurs du Mal” (“The Flowers of Evil”). Photo: Getty Images

Nicolas Chow is chairman for Asia and worldwide head of Asian art at Sotheby’s. Photo: Sotheby’s

The frontispiece for “Les Fleurs du Mal” by French artist Felix Bracquemond. Photo: Getty Images

Best books of 2023 – with a twist – from Elon Musk biography and Prince Harry’s Spare to Hong Kong poetry

Elon Musk (the book) was written by a bona fide big-deal biographer: Walter Isaacson.

The cover of Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson. The biography makes our list of best books of 2023 under the theme of the Cambridge Dictionary word of the year, “hallucination”.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang.

Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann.

Spare by Prince Harry.

A Dragon Realm Adventure by Katie Kevin Tsang.

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Chlorine by Jade Song.

Takeaway by Angela Hui.

Tintin’s real-life Chinese friend: how Hergé’s art and life was influenced by artist Zhang Chongren

Zhang Chongren points to a poster of Chang Chong-chen, a character in Tintin book The Blue Lotus based on him, in Paris in 1985. The leading Chinese artist and Georges Remi, known as Hergé and author of the books, became firm friends after meeting in the 1930s. Photo: Getty Images

Toddler Zhang Chongren at the knee of his silk embroiderer mother. Illustration: Samuel Porteous

Zhang at around the age of eight-12 took part in the global postcard collection craze of that era. This also allowed him to get an education in the European Old Masters. Illustration: Samuel Porteous

Belgian cartoonist Hergé (left) and Zhang at the Cinquantenaire Park in Brussels in the 1930s. Photo: Getty Images

The three ages of Zhang: a) young man working with Hergé, b) middle aged, c) elderly Zhang, and d) their avatars Tintin and Chang on the desk. Illustration: Samuel Porteous

Zhang during the Cultural Revolution enduring the criticism sessions by discreetly practising his calligraphy while being berated. Illustration: Samuel Porteous

Hergé welcomes his friend back to Belgium after 46 years apart. Photo: Getty Images

Zhang holds copies of The Blue Lotus and Tintin in Tibet. Photo: Getty Images

An elderly Zhang with the public statue of Nie Er. Illustration: Samuel Porteous

Why British author Simon Winchester would sleep with one of his critics’ wives, his love of Hong Kong, and why he got prison time during the Falklands war

Simon Winchester, Milan, Italy, September 2018. Photo: Getty Images

British author and journalist Simon Winchester in Milan, Italy, in September 2018. Photo: Getty Images

Winchester aged five, circa 1949. Photo: Simon Winchester

Welsh travel writer and historian Jan Morris in 1988. Photo: Getty Images

Winchester as a reporter at The Guardian, which he joined as a regional reporter in 1969 before being posted to Washington in 1972. Photo: Simon Winchester

Winchester (right) with two other British journalists in an Argentine police station after their arrests in 1982. Photo: Simon Winchester

Winchester was incensed when a critic panned his book about the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. 

Winchester with his wife, Setsuko, at Lapham’s Quarterly’s Decades Ball in New York in 2019. Photo: Getty Images

Winchester on his farm in the United States. Photo: Simon Winchester

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Nicolas Chow, chairman for Asia and worldwide head of Asian art at Sotheby’s, read Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) when he was 13
He says he was seduced by the search for beauty in the darker corners of the human experience and the book changed his sensibility entirely


Nicolas Chow, chairman for Asia and worldwide head of Asian art at Sotheby’s, explains how French poet Charles Baudelaire’s book Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) changed his life.


‘The thrill of the forbidden’: how Charles Baudelaire’s dark, taboo-busting poetry changed the life of a Sotheby’s executive

Nicolas Chow, chairman for Asia and worldwide head of Asian art at Sotheby’s, read Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) when he was 13 He says he was seduced by the search for beauty in the darker corners of the human experience and the book changed his sensibility entirely

Nicolas Chow, chairman for Asia and worldwide head of Asian art at Sotheby’s, read Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) when he was 13

He says he was seduced by the search for beauty in the darker corners of the human experience and the book changed his sensibility entirely