What’s the vibe in Paris, you may be asking? While the detritus of the weekend’s protests marks many of the city’s arrondissements, the art world is proceeding with business as usual, with events and openings going on as planned Monday night and Tuesday, culminating in the opening of Art Basel Paris’s Avant Première preview at 3 p.m.
Around 10 minutes before opening, only a short line had formed to enter the Grand Palais, the architectural marvel that is home to Art Basel’s French fair. It was an indication that this year’s affair seemed a bit less busy than last year’s debut of Avant Première, the ultra-VIP event that now precedes the fair’s regular VIP opening days. That early observation proved all too true throughout the following four hours: aisles were full but navigable, and the blue-chip booths were brimming with buyers. The fair and the galleries had seemingly edited down their lists of VVIPs to only the most serious of collectors.
While some dealers and advisers told ARTnews that they knew of collectors who had canceled their trips to Paris amid the ongoing protests—though they declined to give specifics—any concerns that American collectors wouldn’t show up proved unfounded as well. Around the floor, ARTnews spotted Top 200 Collectors like Allison Berg, Glenn Fuhrman, Pamela Joyner, Nancy A. Nasher, Bob Clark, and Jason and Michelle Rubell, as well as Anne-Cecilie Speyer, Jessica Seinfeld, and Adam Lindemann. US museum directors and curators were also spotted, including Michael Govan (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Massimiliano Gioni (New Museum), Ruba Katrib (MoMA PS1), Giampaolo Bianconi (Art Institute of Chicago), and Max Hollein and David Breslin (Metropolitan Museum of Art), with the Met hosting a large trustee group in Paris. Actresses Katie Holmes and Natalie Portman were also spotted in attendance.
Adviser Ana Sokoloff told ARTnews that she had been impressed by what she had seen so far and that she felt the booths were especially “curated and well thought out” this year, adding that it’s hard not to be seduced by the Grand Palais: “This place is magical.”
When asked how this year’s edition of Avant Première was, dealers resoundingly reported “good energy” all around. “We’re off to a great start—we’re at home,” Mathieu Templon of Paris-based Templon said just over an hour into the event. The gallery confirmed at least one sale: Bilal Hamdad’s L’envers du soir (2026), which sold for €65,000. Hamdad had a solo show at the Petit Palais during last year’s Art Basel Paris, and Templon described heavy demand for the artist’s work, with his upcoming March show being hotly anticipated.
Because of Avant Première’s shortened timeline, most galleries were only able to report a sale or two, far from the lengthy reports that typically accompany the close of business on the opening day of Art Basel’s other fairs and those put on by its competitor Frieze, which just hosted its hometown London fairs last week.
While much has been written about the London-versus-Paris debate, collector Will Paley, who splits his time between New York and São Paulo, described the two fairs as “complementary,” adding, “Frieze is primarily for young galleries, young artists, and young collectors with a more adventurous tone [while] Art Basel Paris has a higher price point.”
Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot similarly told ARTnews that top-tier attendance is “the strength of this fair”; however, “the problematic side is that you get distracted by the city. People come here to see a thousand things.” The fair is just one, albeit important, part of the mix.
Thaddaeus Ropac agreed, telling ARTnews that he has found that “collectors make decisions fast in Paris” because the fair is competing for attention. While some clients had said they would be back Wednesday morning for the official VIP opening, others said they would skip it to see the bevy of museum and gallery shows on offer, or even do some shopping. Even so, that hasn’t stopped dealers like Ropac from bringing choice and pricey works to Paris, once the sole domain of Art Basel’s Swiss fair, where the “focus is on the fair.”
Among the 15 sales the gallery reported Tuesday were four Picassos (for undisclosed prices) dating from 1906 to 1938, a 1953 mixed-media Lucio Fontana for €1.8 million, and a 2019 Georg Baselitz for €800,000. “We’re doing very well—but it was expected, to be honest,” Ropac said.
Payot echoed that sales tend happen more quickly at fairs than in the gallery, but he noted that collectors continue to take more time to close deals. “It’s definitely a slower pace than about five years ago, but great things do find great homes.” Indeed, in just the short span of Tuesday afternoon, Hauser & Wirth sold Gerhard Richter’s 1965 work Rokokotisch (Rococo Table) for a price in the region of $10 million. (The rare early work had been an unexpected addition to the booth and was not in previews.) The gallery also sold Georg Baselitz’s Der Hirte (The Shepherd) (1965) for a price in the region of $10 million, George Condo’s Woman with Designer Shirt (2026) for $2.9 million, Lucio Fontana’s 1961 work Concetto spaziale (Spatial Concept) for €1.7 million ($1.9 million), Philip Guston’s Untitled (1969) for $1.5 million, and Alexander Calder’s Four Dots and Brass Tail (ca. 1953) for just under $1 million, to name a few.
Pace Di Donna Schrader unveiled what is believed to be the most expensive artwork at the fair: a rare, striking painting of a reclining nude woman by Amedeo Modigliani, titled Nu étendu (Lolotte), from 1917, valued in excess of $100 million. The gallery said the painting has not been seen in about a century and was part of Modigliani’s 1917 exhibition at Galerie Berthe Weill, which caused a scandal for indecency and would be his only solo show in his lifetime.
Emmanuel Di Donna said the start of the fair was hugely successful, though the Modigliani would take time to place. Otherwise, “it’s been like drinking from a fire hose,” he said of overall sales activity.
Declining to provide specific prices, Gagosian said it had sold a 1987 Willem de Kooning for eight figures, as well as a Peter Doig. White Cube reported 16 sales, including two Julie Mehretu paintings (one from 2001, the other 2018) for $7.85 million each. Its booth featured historical works on paper, including a Picasso that sold for €150,000 and a Léger for €65,000.
Other sales that ARTnews learned of include a Victor Man painting for $1.3 million and two Wangechi Mutu collage works for $325,000 each, sold by Gladstone, and a Haegue Yang sculpture sold by Kurimanzutto for $110,000.
Brussels-based dealer Xavier Hufkens reported 10 sales, the priciest being a Charline von Heyl painting for $475,000. “Despite a rather turbulent weekend, we’ve felt a genuine enthusiasm for art from the very start of the fair,” Hufkens said in an email. “There’s something about Paris: its contradictions, its restless energy, its ability to surprise you at every turn. Fluctuat nec mergitur, as the city’s motto goes. It feels particularly fitting this week.”
Mike Homer, a partner at David Kordansky Gallery, said that several holds had converted into sales, confirming that there is “a desire to see works in person, in the round—it’s a nice return.” One of those sales was a rare Sam Gilliam hard-edge abstraction, Mycenaean Ode (1965), for $300,000.
This year, the fair had 12 shared booths representing 24 galleries, more than any previous edition. One standout example is the one shared between Layr (Vienna) and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (Berlin, Munich) on the fair’s second floor, where both galleries said they had sold several works. “We sold a lot of things that we were very keen on placing in very prominent collections, so we’re very happy,” said Amadeo Kraupa-Tuskany, who specified that the collections were located in Europe. Emanuel Layr added that the gallery had placed works with American collectors as well.
The booth featured historic and contemporary pairings from both their programs. There was Franz West’s Passstück (1983/1984), a sculpture meant to be used like a strange crutch that would modify how a person moves about. Alongside it was Anna Uddenberg’s 2026 sculpture White Noise (Soft Skills), featuring a life-size, faceless mannequin whose body is contorted by a strange, futuristic interpretation of ergonomic office-style furniture contraptions.
“Something that really matters to us is staying excited ourselves, but also exciting other people, and asking new questions,” said Layr. “Now you have to be super open about how you operate—how you present yourself, and how you join forces.”
Art adviser Nicolas Nahab, cofounder of NG Partners, agreed that galleries are increasingly finding creative ways to collaborate in light of a continued “period of adjustment” in the art market, particularly related to skepticism over pricing for ultra-contemporary artworks.
“Collectors today don’t trust prices like they used to, and don’t take them at face value,” said Nahab. “This lack of trust makes them doubt and interrogate information given to them. They need reassurance, research, and a global understanding of an artist’s practice and market before making a decision, which is why the decision-making is so slow.”
“If trust is there,” he added, “then the decision is easy for collectors.”