Any other business

Having posted some photos, with brief comments, from Art Basel Paris and Paris Internationale , I simply forgot I'd meant to add a third article about Paris's 2025 October events, this time covering any other art that had struck me since I came back from Greece. In other words, this particular post, now that I've remembered to write it, isn't limited exclusively to the fairs; it's intended to tie up loose ends. The reason I came back to Paris when I did, mid-October, was not only to catch the art fairs, but first of all, to go to a concert in Brussels, written up on my other, opera blog . We had some time to kill before the event, time enough to visit the John Baldessari exhibition at the Bozar, i.e. the very building the concert was due to take place in. It's uncanny how, when in the presence of really good art, you just know it. I liked it a lot. Back in Paris, the first fair I went to was actually neither Art Basel nor Paris Internationale, but Asia Now. Thi...

In my post about Art Basel Paris 2025 , I mentioned that both it and Paris Internationale seemed better than last year - whether because they were showing more interesting work, or because I was in a better mood, I don't know. This year, the peripatetic fair was located in the former Adidas shop on the Champs Elysées, not far from Art Basel (recalling the 2021 Athens Biennale ). I spent quite a long time there, partly because it was a better space altogether than the old post-office building or telephone exchange the fair was in in the last couple of years and partly because I enjoyed quite a lot of the work. But also, I had a nice chat with Gaby (Gabriela Magaña) at the Gaga booth (showing lots of Julien Ceccaldi, but also works by his brother, new to me), and another, over coffee, with Jeremy Parker. Jeremy's someone I first met when he was with Project Native Informant in London, but he's now bravely opening a gallery of his own in Cambridge, called Corpus . Apparently,...

Last year, I didn't post any pictures of Paris's October art fairs, saying I wasn't excited enough to bother. Perhaps I was in a better mood this year. Fresh back from Greece and Italy, I took things easy, to avoid what, four years ago, I called 'art-fair fatigue,' and found both Art Basel Paris and Paris Internationale better than last October. I took some photos of things that caught my eye. This post shows photos of Art Basel. Photos of Paris Internationale are in a separate one . During the fairs, Cornelia Baltes had a solo show at Andrehn Schiptjenko's Paris branch, and they also had this nice display on their booth. I was glad to see she's 'back'. Intriguing to se Jean Claracq moving into ceramics, with nods to Babylon and perhaps the walls from Susa in the Louvre. Unusual for me to like anything by Magritte, but this one I did.