The_Art_Newspaper_-_November_2016

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Art Market Fairs

THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016

SCREENS: TEFAF. SCULLY: © DAVID OWENS. HORST: © THE CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS

Paris Photo turns 20

After last year’s catastrophe, fair expands its exhibition spaces

Paris. Last year was one to

forget for the Parisian photogra-

phy fair. The terrorist attacks

that took place on Friday 13

November and caused the

deaths of around 130 people,

forced the city into shutdown.

The fair was cut short, forgo-

ing a weekend’s worth of sales

and almost 40,000 visitors. This

year, the fair and the city’s insti-

tutions are rallying to put last

year’s events out of mind and

give the grande dame of pho-

tography fairs the 20th anniver-

sary it deserves.

The the Pompidou Centre

is showing 100 works by 40

artists from the past ten years

of acquisitions—part of its inter-

nationally acclaimed collection

of more than 40,000 prints. A

number of special exhibitions

are also being organised in the

Grand Palais to complement

the gallery stands. They include

Leica’s exhibition of work by the

37 laureates of its Leica Oskar

Barnack Award, including Luc

Delahaye and Jane Evelyn

Atwood; and a show of works

owned by JP Morgan, one of the

fair’s oicial partners, from its

own collection by artists includ-

ing Diane Arbus, John Baldes-

sari, Cecil Beaton, Robert Dois-

neau and Walker Evans.

This year’s edition of Paris

Photo has 178 exhibitors in

all, 26 of which are new to the

fair. Following its success last

year, the Prismes sector has

expanded this year to a larger

space in the Salon d’Honneur

of the Grand Palais; there are 14

presentations of works, includ-

ing White Space Gallery’s selec-

tion of prints by the Russian

cinematographer Andrei Tark-

ovsky, and an Edward Bur-

tynsky display courtesy of the

Howard Greenberg, Nicholas

Metivier, Bryce Wolkowitz and

Flowers galleries. E.R.

• Paris Photo, Grand Palais: VIP
  opening, 9 November; public days,
  10-13 November


• For an interview with Paris
  Photo’s artistic director, Christoph
  Wiesner, see our photography
  special report, Review, p6

Horst P. Horst’s Muriel Maxwell

(1939), on Bernheimer’s stand

Brexit seen as

irrelevant as

Frieze fairs post

strong sales

London. Because most international gal-
leries with outposts in London sell works
in foreign currency, they are unafected
by the pound’s devaluation following
the UK’s vote in July to leave the EU. “We
don’t price much in pounds—mostly in
euros and dollars,” says Angela Choon of
David Zwirner gallery. Some UK galler-
ies also price works in foreign currency.
Bernard Jacobson, the gallerist, says:
“We buy Motherwell in dollars, so we
sell him in dollars. With others, such as
Pierre Soulages, we buy in euros, so we
sell in euros.”
Collectors were out in force at both
fairs. At Frieze Masters, Mnuchin Gallery
sold Sean Scully’s Gate (1997) and Bridget
Riley’s Delos (1983), at the VIP opening,
each priced between $1m and $1.5m.
Hauser & Wirth sold a small Alexander
Calder stabile (a stationary sculpture)
for $600,000 and a much-talked-about
decomposing cheese painting by Dieter
Roth for more than $500,000. Marlbor-
ough Fine Art sold around £1m worth of
work by Paula Rego.
Meanwhile at Frieze London, Hauser
& Wirth’s “L’atelier d’artistes” stand, was
designed to look like an artist’s studio,
overflowing with works. The gallery sold
sculptures by Fischli/Weiss and Thomas
Houseago, priced at around $75,000, and
a small Phyllida Barlow sculpture for
£50,000. Goodman Gallery sold William
Kentridge’s charcoal on paper work
Observer (2016) for $450,000. T.A.N.

Sean Scully’s Gate (1997) on Mnuchin Gallery’s stand at

Frieze Masters in London

New York. Tefaf made its much-antic-
ipated American debut in New York
last month (22-26 October), drawing
around 6,500 people during its opening
weekend. The Park Avenue Armory’s
dusky interior was transformed for the
European Fine Art Fair with airy scrims,
pale carpeting and cascading flower
“curtains” by the Dutch designer Tom
Postma, while champagne flowed and
oysters were shucked on the spot for the
well-heeled, if rain-damp, crowd.
The fair, announced in February, has
joined with the former Spring Masters,
founded by Artvest, to present vetted
objects older than 1920 in October and
Modern and contemporary art and
design in May, efectively replacing the
now-defunct International Fine Art and
Antique Dealers Show. Dealers grum-
bled about logistical problems that left
them scrambling to hang their stands,
but these issues were largely invisi-
ble to attendees. Lewis Smith of Lon-
don’s Koopman Rare Art, who brought
19th-century silver pieces by Paul Storr,
says, “It was tense but successful,”
adding, “all this will improve every year.”

New York’s taste for Old Masters

“This is a different level,” says Boris
Vervoordt of Axel Vervoordt. Referring
to previous Armory fairs, he says, “It
had gotten a little brown and boring.”
Vervoordt was among the select galler-
ies to set up space in the period rooms
upstairs, used for a commercial fair
for the first time. Among the treas-
ures on ofer was a large 16th-century
Fontainebleau tapestry from the royal
manufacture, with an asking price
of €380,000. Nearby, at Christophe de
Quénetain of Paris, exhibiting for the
first time in New York, a Franz Zeller

secretaire (around 1750-60) with moth-

er-of-pearl inlay and a Rothschild prov-

enance that was priced in the region of

$2.75m had drawn an admiring crowd.

Based on Tefaf’s reputation for

quality, expectations were high, and

the 94 dealers pulled out all the stops,

stocking specially designed booths

with new discoveries. Many Europeans

pointed to an unmet demand for fine

Old Master paintings in New York as a

main reason for signing up, and buyers

were seen making serious inquiries on

pieces at the De Jonckheere, Tomasso

Brothers and Moretti stands.

Edmondo di Robilant, of Robilant

and Voena sold four Italian paintings,

including Vanvitelli’s View of the

Darsena, Naples (1700) for €1.8m to a

European collector, and St John the

Tefaf makes New York debut

Dealers rush to satisfy American demand for top-quality art and antiques

Americans shun Fiac

but Europeans step in

Paris. “Since I started doing Fiac, I have never seen so few

Americans. There are five good US collectors here,” said

the Paris-based dealer Thaddaeus Ropac. He added that

almost all the works on his booth had sold to “core Euro-

peans”. Parisian collectors bought works by Tony Cragg,

Yan Pei-Ming and Robert Longo, and Ropac also sold Georg

Baselitz’s painting Guidiamo (2016), priced at €500,000, to

a German buyer.

The recent terrorist attacks in France, the timing of

discussions over Brexit by the UK government and the

impending US presidential election are all likely to have

deterred US collectors from attending the Paris-based fair,

although dealers at Fiac cited the change in dates of Lon-

don’s Frieze art fair this year, because of the Jewish holiday

of Yom Kippur, as another factor. “As an American collec-

tor, you had to make a choice,” said the New York-based

dealer Rachel Lehmann. Her gallery, Lehmann Maupin,

sold works by the South Africa-based artist Liza Lou, priced

between $100,000 and $450,000, along with works by the

Paris-born artist. G.H. and A.S.

Report

Preview

Report

Baptist (around 1610), by Bartolomeo

Manfredi, to an Asian collector for

$2.5m. “We are certainly happy with

the outcome, having had some pretty

patchy runs at various art fairs in

Europe,” di Robilant says.

By the end of the opening weekend,

London’s Rupert Wace Ancient Art sold

a Hellenistic bronze bull to a New York

collector for around $300,000 and an

Egyptian hieroglyph panel on wood for

around $100,000 to a California-based

collector. “Our clients so far have been

private US collectors mostly known to

us, but we have met a couple of new

buyers, one completely new to the field

of antiquities,” says Claire Brown, a

gallery director.

Several dealers say that New York

has been in want of a museum-quality

art and antiques destination until now.

“The overall dealer quality is what out-

shines all previous events,” says Koop-

man’s Smith, who has shown at various

fairs in New York for 35 years. “No other

event in America can compare.”

Sarah P. Hanson

A Japanese six-

fold paper screen

by Tansaku (1688-

1769) on Gregg

Baker Asian Art’s

stand at Tefaf

New York