Paris+ Poised to Unseat FIAC as City’s Primary Art Fair
By Jake Erlewine
Visitors at FIAC in 2017 Image Credit: Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The entry of Art Basel into the Parisian art scene with its new fair Paris+ par Art Basel is a shock to both French and international industry professionals. It is the next major domino to fall in what many view as a cultural renaissance for the city’s art market, in no small part aided by the international market’s Brexit-fueled search for a new Western European focus city. Paris+, which opens to VIPs on Wednesday, has usurped both the timeslot and venue of FIAC, previously the city’s primary blue-chip contemporary art fair, leaving many to question whether it can reinvent itself.
As Art Basel is currently the largest art fair in the world, with events routinely drawing buyers and critics from around the globe, Paris+ is expected to outperform FIAC economically, despite being a similarly-sized fair. Adding to the strain between the fairs is the distinctly international character of Art Basel fairs, contrasted with the largely French exhibitor body of FIAC. Many lesser-known French galleries, such as Galerie Catherine Issert of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, who have exhibited at FIAC almost every year since its inception in 1978, have missed the cut for this year’s edition of Paris+, robbing galleries and artists alike of access to the powerful launchpad of Art Basel. Despite this, it appears that FIAC will not exhibit in the Grand Palais again, as its contract was terminated, and its timeslot was handed instead to Art Basel. While RX France, owners of the FIAC trademark, did secure a seven-year contract to run Paris Photo, a photography-centered fair, at the Grand Palais, FIAC will have to go elsewhere, and the previous main event of the Parisian art market will have to find a new raison d’etre in order to keep afloat.
However, in the midst of this coup, one question persists: if not FIAC, where will emerging artists and galleries ply their trade? One option is Paris Internationale, established in 2015 in order to provide the French art market with a global face-lift via the exhibition of young, emerging artists. This year, the fair will be hosted in the studio of 19th-century photographer Nadar, which hosted the first exhibition of Impressionist art. Sylvia Ammon, director of Paris Internationale, sees Art Basel’s arrival in the City of Light as “a good thing,” and remarked that Paris Internationale and FIAC had acheived a “degree of porosity, and I hope [that will be] more so with Paris+.” However, this will be hard to acheive, as long-time director of Paris Internationale Clément Deléphine has transferred to Art Basel to head up their nascent French festival.
Although Art Basel will provide some much-needed international exposure to the Parisian art market, which many have thought to be stagnant since the 1960s, it is hard not to see this as an exercise in hegemony by the industry titans. Perhaps Paris+, due to its international aim, will provide a redefinition of the French art scene; on the other hand, it may also whitewash and Hausmannize the voice of the city, leaving young artists without a viable platform to exhibit their art. Only time will tell which of these outcomes will prove to be true.
Bibliography
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Gerlis, Melanie. “Art Basel’s new Paris fair marks city’s rise,” 14 October 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/9a35c5ef-844f-4b68-b106-f52bd2d5f6d0
Greenberger, Alex. “Paris+, Explained: Why Art Basel Arrived in Paris, and What’s Happening to FIAC,” 16 October 2022. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/paris-plus-art-basel-fiac-explained-1234642940/
Jhala, Kabir. “Paris Internationale fair once positioned itself as a cooler alternative to Fiac—will Art Basel's presence change that?” 17 October 2022. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/10/17/paris-internationale-fair-cooler-alternative-to-fiac-art-basel