Americans flocked to the city in droves. A warm fall sun shone through the vast glass roof. The dealers brought their very best pieces. And the Art Basel brand did what it does.
Art Basel Paris, which opened to V.I.P. visitors on Wednesday and runs through Sunday, is the first full-scale, fully-branded Paris event for the fair group since its Swiss-based parent company, MCH Group, took over the running of France’s flagship art fair in 2022. MCH, whose biggest shareholder is James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems investment firm, already holds slickly organized and marketed shows in Hong Kong, Miami Beach and Basel, Switzerland.
Since the takeover, two smaller iterations, awkwardly titled Paris+ par Art Basel, had been held in a temporary venue near the Eiffel Tower. The rebranded fair — now held in the recently restored Grand Palais, an Art Nouveau exhibition hall originally built for the 1900 World’s Fair — this year features 195 galleries, a 27 percent increase on Paris+.
“There is an atmosphere of the 19th century — but that’s glorious. It adds to the Parisian grandeur,” said the Antwerp-based contemporary art collector Luc Haenen, who was wearing sunglasses in the sun-drenched nave of the Grand Palais.
For 47 years, until 2021, Paris’s fall art fair was a very French offering: la Foire internationale d’art contemporain, or FIAC. The traditional cross-Channel rival of Frieze London, FIAC had attracted criticism from some of its big-name exhibitors for not bringing in enough international collectors. At the final 2021 edition, the New York mega-gallerist David Zwirner said he was disappointed with sales after the “vibrancy of Frieze.”
So what did he think of the first edition of Art Basel Paris?
“Incomparable,” Zwirner replied. “I’ve just had an interesting conversation with a Beijing collector. I’ve seen a lot of Americans. We’ve had major museum curators and directors.” His gallery announced 11 confirmed sales by the end of the first day, led by a painting by the Romanian artist Victor Man, priced at 1.2 million euros, about $1.3 million.
For various economic, political and geopolitical reasons, the international art market has been in a sustained downturn for more than a year. Dealers were hoping that the first edition of Art Basel Paris might be a game-changer, and some brought pieces at price levels that were never seen at FIAC.
“The last time this was on the market was at auction 10 years ago — it made $33 million,” said Marc Payot, the president of Hauser & Wirth, referring to Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 “Suprematism, 18th Construction,” which had pride of place on his gallery’s booth (at a higher price). Payot added that the Malevich was reserved.
As well as Hauser & Wirth’s Malevich, there was the monumental Alighiero Boetti “Mappa” hanging on the booth of the Italian dealers Tornabuoni. Completed in 1991, it is one of a handful of 20 foot-wide world maps with national flags embroidered for the Italian artist by Afghan craftswomen. Michele Casamonte, the founder of the gallery’s Paris branch, said on Thursday that the work had sold to Casa Sanlorenzo, a cultural foundation based in Venice, for an undisclosed eight-figure price.
But with almost 200 booths to browse, there were also plenty of works by less well-known artists at less heady price levels to be discovered — and even bought. “It’s a fair for everyone,” said the Italian contemporary art collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who spent her first hours at Art Basel Paris exploring smaller presentations at the fair’s periphery. “You can buy works for as little as €5,000,” she said. “We want to get a new generation of collectors to buy.”
Sandretto Re Rebaundengo said she was impressed by the fair’s new Premise section featuring historical works by neglected artists. Here, the Barcelona-based gallery Bombon showcased the raw homoerotic art of Nazario Luque Vera, a pioneer of underground comics in Spain during the dictatorship of General Franco. Drawings were priced from €2,700. Nearby on the first floor, a haunting sculpture modeled out of bread by the young German artist Oscar Kargruber was priced at €8,000 by the Frankfurt-based gallery Neue Alte Brücke. Here, however, reports of sales were noticeably patchier.
“Paris is having a good moment,” Sandretto Re Rebaundengo said. “The city is more interesting that it was 10 years ago.”
Visitors were certainly spoiled for choice during what is now known as “Paris Art Week.” Apart from all the museum exhibitions, and Art Basel Paris, there were collateral fairs such as Paris Internationale, Asia Now and the Salon. Around 400 people turned up to the opening of Place des Vosges, a pop-up boutique fair of seven gallerists overlooking Paris’s oldest square, according to its organizer, the Los Angeles dealer Chris Sharp.
“The market feels much stronger here than last year. That’s the Art Basel factor,” said Candace Worth, a New York-based art adviser, who was guiding three American collectors around the Grand Palais.
“Who doesn’t like coming to Paris?” Worth said “You can go to a great art fair or exhibition, do a little shopping, then a great restaurant for dinner. It’s easy. It suits the lifestyle of the moneyed classes.”
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