Luxury Brands Flock to Inaugural Edition of Art Basel Fair in Paris
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PARIS — Leading luxury brands took advantage of the inaugural edition of Paris+ by Art Basel to stage citywide events that had the French capital buzzing even before the art fair’s official opening to the public on Thursday.
Within minutes of the preview opening on Wednesday morning, the Grand Palais Éphémère temporary structure, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, was thrumming with visitors ready to whip out their credit cards. At the Louis Vuitton stand, staffers had to explain that the objects on display were not for sale.
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The French luxury house partnered with Art Basel for the first time to highlight its longstanding relationships with artists including Richard Prince, Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama, who was present in spirit via a lifesize statue created for her first collaboration with Vuitton in 2012, which will be followed by a second collection set to launch next year.
Among the 43 works on show at the hard-to-miss stand, located just to the left of the entrance, were a giant panda sculpture by Takashi Murakami, a travel trunk designed by Cindy Sherman, and a wall of handbags designed by artists as part of Vuitton’s Artycapucines collection, the latest edition of which launched in select stores on Wednesday.
“It allows us to put a little smile on everybody’s face,” said Michael Burke, chairman and chief executive officer of Louis Vuitton, surveying the early crowd. “Everybody can be so serious in the art world, and Kusama has taught us, Murakami has taught us, that you don’t always have to be deadly serious.”
Although the walls between art and fashion have crumbled in recent years, with a glut of collaborations between luxury brands and art world stars, the prominence of the Vuitton stand may raise a few eyebrows among purists — but Burke doesn’t mind.
“I would hope a few would be shocked. I’m convinced not all of them will be shocked. The snobs will be shocked. We’re not snobs,” he demurred. Vuitton’s partnership with Art Basel is surfing on the euphoria of post-pandemic social gatherings and trade events.
“When you’re given that opportunity to have that type of discourse and engagement with this crowd, who is still very, very hungry coming out of the pandemic, you want to contribute to that,” Burke noted. “I think before the pandemic, we were so serious in everything we did, and then having been gone for over two years, when you come back, everybody’s a little bit giddy.”
That was reflected in brisk deal-making. Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot noted there was “discernible new excitement around both edge-defining contemporary art and discoveries in modern and historical art,” noting that the first day had signaled that “collectors and curators have gotten the assignment,” snapping major pieces within hours of the opening.
By Wednesday evening, the gallery had sold newly produced works from George Condo for $2.6 million; the energetic blue swirls of Rashid Johnson’s “Bruise Painting ‘Sanctuary,'” snapped up for $1 million; and an Avery Singer piece, which went to a European museum for $800,000.
The sentiment was echoed by Cécile Verdier, president of Christie’s France, which partnered with Kering to display 15 sculptures from its upcoming New York auction of the works of Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne in the courtyard of the French luxury group’s picturesque headquarters, located in a former hospital dating back to 17th century.
“There is an effervescence around Paris as an art capital that is due to several existing factors, and the fair is the extra ingredient on top,” she said.
The announcement earlier this year that MCH Group, the owner of the Art Basel fairs, would dislodge France’s FIAC contemporary art fair from its traditional fall slot at the Grand Palais reflects a revival in the French capital’s status as an art market, reshuffling the decks for participating galleries and sponsors. In addition to Vuitton, partners of the Paris+ show include Audemars Piguet, David Yurman, Groupe Galeries Lafayette, Lalique and Guerlain.
The first edition features 156 leading French and international galleries, spread across the main exhibition space and citywide sites including the Tuileries Garden and Place Vendôme, where access is free, organizers said.
“I was at the fair this morning. There are a lot of familiar exhibitors, some of which also took part in FIAC, but it’s a smaller fair than it will be when the Grand Palais reopens [following renovations]. So there are only important galleries and important works, and you felt that the whole world was there,” Verdier said.
“There’s a lot of excitement around this fair due to the international reach of the Art Basel brand, which is a guarantee of quality. FIAC was a very nice fair, but perhaps more focused on emerging artists,” she added.
Verdier noted that Paris+ opened amid a busy calendar of fall exhibitions in local museums, with shows devoted to artists including Oskar Kokoschka, Sam Szafran, Edvard Munch, Joan Mitchell and Alice Neel, among others. “I don’t know any capital worldwide where this many exhibitions have opened between early September and mid-October,” she marveled.
And the city has spruced up since the coronavirus pandemic broke out in 2020, with the opening of several new institutions including the Bourse de Commerce, the contemporary art museum owned by billionaire François Pinault, the founder of Kering and owner of Christie’s.
“It’s an ecosystem that was already there, but that’s expanding. When you look at Avenue Matignon, where Christie’s has its headquarters, a lot of galleries are setting up shop in the area. It’s changed a lot in the last three years,” said Verdier, pointing to the arrival in the area of art dealers including Emmanuel Perrotin, Per Skarstedt and Nathalie Obadia, and the upcoming opening of the Hauser & Wirth gallery on nearby Rue François 1er.
Yana Peel, global head of arts and culture at Chanel, was also feeling the buzz.
“Paris+ today had wonderful energy,” she said at a party on Wednesday night celebrating the launch of Assemble, a three-year partnership between the Chanel Culture Fund and the Centre Pompidou contemporary art museum that aims to foster a public dialogue with artists, architects, scientists and other innovators. “There’s amazing museum shows on at the moment, and I think what’s really exciting is to have all the artists here with us tonight.”
The event, held on a fifth-floor terrace with panoramic views of Paris, drew artists including Kehinde Wiley, Sheila Hicks, Mickalene Thomas and Mire Lee, as well as Ruth Rogers, the widow of Pompidou architect Richard Rogers, accompanied by her stepson Ab.
Among Assemble’s planned initiatives are an annual conference to shape the future cultural program of the Pompidou, which is scheduled to close in 2024 for several years of renovations, but will continue to host exhibitions off-site. It will also create a lab dedicated to advancing sustainability and regenerative practices in design and architecture.
Unlike some of its competitors, Chanel doesn’t funnel its artist collaborations into products. Instead, it is banking on the global cultural aura of its partnerships with leading art institutions, and the Chanel Next Prize, which supports individual creators.
“We’ve had a century of cultural philanthropy. If we look at Gabrielle Chanel and her work with Stravinsky and Diaghilev, it was very interdisciplinary, it was very modern, and it was very focused on creating conditions for artists to dare,” Peel explained.
“Artists are at the heart of life. You can see the energy in this room, and artists often show us the way forward. We live in such complex times and Gerhard Richter said art is the greatest form of hope. So I think we look to artists for their beauty and for their prescience,” she added.
Peel noted that the Pompidou partnership was inspired by philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who encouraged institutions to think about knowledge exchange.
“What is demanded of future audiences who may never know a world without the internet? What are the questions that museums like this should be asking as they also preserve history? I think these are all really important questions, and I think it’s very, very exciting for Chanel to engage with the thinkers, the doers, the creators who are really defining what matters most and what’s coming next,” she said.
Supporting artists to create and exhibit to the public, rather than adding to a company collection, is also what Audemars Piguet is aiming for. Now in its 10th year, its Contemporary art program commissioned Andreas Angelidakis for a three-week immersive installation at the headquarters of the French Communist Party, a landmark building designed by Oscar Niemeyer.
Titled “Center for the Critical Appreciation of Antiquity,” the Greek artist’s first solo exhibition in Paris reframes antiquity through a queer lens, turning the building’s famous domed conference room into a subterranean archeological excavation filled with plush blocks in shapes inspired by classic architectural features.
Meanwhile, Lalique unveiled its collaboration with James Turrell, which includes two limited edition fragrances in crystal bottles, marking the first time it has created a perfume with an artist.
The busy schedule of auxiliary activities was set to last for the duration of Paris+, which runs through Sunday. Hermès is staging what it bills as a “poetic and cinematographic” performance based on the myth of Pegasus. “La Fabrique de la légèreté,” conceived by choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey and her husband, filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael, is due to run at the Grande Halle de la Villette from Oct. 21 to 28.
With contributions from Lily Templeton
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