It seems that little has happened in the uppermost reaches of French fashion and philanthropy in recent decades that has not in some way involved either Bernard Arnault, 72, or François Pinault, 85, the mega-collectors and billionaire patresfamilias of, respectively, the LVMH and Kering luxury conglomerates. The two have been locking horns on the most gilded arenas for years, most famously in 2001 when Pinault’s PPR (now known as Kering) boxed out Arnault in the acquisition battle for Gucci, helmed then by Tom Ford. The jousting continued for decades, culminating in the most highbrow-excellent ego contest in human history, wherein the two billionaires donated hundreds of millions of euros in kind to rebuild Notre Dame. For those keeping score: The Arnault family gave $218 million, while Pinault (along with son François-Henri, who took over the day-to-day of the family business in 2003) donated $109 million.
But competition over fashion houses and charitable giving has paled in comparison to the showdown between their two private museums. Mr. Arnault (everyone calls him “Mister Ar-noh”) opened the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the forested area of the Bois de Boulogne in 2014, its structure dreamed up by Frank Gehry—a shimmering pile of what look like silver eggshell pieces delicately placed upon one another. It was closed to the public during the pandemic and reopened just weeks ago with “The Morozov Collection,” a show of Impressionist masterpieces from the collection of two brothers that had been dispersed by a century of war and revolution, only to be put together by Arnault (with a little help from Vladimir Putin).
Then, last May, Mr. Pinault (everyone calls him “Mister Pee-no”) opened his own private museum, the Bourse de Commerce in the central neighborhood of Les Halles, in a former hub for Parisian grain trade, after an extraordinary $170 million renovation by Tadao Ando. And while Mr. Pinault’s museum might not currently have a trove of Matisse and Picasso reunited for the first time in a century, it has on display the masterpieces from his collection, including a suite of some 30 seminal works by David Hammons, the most comprehensive show of the artist’s work ever staged in Europe.
Each institution is a game changer of an addition to the 21st-century French cultural landscape in its own right, but due to some quirks of timing and a global pandemic, they’ve only been open to the public concurrently for a few weeks. The arrival in Paris this week of Foire Internationale de l’Art Contemporain (otherwise known as FIAC) allowed for the gallery class to take them both in together and update the mental score card.
“You know, it’s quite amazing and interesting that two of the biggest collectors in the art world are both French, and both care deeply and keenly about art—but also their city, to build museums here,” said Jennifer Flay, who’s been the director of FIAC since 2010. “And I think that’s a beautiful message. It’s a remarkable phenomenon that brings a lot of people who love art to the city.”
Flay was sitting in an office carved into the warren of rooms hidden inside the guts of FIAC, which was staged this year not at its usual digs in the light-strewn Grand Palais but rather in the Grand Palais Éphémère, a new space built to house exhibitions while the 1897 iron and glass structure on the Champs-Élysées gets a much-needed face-lift ahead of the 2024 Olympics. Flay seemed upbeat, noting that exhibitors were eminently pleased with the new setup, which trades the grandeur of the old space for a more typical art fair setup with navigable aisles.
Evidently, it worked: Collectors did buy at the fair, stopping by the Hauser & Wirth booth to snap up new paintings by George Condo and Rashid Johnson for $1.55 million and $850,000, respectively. Perhaps the biggest sale of Wednesday, the fair’s first day, was Robert Rauschenberg’s Star Grass (1963), which sold for $2.8 million at the Thaddaeus Ropac booth.
But it was also clear that, after the madness of Frieze London and Art Basel just weeks before, there was a bit of fair fatigue going on by the time the proceedings were getting underway this year in Paris.
“I am a little disappointed, after the vibrancy of Frieze, with sales at FIAC. Paris is such a great city for a fair, but FIAC has tended to underperform for us compared with other major fairs,” David Zwirner said in a statement that was blasted out to press mid-afternoon on the first day of the fair.
Even more reason to thank God (or the continued commitment of the luxury-buying public), then, for the private museums—even if, when reached on the phone, Louis Vuitton Foundation director Suzanne Pagé sought to distinguish her institution from the vagaries of the fair circuit. Rather, she said, it leans into hearty programming built on careful collecting.
“The decision of Mr. Arnault has a great impact on an artist,” Pagé said. “We are a museum, a museum in the sense that the work that we buy, we never sell. We don’t sell, so what we want is to be ambitious and moving, and only have a cultural impact.”
A more cynical ear might have heard in that response a little bit of a knock on Mr. Pinault, who has been known to sell work through that little auction house he bought in 1998 through his Group Artémis, Christie’s. In 2016, for example, Pinault was the consignor of Adrian Ghenie’s Nickelodeon (2008), which quadrupled high estimates when it sold for about $8.4 million.
She stressed that Mr. Arnault loves staging historical surveys and acquiring works by the leading contemporary voices. When asked what she thought of the Bourse, Pagé responded diplomatically, “I think it’s very good! We just have a different look at the art.”
Mr. Pinault for his part vigorously pursues the new. Though he could not be reached for this story, he told The New York Times earlier this year, “It’s impossible that we have become so stupid today that there are no human beings alive capable of creating tomorrow’s masterpieces.”
Just how exactly does the billionaire go about buying tomorrow’s masterpieces? Pagé’s counterpart, Bourse de Commerce director Jean-Jacques Aillagon, initially agreed to respond to questions over email; at the time the answers were to arrive, a press rep sent an email: “The Pinault Collection does not communicate on its acquisitions and it is not for Pinault Collection’s representative to comment on market-related matters.”
And yet a stroll through the Bourse this week provided more than just a snapshot of Mr. Pinault’s slam-bang collecting strategy. These were only a small slice of the 10,000 works in the collection, and yet many of them had been purchased at fairs, galleries, and auction houses in the last decade. Rudolf Stingel’s massive photorealistic portrait of his dealer, Paula Cooper, was bought by Pinault at Cooper’s booth at Art Basel’s Art Unlimited in 2012 for around $3 million. Pinault snapped up Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Two Eggs Over Medium, Sausage, Hash Browns, Whole Wheat Toast) (2017) from the Zwirner booth at Frieze London, and Marshall’s Laundry Man (2019) from the Zwirner booth at Art Basel in 2019 for $3.5 million. Martin Kippenberger’s Paris Bar—which hung for decades at the legendary Berlin watering hole, until the owner was forced to put it at auction in order to settle a debt—was sold at Christie’s London in 2009 for about $3.7 million. Until the Bourse opened its first exhibition to the world, no one knew the winning bidder for the Kippenberger masterpiece was none other than Mr. Pinault.
There will, of course, be more acquiring to come. Even if FIAC was the third European fair in a month, both men still made sure they had eyes on the ground at the opening. Art adviser Philippe Segalot, known to work with Mr. Pinault, was spotted darting into various high-firepower booths as the fair opened to VIPs Wednesday. On our call, Pagé let slip that she had gone back to the fair for the second day in a row.
“Of course, of course, of course we are buying at FIAC,” she said. “I was there early yesterday morning. Always we buy, and we buy both important and lesser-known artists. We are very open to buy from everywhere in the world.”
Your crib sheet for comings and goings in the art world this week and beyond…
…Speaking of Arnaults, FIAC itself was in danger of upstaging this year before it even got started. Over the weekend, Tiffany executive vice president Alexandre Arnault, second son of Bernard, hosted an elaborate wedding party at the family-owned Cipriani on Giudecca in Venice, drawing guests such as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who were recently spotted gallery-hopping in London during Frieze. Also in attendance were Larry Gagosian, who popped over from London, leather-clad architect Peter Marino, tennis hero and watch-hawker Roger Federer, and the artist JR, who came in on the train from Paris with Pharrell.
…After nearly eight years of basically shunning the New York art world, Mayor Bill de Blasio will take a stop on his way out the door and speak at a ceremony at the Studio Museum in Harlem Tuesday alongside director Thelma Golden and architect Sir David Adjaye, to mark the progress of the construction of the building. Also speaking is board chair Ray McGuire—who if you can remember, had a somewhat forgettable run for mayor himself earlier this year.
…Billie Eilish posted a cryptic Instagram this week teasing…something…and using for a backdrop a work by artist Anna Park that sold earlier this year at Half Gallery’s April show. The big reveal turned out to be the pop star’s inaugural fragrance, Eilish.
…Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, was spotted at Berlin exhibition space Kraftwerk checking out a work by Cyprien Gaillard. It’s part of the sound and art festival Berlin Atonal, and in the video a tipster sent, Kanye is standing between Gaillard’s twin inflatable white tubs, taking in the ambient noise.
…Downtown New York mainstay Karma is two-stepping down to Texas to stage a takeover of the Joule hotel in Dallas, where gallery artists such as Mungo Thomson, Paul Mogenson, and Ann Craven will see their works installed in the lobby and reception areas. Just in time for the Two x Two for AIDS and Art auction and gala that’s once again happening at the Rachofsky House tomorrow night after a year hiatus.
…Artist Daniel Buren recently completed a work that spans across the French presidential home of the Élysée Palace, and to celebrate President Emmanuel Macron threw a party Wednesday for all the folks in town for FIAC, including Met director Max Hollein, artists Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian, Victoria Miro codirector Glenn Scott Wright, and curator Chris Dercon.
The parties in Paris for FIAC started when everyone got off the Eurostar. Straight from Gare du Nord, collectors and their entourages caught taxis to Le Bristol, the classic hotel adjacent to Avenue Matignon, the new perch for high art world power in the City of Light. Christie’s expanded and renovated its Avenue Matignon space earlier this year to match the new arsenal of gallery powerhouses that encroached up the block, and Emmanuel Perrotin, a dealer more associated with the longhairs and hipsters of Le Marias, opened a second gallery on the très chic street in September. On Monday, Perrotin’s show of new work by Elmgreen & Dragset had to battle for eyeballs with the Eric Fischl show at Per Skarstedt’s new Matignon space, an Alex Israel banger at Almine Rech, and Jay Jopling offering up Baselitzes and Hammonds galore at White Cube, also on the block. But that’s not to say there wasn’t any action in the Third. David Zwirner opened his Marais gallery for a new show of pool works by Harold Ancart, and followed it up with a rollicking supper party at Loulou, where Ancart (often trailed by the actress Dianna Agron) made his way through a throng of well-wishes that included artist Rashid Johnson, Marlene Zwirner, and Givenchy designer Matthew Williams, and the artist’s mother, perhaps the wittiest attendee there.
Tuesday the crowd sauntered from drinks at Café de Flore to the Cahiers d’Art galleries of Rue du Dragon for an opening of fabulous new monotypes by the Los Angeles artist Jill Mulleady, and Arthur Jafa’s first show in France, a survey of sculpture and photos called “Fried Dinosaur Fried Chicken Fried Man.” Dinner was at the brasserie La Belle Epoque, and by the time dessert arrived it was time to dip into the Gagosian party at Hotel Costes, celebrating the just opened space on the Place Vendôme—Larry Gagosian’s third shop in Paris, mais oui!—where an Alexander Calder show accompanied the well-documented installation of the sculptor’s gigantic Flying Dragon (1975) in the middle of the storied plaza.
The Gagosian party went late, and the next night Perrotin had a thing at Petit Palais, White Cube had a thing at Hotel Voltaire, and if that wasn’t enough, one more bash remained on Thursday—Thaddaeus Ropac’s annual party at Maxim’s, the original most famous restaurant in the world. The fur-jacket crowd lit cigarettes inside, comically French DJs spun Serge Gainsbourg and the Bee Gees, and Cara Delevingne showed up around 1 a.m. Let’s hope the crowd didn’t leave too late—there was probably a train leaving early the next day, taking them to wherever they had to party next.
And that’s a wrap on this week’s True Colors! Like what you’re seeing? Hate what you’re reading? Have a tip? Drop me a line at nate_freeman@condenast.com.
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