In Paris, Fashion Is Betting on Art Basel’s Big Bang

PARIS – A month after the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, and barely a fortnight after the Paris women’s season, the city has once again geared into hyperdrive: France’s biggest art fair returned to the newly-renovated Grand Palais for the first time since 2019, rebranded and reborn as the first-ever Art Basel Paris.

After the country’s long-running art event FIAC lost its contract to Art Basel in 2021, the fair was condemned to two years of sombre purgatory, taking place inside the Grand Palais Éphémère—a black box venue on the Champ des Mars under the awkward moniker of “Paris Plus.”

This new incarnation is hoped to become the grandest annual art fair in the world—and fashion brands have taken notice.

On Wednesday, an unseasonably warm October day cast a pleasing glow over the labyrinthine network of blue-chip gallery booths as the first wave of VIP art collectors, advisers and press were admitted to the Beaux Arts monument. Millions of euros worth of modern and contemporary art went for sale: the fair represents the livelihood of thousands of people, as well as a chance for well-heeled collectors to trade in the best of the best.

For others, the event provides an aperture to where global creativity is headed. For weekend punters, it can be a sort of art amusement park—a place to gawk at extraordinary paintings and objects, to Instagram them, and to hopefully leave with a little more understanding of the international scene (or perhaps of our human condition).

The approach of luxury and fashion houses to Paris burgeoning art week are worth unpicking, as both motives and methods vary according to the aesthetic and tactical positioning of each player.

In a period of waning interest in luxury, where maintaining relationships with the 1 percent is paramount for brands, the art world represents an increasingly important window into the tastes and spending habits of the world’s wealthiest culturati—shoppers for whom a trip to Paris to consume art and culture might be just one of many stops on their social calendar. From pay-to-play dinners in the restaurant of the Alaïa boutique on rue de Marignan to artist talks at Burberry’s new Avenue Montaigne boutique and a Peter Lindbergh photography exhibition opening at Dior Galerie just metres away, Paris’ golden triangle was rife with branded ‘art happenings’. Some went farther, with activations beyond their shop floors that offered art to a wider public in the French capital and beyond.

On Tuesday, Fondation Louis Vuitton marked its 10th anniversary by opening a gargantuan retrospective of the American pop artist Tom Wesselmann that runs through February 2025. Inside the fair, Louis Vuitton highlighted creations by the foundation’s architect Frank Gehry. One of his signature fish sculptures appeared to float between two LV monogrammed balloons on the central balcony of the Grand Palais. Behind it, a sponsored lounge exhibited new iterations of Gehry’s Twisted Box bags amongst other futuristic handbag designs and sketches of the foundation. The Gehry installation sparked a compelling architectural dialogue with the Grand Palais, though the sponsorship at times toed the line between didactic design exhibition and intellectualised visual merchandising.

Also inside the Grand Palais, Art Basel’s partnership with Sarah Andelman (of Colette fame), a shop which began at Basel proper this June, continued in the cultural curator’s home town. Reprising her role as eagle-eyed shopkeeper and purveyor of playful, pop objects, Andelman dug deep into the fair’s themes and other pertinent artistic moments of 2024 to deliver a nuanced showcase that ranges from whimsical art tchotchkes (poetic paper bracelets, Warhol stickers, Nicki de Saint Phalle inflatables) to a €390 limited edition Guerlain fragrance repackaged by the French painter Julie Beaufils. There were first edition Surrealist books and art skateboards signed by Jeff Koons. A merch collection by the French art collective Claire Fontaine, whose catchphrase ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ was the title of this year’s Venice Art Biennale, provided anarchist flavour: red baseball caps stating “I Do It Because It’s Right” flip the bird at MAGA hats the world over, while sweatshirts proclaiming ‘Patriarchy = C02′ added an irreverent streak in what is still (by the looks of many attendees) a rich, white man’s world. Much of the merch will head to Dover Street Market Paris in the coming days, extending the project’s lifespan.

Beyond the fair itself, Paris was awash with satellite fairs including Paris Internationale and Design Miami, gallery and museum openings, parties, dinners and more, as excitement for the revamped Art Basel evolved the fair into a city-wide art week.

At the Palais d’Iena, Miu Miu unveiled a performance and exhibition entitled ‘Tales and Tellers’ by Polish artist Goshka Macuga—elaborating on her installation initially set up for Miuccia Prada’s Oct. 1 Miu Miu show, which helped make the event a highlight of Paris Fashion Week. Macuga and Miu Miu’s partnership turned out to be a highlight of the Art Basel Paris Public Program, as well. Conceived as a multi-faceted experience of architecture, fashion, cinema and print media, the experiential happening might be tricky nut to crack for those who only catch a passing Instagram story of Miu Miu-clad ladies applying lipstick, singing opera or stretching on the floor of the Auguste Perret-designed concrete edifice. Seen in person though, it is a true gesamtkunstwerk: The performers are cast to resemble protagonists from each of the 28 “Miu Miu Tales”—an anthology of short films by women about women, directed by the likes of Agnès Varda, Chloë Sevigny and Miranda July—which were projected on screens, iPads, iPhones and viewfinders in an architectural intervention designed by Rem Koolhaas’ thinktank OMA.

Surrounded by conveyor belts hung with Macuga’s QR-coded newsprint artwork ‘The Truthless Times’ ( first seen at the Miu Miu fashion show),’Tales and Tellers’ is a bold and generous expression of Miu Miu’s brand identity: as fiercely intellectual as it is playful and absurd. It artfully repackages 13 years of film production into a week-long live happening, including a talks program convened by the Spanish curator Elvira Dyangani Ose. Yet, there is nothing to buy — other than into the seductive world of Miu Miu’s girl gang: international, independent and unafraid to blend fashion with other artistic and cultural endeavours.

At the Centre Pompidou, Chanel sponsored the exhibition “目 Chine – A new generation of artists” through its London-based culture fund headed up by former Serpentine CEO Yana Peel (the Mandarin character loosely translates as “eye”). The exhibition features futuristic painting, theatrical photography and animated films, and opened with a power breakfast on the museum’s rooftop Tuesday. There, curators, collectors and press fêted Chanel’s donation of 21 works by 15 young Chinese artists—expanding the museum’s Chinese collection by 20% in one fell swoop. Whilst Chanel continues to run a small branded art space in Tokyo, the majority of the company’s art philanthropy takes place at a safe distance from its consumer-facing brand. The company supports young talent through its Chanel Next Prize as well as underwriting major institutions, including the renovation of a wing of the Centre Pompidou in 2022 and ongoing programs with London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. The brand is stricter than competitors about keeping its commercial output and artistic patronage distinctly separate, allowing for an emphasis on artistic merit and projects that are rarely muddied by celebrity endorsement or brand marketing.

With no direct link to the fair yet an undoubtable presence on the Parisian art scene, the Pinault Collection’s Bourse de Commerce museum opened a sophisticated and comprehensive exhibition this week focusing on the Italian mid-century Arte Povera movement, with subdued advertising across the city featuring Giuseppe Penone’s bronze tree sculptures and a brooding flower by the late Greek artist Jannis Kounelis. The art institution, which is owned by Kering founder François Pinault, rarely crosses over with the family’s fashion empire operated by Pinault’s son François-Henri (putting one Saint Laurent men’s runway show and a Balenciaga Haute Couture dinner aside). Instead, the Parisian extension of Pinaults’ Venetian museums, which include the Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana buildings, has established itself as a cultural hub for highly-curated contemporary art that offers a more subversive, highbrow expression than the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s blockbuster approach (its known for large, impossibly expensive showings of 20th century art’s biggest names).

Downstairs in the Bourse basement on Wednesday night, the 91-year old Arte Povera figure Michelangelo Pistoletto reenacted a 1966 performance piece in which he smashes a metric cube of mirror on stage, before discussing the philosophical ins and outs of his own mirror paintings and humanity’s relationship with image and self, substance and time.

It was an existential pause in the middle of a frenetic week of openings and dinners that’s on its way to rivalling Paris Fashion Week in both its excess and frivolity. An opulent cocktail party at Sotheby’s new headquarters felt like its apex: with an hour-long queue round the block for guests to sample Laila Gohar’s giant rose and apple cake sculptures and towers of langoustines, the decadent dissonance with world events felt perfectly pre-apocalyptic.