Grand-Palais effect

There is an “Art Basel effect” within the art market, or in other words, how an entire city can be transformed over a few days by a massive influx of art professionals but also art fans, who come expecting the best in artistic creation as selected by the Swiss juggernaut. There’s also a “Grand-Palais effect” in Paris, or in other words, how one of the most prestigious exhibition venues in the world houses exhibitions bathed in natural light under the largest glass roof in Europe (14,900 m2) dating from 1900.

41 galleries more

For the first time, in 2024, both effects are combined: the Art Basel Paris fair with its 195 participating galleries (41 more than in 2023) is being held at the Grand Palais. Art Basel Paris takes place from October 18 to 20 for the general public with access by invitation only on October 16 and 17. The most impressive part of the whole operation is the shockwave that the fair generates throughout the city.  Art Basel is partnering with exhibitions in nine different locations.

Goshka Macuga

Goshka Macuga

This year the one that shouldn’t be missed is being held at the Palais d’Iéna until 20 October. It’s a performance orchestrated by the artist Goshka Macuga (born in 1967 in Warsaw) around videos commissioned by the fashion brand Miu Miu, involving no less than 115 performers.  There are digressions on the image of women and “our post-truth period”, explains Macuga.

Sotheby’s new headquarters

Parisian institutions together with galleries and auction houses have joined forces to organize special shows during the period of the fair. On 12 October Sotheby’s opened its new Parisian headquarters at 83 rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré. 3,300 m2 of very luxurious space spread over five floors, where you can admire, for example, a sumptuous large-scale painting of Monet’s Water Lilies painted during the First World War, sold on November 18 in New York (estimate: 60 million dollars).

Gurr Johns

Far from these splendours, the Anglo-American art consultancy Gurr Johns has also just set up an office in Paris, upstairs in a small apartment. According to French director Anika Guntrum, a former Christie’s specialist, “in the current situation, private deals respond much better to urgent and discreet requests from clients rather than auctions.”

In Paris the general standard of galleries and the prices charged also remain high.

Rashid Johnson

It is in the French capital that the multinational gallery Hauser & Wirth chose to display the work of one of the stars of its roster, the American painter Rashid Johnson (born in 1977). Known for often changing his style, the artist references one of his elders, a follower of this approach and great friend of the Surrealists, Francis Picabia. This time Johnson paints, among other things, ghostly figures, like knights with a stringy appearance, somewhere between skeletons and armour.

Souls

Rashid Johnson

For the artist, they represent souls. The prices reflect the gallery’s reputation: between 500,000 and 1.4 million dollars. In 2022 one of his paintings sold at auction for 2.9 million dollars.

Kader Attia

On a more modest scale the French gallery Mor Charpentier, known for its visual artists with activist messages, has just  moved to more confortable premises in  Le Marais. For its inaugural exhibition it presents, for the first time, the work of the Franco-Algerian artist who lives in Berlin, Kader Attia (born in 1970) (See here an other interview of Kader Attia). Highly prized by international institutions – he was, among other things, curator of the Berlin Biennale in 2022 – he creates sculptures, videos and installations that recount recent history, the effects of colonization and the principle of reparation.

Rain sticks

The key work in his Parisian exhibition is a set of traditional Indian rain sticks, operated by very contemporary robots, which create disturbing music. His works are for sale between 45,000 and 250,000 euros.

Gaetano Pesce

The fairs established in the wake of Art Basel are also proliferating. This is the case for Design Miami Paris, running from October 15 to 20 with 24 participants installed in a private hotel in the 7th arrondissement. The range of high-end furniture and art objects includes an exhibition by one of the great reference points in the field, the Italian Gaetano Pesce, who died in April 2024 at the age of 84. It is organized by the New York art gallery Salon 94.

Art or design?

Gaetano Pesce

Pesce has always worked with technical experiments and humour, too, while juggling the sense of equivocation between art and design. Glenn Adamson, Pesce’s executor, points out: “He was very free and didn’t want to be confined to the idea of ​​doing just one or the other.”

The armchairs from the “La Famiglia” series, made of felt dipped in resin and cut out, his ultimate achievements, are reminiscent of caricatures of ghosts. (For sale starting from 20,000 euros in an edition of 20 copies).

Clément Delépine

In contrast with this euphoric context for art in Paris, the global climate remains gloomy. This isn’t denied by the director of the fair, Clément Delépine: “Indeed, according to the Art Market report, the market in 2024 contracted by 4% compared to 2023. My only response is my responsibility to bring together the best galleries and the best collectors in the world.” (See here an other interview of Clément Delépine).

Malevich

Kasimir Malevich

In this respect, the fair is a complete success, with a powerful demonstration of strength on the part of the multinational galleries. Hauser & Wirth presents nothing less than a painting by Malevich (1879-1935), the hero of the Russian avant-garde.  The gallery does not communicate about the asking price but the Suprematist Construction, painted in 1915, sold for €30 million in 2015.

Richter and Dumas

Gerhard Richter

Zwirner is offering an astonishing ensemble of canvases depicting groups by the great German painter Gerhard Richter (See here a report about Gerhard Richter) and the highly talented South African painter Marlène Dumas (See here a report about Marlene Dumas) (to be sold for between €2 and €10 million).

Marlene Dumas

Early Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Galleries are very much in tune with what’s going on in Paris museums. On the Gagosian stand, for example, we find an early Pollock painting from 1939-1940, a cubist crucifixion (for sale at around 3.5 million dollars), which could almost be included in the Musée Picasso’s exhibition  called “Jackson Pollock, les années de jeunesse” .

Tom Wesselmann

Tom Wesselmann

Several stands displayed works by the American Pop artist Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004), who is the subject of a retrospective at the Fondation Vuitton. Wesselmann focused on parts of the female body, which he turned into fetish objects by presenting them in large scale and often also in relief or as shaped pieces: a hand holding a cigarette…. A mouth dripping with smoke…

The fantasy of the woman embodied in details and gestures. This is the case for Gagosian and Almine Rech also, who is offering one of his big cut-out canvases, ‘Smoker’ from 1980, for sale at around 5 million dollars. The record auction price in 2008 for Wesselmann was 6.7 million dollars for a work on the same theme.

Loie Hollowell

Loie Hollowell

From the younger galleries,  San Francisco-based Jessica Silverman is displaying in the nave of the Grand Palais, among others, the paintings by American artist Loie Hollowell (born in 1984), whose abstract canvases which subtly speak of the female body are already featured in collections at nineteen museums around the world, from Lacma in Los Angeles to the Centre Pompidou.

In 2023 one of her paintings sold for 2.3 million dollars. At the fair, Silverman is presenting a small diptych for 170,000 dollars, a particularly reasonable price for Hollowell. She explains: “We are very attentive to the prices we charge. Here, it’s the small format that justifies it.”

Enzo Cucci

Enzo Cucci

Among the French galleries known for their  experimental choices, Balice-Hertling is nevertheless exhibiting a series of artists whose careers are already well advanced: ‘In these difficult times, I want to show, as a lesson, artists who are capable of resilience”  says Daniele Balice. This is the case of the Italian artist Enzo Cucchi (born 1949), who was once forgotten after his exceptional success in the 1980s. In the large painting he produced in 2021, he depicts a skeleton of a man lying on the back of a  horse (for sale at €90,000). If the message seems pessimistic, the work sold out on the first day.

Marianne Boesky

With the tenacity that characterizes art market professionals, the Marianne Boesky gallery from New York, which was not accepted at the Grand Palais, is organizing a small temporary exhibition in the Elysée district. We can see, among others, the very subtle work of Pier Paolo Calzolari (born in 1943) (on sale for between 90,000 and 750,000 dollars), one of the activists from the Arte Povera movement that they have represented since 2010.

Arte Povera

Pier Paolo Calzolari

The Bourse de Commerce is currently staging a high profile show curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev about the movement. The Artprice database indicates that 350,000 euros is the highest price ever recorded for Calzolari. The major movement, born in Italy in the 1960s, which often used simple materials, should end up seeing its value rise under the effect of the exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce. Unless the crisis intensifies.

https://www.artbasel.com/

https://www.miumiu.com/ww/en/miumiu-club/special-projects/

https://www.hauserwirth.com/fr/

https://www.mor-charpentier.com/fr/

https://designmiami.com/fair/paris-2024

https://marianneboeskygallery.com/

Kiki Smith