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And just like that, we’re back in Paris. Not for a fashion showcase, mind you, but rather for the newly revamped Art Basel Paris. Why revamped? Well, while this technically marks the third edition of the global art fair brand’s outing in the French capital, previous iterations have taken place under the name ‘Paris+ par Art Basel’ at the Grand Palais Éphémère — a temporary structure installed next to the Eiffel Tower while its original namesake underwent a three-year renovation.
More than just a mere name change, the rebrand reflects a significant expansion in the size, scale and impact of the event, which its relocation to the Beaux-Arts exhibition space has allowed, affording it reputational parity with Art Basel’s three pre-existing annual showcases in Miami, Hong Kong and Basel. “With this new name, we’ve reinforced our commitment to the city and its dynamic cultural ecosystem, leveraging the impact of the global Art Basel brand to further bolster the Parisian fair, underscore its ambition and amplify its resonance in Paris and the world,” says Vincenzo De Bellis, Art Basel director of fairs and exhibition platforms. Now an irrefutable must on the global art calendar, this year’s edition will host booths by 195 galleries — 53 of which are newcomers — marking a 27 per cent increase since last year’s Paris+.
It isn’t just what’s taking place within the Grand Palais that’s due to draw a global collector audience, though. Much like Frieze London, which took place last week, Art Basel Paris is expected to light up la ville lumière, with a panoply of events, parties and parallel activations taking place alongside the fair.
Here’s all you need to know about Art Basel Paris, which runs from 18 to 20 October.
Causes for optimism
As with last week’s Frieze London, Art Basel Paris takes place amid a dulled market climate. A report produced by Art Basel and UBS documents a 4 per cent fall in the value of the global art market in 2023 versus the year prior, with sluggish auction sales reported by European auction houses in Q1 and Q2 of 2024. It should be noted, however, that despite the general unease, encouraging signs of recovery have appeared in recent months. “Mid-season auctions in New York marked an improvement from last year,” notes Kabir Jhala, art market editor for The Art Newspaper. “Gallerists who attended the Armory Show last month also expressed that an appetite has returned in New York. And like much in culture, what America starts, the rest of the world often follows.”
Jhala’s hypothesis seems to have been vindicated by reports from the opening days of Frieze London, where sales were more brisk than anticipated — particularly among the fair’s emerging galleries, who benefited from a redesign of the tent that placed them close to the entrance. Ginny on Frederick, an independent gallery located in London’s Clerkenwell, had sold out its solo presentation of works by rising artist Charlotte Edey in the first few hours of the fair’s VIP preview opening.
The knock-on effect for galleries presenting at Art Basel Paris remains to be seen, of course, but it bodes well, particularly given the buzz around the French fair that had been building long before its opening. “Art Basel Paris is this year’s most-hyped fair, due to two previous successful editions — so successful that it is threatening to overshadow the fair brand’s original namesake event,” Jhala says. “Equally important is its shift to the Grand Palais, which increases gallery numbers and stand sizes, and provides a resplendent setting. The crème of the collecting class is expected to show up and spend.”
The Grand Palais
Indeed, Art Basel Paris’s setting is being touted as a key draw, with the ornate, glass-roofed landmark — sat square in one of the city’s toniest neighbourhoods — offering an air of elevation and occasion that’s difficult to match. Following on from the Olympics (the fencing and taekwondo competitions were hosted in the space) and Chanel (which staged its most recent fashion show here), Art Basel will be the third party to take up temporary residence in the space since its renovation, adding to the sense of novelty for gallerists, collectors and casual visitors alike.
Those who enter the space will see that this year’s fair has been divided into three primary sections, including ‘Emergence’, an area dedicated to emerging galleries sponsored by Galeries Lafayette; and ‘Premise’, a new addition in which nine Art Basel newcomers will present “highly singular projects that may include work produced before 1900”, says De Bellis, with the turn of the 20th century typically marking the cut-off point for works presented at the fair. “Premise reflects Art Basel Paris’s mission to foster a more inclusive definition of the art historical canon.”
Among this year’s exhibitors are a number of galleries that, this time around at least, seem to have been so drawn in by the energy around Art Basel Paris that they’ve opted to forgo presenting at Frieze London. They include New York-based Casey Kaplan, Mexico City-based Kurimanzutto and London-based Pilar Corrias, with the latter seen as particularly noteworthy due to the location of its home base. “Following the recent opening of our flagship gallery in Mayfair and three solo exhibitions by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ella Walker and Vivien Zhang across our London galleries this autumn, my focus has been on our international art fair programming,” Pilar Corrias, the gallery’s founding director, says of her motivations for opting for Art Basel Paris this year. “With the fair’s rebranding and the newly renovated Grand Palais, Art Basel Paris is a particularly exciting fair to be working towards this year and to showcase new and significant work from our ground-breaking roster of artists.”
Another feature worth observing will be the development of the Art Basel Shop, the itinerant concept store that debuted at the fair’s edition in Basel, Switzerland last June. Once again, the retail concept has been curated by Sarah Andelman, former co-founder and creative director of iconic Parisian store Colette, which shuttered in 2017, and now founder of consulting and curatorial platform Just An Idea.
Just as in Basel, the Art Basel Shop’s Parisian iteration will feature an array of limited-edition product runs created in collaboration with artists and brands that have a particular affiliation with the city. “We really adapt each curation for each city,” Andelman says, highlighting the AB by Artist apparel and accessories collection created by Paris-based artist collective Claire Fontaine, and the Art Basel edition of Guerlain’s fragrance Œillet Pourpre. Also on offer are exclusive products linked to current major exhibitions around the city, including the blockbuster ‘Surrealism’ exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and the Tom Wesselmann-focused Pop Art show at Fondation Louis Vuitton, and an expanded clothing offering, building on the fact that “apparel was a very successful category in Basel”, says Andelman.
The fair space isn’t the only place you’ll be able to shop the products, however. A mark of its keen interest in fleshing out its lifestyle proposal, the Art Basel Shop will host an off-site pop-up at Dover Street Market Paris from 18 to 27 October — extending a week beyond the dates of the fair itself. The offering, at the recently opened Marais outpost of the emblematic concept store, is yet to be confirmed, but it will comprise a selection of key products from both the Basel and Paris curations.
Paris as a canvas
Indeed, the impact of Art Basel Paris is anything but limited to the Grand Palais. This year brings the fair’s most extensive public programme to date, with a number of the city’s celebrated landmarks animated by the occasion. The Place Vendôme, for example, will host a large-scale installation of three mushroom sculptures by German artist Carsten Höller, while the Petit Palais — just across the road from the main venue — will host an open-access conversations programme convened by Paris-based curators Pierre-Alexandre Matéos and Charles Teyssou. Scheduled talks include a discourse on urban avant-garde resistance between Serpentine artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist, artists Jane Dickson and Futura 2000, and musician and poet James Massiah, as well as another featuring artist and brand consultant Ana Viktoria Dzinic, artist and trend forecaster Dena Yago, and the designers behind Parisian It-brand All-In on the intersections of art and fashion.
To that end, the Palais d’Iéna will host one of the week’s most ambitious activations, a multilayered project staged by Miu Miu, the official sponsor of Art Basel Paris’s public programme. Staged in the location of the brand’s seasonal fashion shows, the activation — titled ‘Tales Tellers’ — will bring to life the films that Miu Miu has commissioned since 2011 through its Women’s Tales short film series, and through the site-specific art installations within which its runway shows have taken place since 2021. There will also be a space dedicated to screenings of the films, as well as a talk programme featuring the artists and filmmakers that made them, including Sophia Al-Maria, Janicza Bravo and Shuang Li.
Conceived by interdisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga — who also devised the impressive newspaper press-inspired set for Miu Miu’s most recent show — and convened by Elvira Dyangani Ose, the incumbent director of Barcelona’s MACBA Contemporary Art Museum, the project is a direct manifestation of Miuccia Prada’s desire “to bring together the work done by Miu Miu within film and visual culture”, Dyangani Ose says. “Visitors won’t encounter a traditional exhibition. Instead, they will step into a vibrant and dynamic environment where art, design, performance and cinematic storytelling converge,” adds Macuga.
Brand power
Of course, Paris is a city in which the relationship between art and fashion is particularly well entrenched, as a glance at a number of major institutional openings coinciding with Art Basel Paris reveals. Lafayette Anticipations — home of the Foundations Galeries Lafayette — has just opened a major solo show by American artist Martine Syms, while Bourse de Commerce, one of the locations that houses the Pinault collection, opened the doors to its ‘Arte Povera’ exhibition last week.
Even publicly owned institutions such as the Centre Pompidou benefit from the cultural philanthropy of the city’s fashion houses; its landmark exhibition of contemporary Chinese artists, which also opened last week, has been supported by Chanel, which acquired 21 of the works on show for the museum’s permanent collection. “I am delighted that Chanel’s support will enable the Centre Pompidou to acquire works by some of the most dynamic young Chinese artists working today,” says Yana Peel, Chanel’s global head of arts and culture. “With these key acquisitions, we are helping expand the museum’s permanent collection of Chinese contemporary artists by over 20 per cent, including the significant addition of seven women artists.”
These aren’t, of course, the only significant partnerships between the worlds of fashion and art you’ll hear of this week. Back at the Grand Palais, Louis Vuitton will present a booth paying tribute to the brand’s long-standing relationship with architect and designer Frank Gehry, putting on display a selection of the Capucines bags he designed for the house as well as original sketches of Louis Vuitton’s Seoul outpost. Elsewhere, Vanity Fair is officially co-hosting the fair’s opening cocktail party, while Burberry is due to host an evening of conversation between Art Basel senior editor Patrick Steffen and artist Alvaro Barrington.
And yes, once this weekend’s over, you — and we — can finally get some well-earned rest.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
Correction: This article has been corrected to state that Charlotte Edey s solo presentation sold out in the first few hours of the fair’s VIP preview opening, not in the few hours before (16/10/24).
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