When Hollywood is in the market for art, they go to London gallerist Steve Lazarides, he who discovered Banksy and continues to pioneer edgy and inspiring artists. 

Brad and Angelina, Jude Law and Christina Aguilera are among his best customers. We spoke to him recently about whether fashion can be considered art, London being better than New York, and how his best ever art find came from a market in Havana. 

I think the worlds are so intrinsically linked between fashion, art, music –  they have the same kind of passion and creativity running through them. Some of the Margiela stuff my Mrs wears looks more like art than fashion!

I was lucky to come into this game just as the internet was starting to find its feet and I think that without the internet, my gallery, and many of the artists in it, would not exist. We had this wonderful tool where you can spread art to every nation around the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With blogs, twitter and Instagram artists can get their images out to a huge audience in a way you can’t through a traditional gallery. 

I like the fact that artist, JR’s work is political without being on any kind of political standpoint. It’s something that’s really trying to highlight ordinary people and social injustice, without it necessarily being too much about the artist’s views – it’s more about the people. 

Loving a piece of art is just a gut feeling. It’s something that elicits an emotion. I have a massive passion for communist era art. It was art that was used to subjugate the masses and the fact that a kind of mass-produced art was powerful enough to be able to beat a population down is fascinating. 

My favourite ever art find was a sticker album of the Cuban revolution that I bought in a book fair in Havana in about 1995. My wife and I had no money and got into a raging argument in the book square because I wanted to buy this sticker book but it cost $20, which was all the money we had left. The guy kept dropping the price for me, so in the end I got it for $5, and then about a year later I got an apology phone-call from my wife. She’d seen a page from Time Out advertising some auction, and the sticker album was the lead image with an estimate of £6-8000. That must be the biggest amount of money I’ve ever made on a piece of art, in terms of percentage, ever.

I hate reality TV and I hate biographies – I think life is real enough as it is, so I like total escapist fantasy rubbish.  Walter Mosley and George P Pelecanos are two of my favourite authors. 

I’m a big old soul fan, so I’ve been listening to a lot of Curtis Mayfield. I’ve got a tonne of his albums that I just listen to on rotation. It’s summer time, it’s a good time for a bit of 70s soul. 

Everyone says New York is a melting pot, but I think London is far more multi-cultural than any city I’ve ever visited. I love the food, culture, the art, the people, the weather – I like it when it’s cold, I like it when it’s sunny.