Around the galleries – Paris+ par Art Basel is back with even grander plans

From the October 2023 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.

Paris+ par Art Basel

‘A bolder, bigger, better edition’ – that’s how Clément Delépine, director of Paris+ par Art Basel, describes his aims for the fair’s second outing. The most recent offshoot of Art Basel returns to the Grand Palais Éphémère, the temporary exhibition space in the Champs de Mars, which is open until 2024 while the Grand Palais itself is renovated in time for the Paris Olympics – meaning that, as Delépine puts it, ‘it’s still a year of transition for us. We’re defining our identity – both in Paris and vis-à-vis the Art Basel fairs.’

This edition of Paris+ features an expanded public programme and new curators, institutional collaborations and venues across the city. These include the Place de l’Institut – the forecourt of the Institut de France – and the Palais d’Iéna (‘Built in 1937 by Auguste Peret, who was the master of concrete in France. It’s astonishingly beautiful,’ Delépine says). It’s there that an exhibition he describes as a ‘dialogue’ between veteran artists Michelangelo Pistoletto and Daniel Buren will take place, presented by Galleria Continua. As Delépine puts it: ‘I like to think it’s all very ambitious.’

Last year, the talks programme took place in a boat moored near the fair. The venue has been upgraded this year, thanks to a new partner: the Centre Pompidou, which is both hosting the talks and also collaborating on their programming. Unusually, talks will be free for all to attend – with or without a ticket to Paris+. ‘It’s our responsibility to speak beyond the walls of the event and reach a broader audience,’ Delépine says.

Key elements from last year’s edition have returned as collaborations have been renewed. Annabelle Ténèze, director-designate of the Louvre-Lens in northern France, is back to curate ‘La cinquième saison’ (‘The fifth season’), a group show co-produced with the Louvre at the Jardin des Tuileries; there are also public displays at the Place Vendôme (a 7.6m-high aluminium sculpture presented by Urs Fischer and Gagosian) and the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins at the Beaux-Arts (an exhibition of video work and collages by the British artist Jessica Warboys in collaboration with gallery Gaudel de Stampa).

What would Delépine single out as a personal highlight? ‘Really, it’s like asking me to choose between my children,’ he says. Nevertheless, he mentions the 15 galleries who are participating for the first time. These include New York gallery PPOW, which is showing what he calls ‘a really institutional-level presentation’ of works by artist David Wojnarowicz and his mentor and lover, the photographer Peter Hujar, and Los Angeles gallery Blum & Poe, which has a solo show by the artist-musician Lonnie Holley.

This year, 60 of the 154 galleries are French or have an outpost in France. A show of work by the modernist painter Jean Hélion presented by Paris gallery Applicat-Prazan promises to be a highlight. ‘It took them around 10 years to gather all the pieces – and quite frankly, they’re the most important seven paintings by the painter in private hands today.’ Delépine adds: ‘That shows the commitment that galleries are willing to make to Paris+. To me, it’s proof that we’re doing something right.’

Paris+ par Art Basel is at Grand Palais Éphémère and venues around the city from 20–22 October.

Monsignor Ungar (c. 1952), R.B. Kitaj. R.B. Kitaj Estate. Photo: courtesy of Piano Nobile, London; © R.B. Kitaj.

Gallery highlights

Chopped & Screwed
3–28 October
White Cube New York

White Cube is opening its New York gallery, a three-storey space on the Upper East Side, with an exhibition riffing off the idea of distortion, sampling and remixing in music. Taking its title from a DJing technique originating in Houston in the early 1990s, ‘Chopped & Screwed’ features visual artists using mash-up methods to reimagine existing material, including Christian Marclay, Theaster Gates and Tiona Nekkia McClodden.

R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles
25 October–26 January 2024
Piano Nobile, London

After the death of his wife Sandra Fisher in 1994, R.B. Kitaj left London – where he had lived for nearly 40 years – and moved to Los Angeles, where he remained until his death in 2007. Until now, few of the grief-saturated paintings Kitaj produced in the city have been seen in Britain. For the first significant survey of the artist in the UK for a decade, these are on show alongside 40 paintings, pastels and drawings created across his career.

A Mediterranean Harbor At Sunset With Fisherfolk At The Water’s Edge, A Lighthouse And A Man Of War At Anchor In The Bay (1761), Claude-Joseph Vernet

The Hub of the World: Art in Eighteenth-Century Rome
6 October–30 November
Nicholas Hall, New York

To mark the centenary of Anthony M. Clark’s birth, Nicholas Hall is holding an exhibition that honours the tastes of the connoisseur and scholar, who did much to influence collecting habits in 1950s and ’60s America. Sixty works by artists who either lived in or visited 18th-century Rome appear alongside Clark’s notebooks, while a catalogue of essays by art historians offers further insights.

Paula Rego: Letting Loose
22 September–11 November
Victoria Miro, London

The 1980s was the decade in which Paula Rego shifted her focus from collage to painting, creating freewheeling, Art Brut-inspired works influenced by Jean Dubuffet and Henry Darger. The results of this transformative period are the focus of the appropriately-named ‘Letting Loose’ – the confident, seemingly casual handling of paint, and a sense of creative play, are hallmarks of Rego’s work from this era.

Marathon (Running II) (1983), Paula Rego. Photo: courtesy Ostrich Arts Ltd and Victoria Miro; © Ostrich Arts Ltd

Fairs in focus

Highlights International Art Fair
18–22 October
Munich, Germany

The Residenz, a palace in Munich – and the largest city palace in Germany – was once home to the Wittelsbach monarchs. Now it plays host to a grand institution of a rather different sort: Highlights International Art Fair, which returns for its 14th edition. Though its 57 exhibitors are mostly drawn from the best dealers in the German-speaking world, a sprinkling of London, Milan and Paris-based galleries appears among them. Together, their wares span 3,000 years of art history.

The highlights of Highlights include Roman torso sculptures offered by Basel-based Galerie Cahn; an early 17th-century ‘drinking ship’ by goldsmith Esaias zur Linden at Helga Matzke European Silver, from nearby Grünwald; Meissen porcelain, including an impish monkey-shaped teapot of c. 1735, from Langeloh Porcelain, based at Weinheim. And, of course, modern and contemporary art can also be found in abundance. The lithograph Kerze II (1989) by Gerhard Richter, one of the artist’s emblematic depictions of a burning candle, is offered by the Düsseldorf-based Galerie Schwarzer.

From the October 2023 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.