Paris or London? International Collectors Now Have to Choose

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/arts/design/paris-fiac-london-frieze.html

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PARIS — Many international art collectors have to choose between two cities in October, now that Frieze and FIAC, the premier contemporary fairs in London and Paris, are no longer one after the other.

“Frieze is very established at this point and is the second big name after Art Basel,” said Chrissie Shearman, an art adviser based in New York, who chose to visit Paris this October, rather than London, on behalf of her clients. “FIAC is nevertheless the grande dame of art fairs in all the right ways and attracts the most discerning collectors.”

The 44th edition of the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, featuring 193 galleries from 30 countries, opened to V.I.P. visitors in the belle epoque setting of the Grand Palais on Wednesday. For the second year running, this was a full two weeks after the opening of Frieze London and Frieze Masters, making it difficult for long-haul visitors to combine all three fairs into a single trip.

This clear separation inevitably invites comparison. Unlike the twin-tent approach of Frieze, FIAC brings together both new works and classic modern art under a single cast-iron and glass roof, whose cathedral-like grandeur remains a compelling attraction.

“There’s a special luminosity to this place,” Robert Fitzpatrick, the former director and chief executive of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, said of the Grand Palais. “I see things I’ve seen at other fairs, but they sparkle here.”

Mr. Fitzpatrick might have added that Paris is also the birthplace of modern art, a heritage exemplified by the current “Picasso 1932: Année Érotique” exhibition of Marie-Therese Walter paintings at the Musée National Picasso-Paris.

While the commercial hyperactivity of this year’s Frieze Week drew plenty of American collectors to London, the FIAC crowd, as usual, was conspicuously weighted toward continental Europe.

“We wanted to expose Henry to a European audience,” said Tim Blum, co-founder of the gallery Blum & Poe, whose solo presentation of works by the acclaimed African-American artist Henry Taylor was among the most visited booths at FIAC. All eight of the new large-scale figure paintings Mr. Taylor made for the fair, priced between $80,000 and $110,000, found buyers within three hours of the preview. A 2011 sculptural installation of household objects, “It’s like a jungle,” that formed the centerpiece of the booth, was reserved for a buyer at $200,000.

Blum & Poe were among 106 established international galleries exhibiting on the ground floor of the Grand Palais. Upstairs, more than 80 dealers were presenting works by emerging or neglected artists, in an equivalent to the more affordable “Focus” section at Frieze London.

“Frieze and FIAC complement each other,” said the London collector Anita Zabludowicz, while browsing the Paris fair. “At Frieze the galleries are purposeful and focused. Here, it’s more about engaging with art. And dealers are more experimental in the Upper Galleries section at FIAC, which I find rewarding.”

That said, in the current risk-averse climate, many collectors have become more reluctant to gamble on little-known names. An award always helps. This month, the Berlin-based Lebanese sound and installation artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan was awarded the $100,000 Abraaj Group Art Prize. The Paris dealer Mor Charpentier was showing Mr. Hamdan’s powerful 2016 lightbox piece “Saydnaya (the missing 19db),” documenting, in visual terms, the spoken memories of survivors from a prison in Syria where many executions have taken place. Priced at 7,500 euros, or about $8,800, each, four examples from a total edition of five sold to collectors from Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

Away from the main event of a Frieze or a FIAC, satellite fairs also remain a key determiner of whether a city is worth the price of a plane ticket. London, for example, has the 1.54 fair of contemporary African art; Paris has Asia Now and Paris Internationale.

Founded by the French collector Claude Fain and his daughter Alexandra, Asia Now is Europe’s first boutique fair devoted exclusively to contemporary Asian art. The event’s third edition previewed on Tuesday in a rambling 19th-century mansion near the Arc de Triomphe.

“I’m on a crazy carousel,” said the Kuala Lumpur gallerist Richard Koh, referring to the global merry-go-round of international art fairs. This year, his gallery has also participated at fairs in Jakarta, Indonesia; Basel, Switzerland; Hong Kong, New York and Singapore.

“But there’s always a certain allure to Paris, and the collectors here are more receptive to looking at Asian art,” said Mr. Koh, one of 33 dealers exhibiting at the fair. Reflecting the current mood of many contemporary art dealers, Mr. Koh described business as “very slow” after the speculative excesses of the boom (and bust) in abstract art by young practitioners three or four years ago. He remained eager to promote his stable of young Malaysian artists, albeit at measured price points. A green and blue abstract by the Kuala Lumpur-based painter Yeoh Choo Chan, 28, was sold in transit to Asia Now, via Artsy.net, for $12,000.

It was a sign of our current collecting times that one of the most talked-about artists at the funky pop-up Paris Internationale fair was not an American 20-something, but a rediscovered Dutch painter born in 1939.

This year’s edition of the dealer-organized event previewed on Tuesday in the Brutalist chic setting of a converted parking garage in the Haut-Marais. Like a sort of grunge version of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the building’s concrete ramp rose through five floors of presentations from 72 emerging galleries, culminating in a rooftop terrace with a spectacular view of Paris.

The Los Angeles gallery Château Shatto was showing works by Jacqueline de Jong, an abstract painter who in the 1960s was a member of the anticapitalist Situationist International movement. In recent years, she has been living in rural France.

The centerpiece of Château Shatto’s display of Ms. de Jong’s work was the monumental 1987 canvas “Ceux qui vont en bateau,” showing a dreamlike scene of fighting animals. Reminiscent in style of both German Expressionist and Cobra painting, this work is now on offer to a European foundation. In an event where most works were €10,000 or less, it was priced at €65,000.

“This is not a euphoric period,” said Jennifer Flay, director of FIAC, describing the mood among contemporary art dealers. “Everyone understands the natural fluctuations of the market. It’s difficult to survive as a young gallery.”

However, “FIAC Week,” like its London equivalent, gives both emerging and established galleries the opportunity to engage with an international audience. But now Britain has begun negotiations to leave the European Union, and Christie’s and Sotheby’s are expanding their auctions in Paris. On Thursday night, Christie’s sold a version of the Alberto Giacometti sculpture “Grande femme II” to a telephone bidder for €24.9 million, a price higher than any achieved in London during the most recent Frieze Week auctions.

To be sure, the international art fair calendar is a merry-go-round. But in the changing geopolitical climate, will Paris be the horse collectors increasingly want to choose?