“It is better to envy than to pity”Our grandmothers said, who, as everyone knows, are always right. After years of very French masochism, Paris is regaining color on the international art scene thanks to a combination of factors: favorable taxation, which makes France the gateway for imports in Europe, public and private institutions, organizing the at the same time exhibitions that, in quantity, have no equivalent anywhere else, and the arrival of an important player, the Swiss group MCH, which organizes the Art Basel fairs.
The first, in Basel (Switzerland), is rightly considered the best art fair in the world: impeccable organization and the ability to attract the largest public and private collectors on the planet, the result of hard work over several decades, Originally started in the 1990s by one of its visionary directors, Lorenzo Rudolf.
Its branches successively created in Miami and then in Hong Kong have benefited from this label, although each has its own regional specificity. After unceremoniously dethroning FIAC from the niche it occupied for forty years, it modestly chose a convoluted (and unpronounceable) name, Paris+ by Art Basel, for its first edition in 2022. Today, it is no longer afraid to highlight its brand and integrate Art Basel . Paris and its 195 exhibitors in the portfolio of its other fairs.
Revive a struggling market
But Paris is not like Basel, nor is Miami, and even less like Hong Kong. As we have said, the museum offering is incomparable, the number of palaces and starred restaurants unmatched. And nothing replaces the surroundings of the Grand Palais, reopened after three years of construction. On Wednesday morning, October 16, during the inauguration, exhibitors and collectors looked to the sky, not in search of divine help, but to admire the immense glass ceiling that dominates the nave. “Do you know such a beautiful environment? »We hear echo in French, English, Korean or German.
“We are delighted to return here, it is a real injection of vitamins at a time when the art world is dedicated to complaining”confided, all smiles, the powerful Swiss merchant Iwan Wirth, partner of the multinational Hauser & Wirth. “The return to the Grand Palais plus Art Basel is a perfect combination”summarizes his Italian colleague Massimo De Carlo. Others, more pragmatic, regretted not having installed a marquee over their stand: the insolent sun this Wednesday cast shadows and lights that made visibility of the works extremely difficult.
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