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The Big Picture
Your October art market rundown
October is always one of the art world’s busiest months, and this year proved no exception. Here, we pace through some of the month’s key events. Click on the links to read our in-depth reporting.
The month kicked off with the spirited debut of Atlanta Art Fair. As I found when I was there, the city’s first major art fair helped cement Atlanta as a rising powerhouse while also casting a spotlight on its buzzing art community.
It was quickly over to the U.K., where Frieze London and Frieze Masters opened an exciting VIP Day on October 9th. Hauser & Wirth announced the headline sale before the end of day one: Arshile Gorky’s The Opaque (1947) for $8.5 million. Concurrently, the 11th edition of 1-54 London returned to London’s Somerset House, while ambitious alternative art fair Minor Attractions took over the sleek Mandrake Hotel.
The sprint continued into the next week in Europe, where attention was focused on the third edition of Art Basel Paris. Donning a new title and a new venue in the refurbished Grand Palais, the fair’s third iteration welcomed a thrumming crowd on October 16th. Any nerves were quickly abated by a swell of VIP day sales, including White Cube’s sale of Julie Mehretu’s Insile (2013) for $9.5 million.
The excitement hardly died down on the second day, evident in Hauser & Wirth’s $20 million sale of Louise Bourgeois’s Spider I (1995). Elsewhere in town, several satellite fairs took place, including the first edition of The Salon by NADA and the Community. Born out of member demand, the fair added another event to Paris’s already packed week of art world activities.
Slightly farther afield, after the Paris fairs closed, Contemporary Istanbul kicked off its 19th edition with an exclusive “At First Sight” preview day, underscoring the energy across the Turkish art scene.
Rounding us out are the following highlights from key auction sales from this month:
David Hockney’s L’Arbois, Sainte-Maxime (1968), which sold for £13.15 million ($17.19 million), led Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in London.
Lucian Freud’s Ria, Naked Portrait (2006–07), fetching £11.81 million ($15.44 million), was the highest-selling lot at Christie’s 20th- and 21st-century evening sale in London.
Jean Dubuffet’s Visiteur au chapeau bleu (1955) commanded €6.88 million ($7.47 million), topping Sotheby’s “Modernités” sale in Paris.
Salvador Dalí’s Rose méditative (1958), which sold for €3.9 million ($4.23 million), headlined Sotheby’s “Surrealism and its Legacy” sale in Paris.