Art Basel Paris doesn’t have the historical variety of Frieze Masters, nor the scholarly chops of Art Basel in Basel, if I can call it that. Set in the newly refurbished Grand Palais, it’s rather like a bigger – 200-odd galleries – higher quality, and better-located version of Frieze London. Excellence is fairly routine, then, so I went in search of fare that was also unusual in some way. Here are 10 examples:
John Currin: ‘The favourite’, 2024 at Gagosian – multiple locations
It isn’t unusual for another viewer – or, as here, a gallery assistant – to wander into shot as you are photographing a work. What is less frequent is the match whereby she might plausibly have been the model for John Currin. The conjunction has an appropriate slight creepiness, given that Currin feeds the past into the present in search of the point, says the gallery, ‘at which the beautiful and the grotesque are held in perfect balance’. When I approached her, the could-be-model gave me the disappointing news that the painting had already sold for some £1m.
Yuko Mohri: ‘Decomposition’ 2024 at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery – New York / LA
This is in effect a living still life by the Japanese artist. The fruit is sourced and re-sourced as necessary by the gallery, but under her precise instructions, and placed on a vintage table found by Mohri. In the course of decay it gives off electrical charges which are used to power the light – so it turns out that the death so frequently present in the Vanitas still life is taking place in plain sight after all.
Richard Wright: ‘No title 10.8.2023’ at The Modern Institute – Glasgow
2009 Turner Prize winner Richard Wright remains known principally for his work on walls. That’s still his main production, though he has also worked in glass recently. But he has made only the occasional work on paper, so it remains unusual to find one of his watercolours. That may explain why this was relatively expensive (£50,000) for its size. There’s a Japanese flavour to it, and touch of late Turner, as its lyricism settles somewhere between sea and cloud. Wright’s process involves painting, partially washing off in a bath, then overpainting…. It was in the viewing room of Modern Institute, outsie which 2011 Turner Prize winner Martin Boyce’s old-and-new-with-archives solo show was arguably the best presntation in the fair.
Lubaina Himid: ‘Horn Seller’, 2023 at Greene Naftali, New York
I’ve never seen brass instruments being sold this way, which brings a little curiosity value to this larger than life figure from the 2017 Turner Prize winner (that’s enough of those – Ed). Lubaina Himid’s recent series of street vendors are based on Victorian prints, so there was a musical instrument trader depicted – but not of the same race; nor with the same instruments and clothing; and definitely not in the same imaginary architecture. As the gallery says, the genre of the full-length portrait—linked to aristocrats and monarchs—is recast with new protagonists; and – asserting the centrality of Black subjects to art historical arenas long denied them – Himid invents what the archive lacks: ‘I paint it into existence.’
Gustav Klimt: ‘Roman Bath’, 1890, at Richard Nagy – London
I was slightly surprised to find this was an early Klimt. True, Klimt liked to use myth and make classical references, and the frame is apt (though I was told it is probably not original). But the aura, setting and investment in detail put me more in mind of Alma-Tadema. The watercolour has faded somewhat, but the greying of the flesh suits it well, suggesting a statue…
Alvaro Barrington: ’Tupac Surrounded by his Fans’, 2024, at Thaddaeus Ropac – multiple venues
For all the architectural splendour of the venue, it got very hot in the Grand Palais on the opening afternoon. Yet Ropac seemed to be the only gallery with the sense to have brought fans – cunningly attached to a painting. They were fully functional and optimally pointed at the staff table, while also acting as the other sort of fans for Tupac Shakur, the somewhat abstracted subject of this yarn-heavy portrait. The rapper is one Barrington’s personal touchstones, as is Robert Rauschenberg, whose ‘Combines’ inspire the Venezuelan artist’s frequent attachment of real objects to his paintings.
Romuald Hazoumè and ‘Serena’, 2024 at MAGNIN-A – Paris
Talking of fans, the artist who seemed to have most at the fair was Romuald Hazoumè, whose solo stand sported a wide range of his signature plastic petrol can masks. I say ‘sported’ as tennis balls were a new inclusion in several, including in ‘Serena’, a name famous in tennis. That reminds us that the masks are often coded references to particular personalities. They also act as disrupters, through the found objects used, of Western perceptions of African art; and as indicators of the underground economy through which motorcyclists smuggle petrol into Benin from its oil-producing neighbour, Nigeria. I hope some of his admirers had €32,000 handy.
Hans Bellmer: ‘Portrait of the Philosopher Gaston Bachelard’, 1957, at Galerie 1900-2000 – Paris / New York
This may seem a characterful, but not especially unusual, pen and gouache portrait. Yet it isn’t what one would normally associate with Hans Bellmer, whose more typical surreal discombobulations were in evidence elsewhere in the fair. And the subject is interesting: Bachelard (1884-1962) must have been writing the still-influential ‘The Poetics of Space’ (1958) at the time – the book for which he is best-known, at least outside France. And what better place to ponder the phenomenology of architecture?
Christopher Wool: ‘Untitled’, 2021 at Luhring Augustine – New York
Perhaps this isn’t that unusual but I was surprised to find that Christopher Wool has been sculpting as much as painting in recent years. He resides in Marfa, Texas for part of the year, and this type of work – here in copper-plated steel – started from finding some bundles of wire abandoned there by ranchers. That reminded him of the loopy graffiti line characteristic of his paintings. The plinth, incidentally, is Wool’s – I thought it might have been the gallery’s as it was a ‘booth look’, but it turned out that they had made similar plinths to match for other works on the stand…
Nina Canell: ‘Bubble Cult’ 2024 at Mendes Wood DM – multiple locations
It was tempting to look up, given the impressive span 45 metres above. The Berlin-based Swede Nina Canell had actually made the curve of her arch-come-rainbow (come-halo in my shot) echo those of the Grand Palais, by cutting wooden spirit levels up into pieces the right length. Her title picks up on their mechanisms to introduce the idea of a ‘Bubble Cult’, leaving us to wonder if that refers to an economic bubble (perhaps, site-specifically, the art market’s bubble currently threatening to burst) or a community that seeks utopia by bathing in bubbles. And whoever heard of a brown rainbow? Maybe I’d sooner join the Brown Rainbow Cult.
Canell detail with roof…
