Art Basel Paris

The entire art world has been waiting for this crucial moment for a long time: the Art Basel Paris fair – with its international clout – which is taking place for the first time under the glass roof of the Grand Palais, one of the most legendary exhibition venues on the planet. The event, from October 18 to 20, is expected to draw visitors from far and wide while a multitude of openings are scheduled for the same week across the French capital like never before.

Regent’s Park

Frieze London. Gagosian booth

Which goes to show that people didn’t expect too much from the double fair being held a week earlier in London in two tents set up in Regent’s Park. From 9 to 13 October the major annual event in the British capital is Frieze London, dedicated to highly contemporary art with 165 galleries, and Frieze Masters, which deploys a varied offering ranging from antiquity to firmly “established” current art with 130 participants. London is still reeling from Brexit, which isolated the British art market from Europe, but it’s also suffering from the crisis hitting the art market on a global scale.

Tracey Emin

However, the first thing we can observe when visiting exhibitions in English galleries is that London is far from being discouraged. In its gigantic gallery, White Cube presents the latest work by one of the stars of British art, Tracey Emin (born in 1963). The former Young British artist has created paintings, often very large in size, which tell the story of her love life. These paintings are somewhere between abstraction and figuration. With beautiful technical mastery she brings out silhouettes from interlacing lines, often in a dramatic, bloodshot atmosphere.

Mathieu Paris

The large-format canvases, on sale for on average 700,000 to 900,000 pounds, have all found buyers.“It’s clear. We are in a period of re-reading the market,” admits Mathieu Paris, senior director at White Cube (See here an other interview of Mathieu Paris). “But it doesn’t affect artists who are as recognized by institutions as Tracey. Five paintings have been sold to major museums.”

Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas

It’s the same story at Frith Street, a London gallery that is exhibiting the new work of one of the superstars of painting, the South African Marlene Dumas (born in 1953) (See here an interview of Marlene Dumas). At auction in 2023, one of her large canvases sold for the record price of 5.4 million euros. At Frith Street the paintings were presented starting at 400,000 euros.

Marlene Dumas

Frith Street

The artist has two types of production: one very spontaneous, on the fly, which emerges like a torrent, and another that is more polished and plays on the mixture of abstraction and figuration. “Mourning Marsyas” is a very dark exhibition but its audience, which is vast, has been waiting for her new works to go on sale since 2018, the date of her last commercial show. “Demand is very high and we are in the process of deciding who we will place the last available pieces with,” explains Dale McFerland at Frith Street.

Oscar Murillo

Oscar Murillo

Among the most high-profile exhibitions in London, the Zwirner gallery has just opened an exhibition showing  the new work of Oscar Murillo (born in 1986), the British-Colombian artist who makes colourful abstract art that is recognizable at a glance. During the summer of 2024 he staged an exceptional operation at the Tate Modern, over the course of which 70,000 people came to paint on a monumental canvas, whatever they liked.

Murillo directed the use of colour. He has not yet decided what fate awaits this giant public act of expression.

Around 2015 he was a young painter who investors were dreaming about, and one of his works sold for up to 328,000 euros. From that time people wouldn’t have bet much on his future. Now, with his numerous exhibitions in museums and his always renewed style, like at Zwirner in London, his paintings which he calls “Manifestations” – very physical expressions, filled with rage, embodied in colours – he proves he has passed the fashion effect stage (for sale between 180,000 and 700,000 pounds) (See here an other interview of Oscar Murillo).

Fashion in art

For observers of contemporary art, this is a period when new fashionable trends are being challenged. Abstraction or figuration? It seems both are still in favour with the collecting public. But by all accounts sales are noticeably slowing. Curiously, however, the prices set remain high. On the other hand, buyers are asking for longer payment terms and more and more discounts.

Eva Langret

Eva Langret, director of Frieze London, has created a shake-up in the organization of the event’s booths, among other things, by submitting applications for the first two spaces at the entrance to the fair and by redistributing the very visible areas, which are usually set aside for the mega galleries. “In times of crisis, our role is to bring in as many people as possible, to stir excitement in our visitors,” she explains (See here an other interview of Eva Langret).

Glenn Brown

Glenn Brown

One of most the remarkable paintings presented at Frieze London is at the booth of the German also based in Paris, Max Hetzler, who has a painting on panel made with great delicacy, inspired both by classical art and with a touch of surrealism. The British artist Glenn Brown (born in 1966), winner of the Turner Prize in 2000, who has become a “classic” on this side of the Channel, has conceived a tree whose branches, crossed by an infinite number of other branches, transform into a hand (on sale for 450,000 dollars). In Paris, during Art Basel, Max Hetzler will be dedicating an exhibition to him with eight new paintings, portraits that mix, again, art history and references to science fiction.

A sarcophagus !

Inner Sarcophagus of Princess Sopdet-em_haawt

At Frieze Masters the most astonishing object is exhibited by a London antiques dealer, David Aaron. It is a sarcophagus of the Egyptian princess Sopdet-em-haawt dated from the 7th century BC. For a long time it belonged to a French family and was exhibited at the Houston museum between 2018 and early 2024. This extraordinary funerary piece was reserved on the day of the opening by a buyer who refused to have the price of the piece made public. It is assumed that it corresponds to several millions or even over ten million pounds.

Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet, one of the most extraordinary talents of the Impressionist era, appears in at least two booths at Frieze Masters. The international contemporary art gallery Hauser & Wirth is exhibiting a fragment of paintings depicting the public at the racecourse at Longchamps. Most likely with provenance from a French collection, it sold immediately for 4.5 million euros.

Manet and Modern beauty

Edouard Manet

But the unmissable masterpiece is at the booth of the Wildenstein gallery from New York. In “Portrait of Monsieur Brun” the artist, who died three years later, paints a man in a top hat. The green background of the painting is done in the purest blurred impressionist style, while the jacket of the moustachioed hero is drawn with a skilled hatching technique. We understand why the painting appeared in the Getty Museum exhibition on “Manet and modern beauty” in 2019. Small in size, it is on sale for 10 million dollars. It sold for 5.4 million dollars in 2011.

38 Nabis works

Paul Ranson

Among the noteworthy exhibitions at the fair is that of the French dealer based in London and Dubai, Stéphane Custot. He presents no less than 38 paintings and drawings from the movement that played a key role in the invention of modernity, the Nabis, born around 1888 under the influence of Paul Gauguin.

From Félix Valloton to Edouard Vuillard, the works are presented for between 35,000 and 750,000 pounds. “In this period of profound questioning of the values ​​of art, it is important to return to the fundamentals,” concludes Stéphane Custot.

Emile Bernard

Until 13 October. www.frieze.com/