Paris+ par Art Basel will take place from 19 to 22 October 2023 at the Grand Palais Éphémère in the heart of the French capital. The exhibition aims to forge links with France’s cultural sectors and create a major event that will have a profound impact on the city, rooted in its exceptional cultural landscape.
For the second edition of Paris+ par Art Basel, more than 150 galleries from 33 countries and territories will present precise solo, duo and group presentations of the highest quality. In partnership with the City of Paris and some of its cultural institutions, Paris+ par Art Basel will offer visitors a city-wide public programme that is free of charge and accessible to all, thus further strengthening its links with the Parisian cultural scene.
We’ve put together a guide to the various events you can attend during your breaks from Paris+ par Art Basel while you’re in Paris.
À toi de faire, ma mignonne
Musée national Picasso-Paris
3 October 2023 – 7 January 2024
Sophie Calle celebrates the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death in her own way, taking over four floors of the Hôtel Salé with a brand new exhibition. The exhibition À toi de faire, ma mignonne is divided into four parts. It is a counterpoint to the many events organized to celebrate the Spanish artist as part of the Picasso Celebration 1973-2023.
Find out more details on Musée national Picasso-Paris website.
Chagall à l’œuvre. Dessins, céramiques et sculptures 1945-1970
Centre Pompidou
4 October 2023 – 26 February 2024
The exhibition brings together a group of works that entered the collection in 2022 thanks to the generosity of Bella and Meret Meyer. One hundred and twenty-seven drawings, five ceramics and seven sculptures by Marc Chagall have been added to the Centre Pompidou’s collection, one of the most representative and important collections of the artist’s work, especially in terms of pre-war works.
More details about the exhibition you will find on the Centre Pompidou website.
Nicolas de Staël
The Musée d’Art Moderne
15 September 2023 – 21 January 2024
The Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris is devoting a major retrospective to Nicolas de Staël, a key figure in the post-war French art scene. Twenty years after the exhibition organized by the Centre Pompidou in 2003, the exhibition takes a fresh look at the artist’s work, drawing on more recent thematic exhibitions that have highlighted certain little-known aspects of his career (Antibes in 2014, Le Havre in 2014, Aix-en-Provence in 2018).
Find out more on the Musée d’Art Moderne website.
Dana Schutz. Le monde visible
The Musée d’Art Moderne
6 October 2023 – 11 February 2024
Dana Schutz. Le monde visible presents some forty paintings made since the early 2000s, twenty drawings and engravings, and seven sculptures.
Dana Schutz is a storyteller. Her work constructs a universe of turbulent characters, human madness, catastrophic situations and physical disasters. She paints a dystopian portrait of today’s world, detached from traditional notions of beauty. With a virtuoso use of colour, over the years she has developed a sense of dramatic tension that is revealed in her complex compositions. Her paintings depict imaginary scenes inspired by hypothetical situations and improbable bodies, mixed with contemporary life and language.
Find out more details on the Musée d’Art Moderne website.
Elmgreen & Dragset. David and Other Sculptures
Perrotin
14 October 2023 – 18 November 2023
After 20 years of collaboration with the gallery, the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset present a new solo exhibition. The exhibition David and Other Sculptures features seven sculptures depicting different scenarios from this performance. The first sculpture, positioned opposite the entrance, depicts a solitary figure wearing headphones and appearing detached, attracting our attention but not reflecting it. This sculpture, called David, sits on a replica of the gallery’s concrete floor, which is displayed on the wall like a painting and serves as a base for the life-size figurative artwork. It represents our first encounter with a scene of technological immersion. Through these sculptures, the Berlin-based Scandinavian artists explore the emotional impact of a life dominated by gadgets, a theme that remains relevant across time and media.
More details about the exhibition you will find on the Perrotin website.
Alaïa / Grès. Beyond Fashion
Azzedine Alaïa Foundation
11 September 2023 – 11 February 2024
Madame Grès and Azzedine Alaïa were both artists in their own right, devoted to their craft with unwavering determination. While Madame Grès retreated to her workshop and considered herself a sculptor, Alaïa also studied sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Tunis. Despite working in the fashion industry, both individuals remained true to their artistic aspirations without succumbing to the media-driven nature of their profession. Their shared ambition made their respective trades, draping for Madame Grès and cutting for Alaïa, integral principles in the history of fashion. For more information about the exhibition, visit the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation website.
Van Gogh à Auvers-sur-Oise. Les derniers mois
Musée d’Orsay
03 Octobre 2023 – 04 February 2024
Presented at the Musée d’Orsay, this is the first exhibition devoted to the works produced by Vincent van Gogh during the last two months of his life at Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. The exhibition is the culmination of years of research into this crucial phase of the artist’s life, and will enable the public to appreciate it in its true dimension.
Mamma Andersson: Adieu Maria Magdalena
David Zwirner
16 October – 18 November 2023
David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new paintings by Swedish Artist Mamma Andersson, on view at the gallery’s Paris location. Characterized by a unique combination of textured brushstrokes, loose washes, bold graphic lines and evocative colors, Andersson’s works embody a new genre of painting that recalls the Romanticism of the late 19th century, while incorporating a contemporary interest in layered, psychological compositions.
The works in Adieu Maria Magdalena explore recurring themes in Andersson’s work, suggesting complex and powerful feelings of loss. The title of the exhibition is a metaphorical farewell to an earlier phase in her life. It takes its name from a seventeenth-century church in the neighbourhood where Andersson has long lived.
Anna Weyant. The Guitar Man
Gagosian
18 October – 22 December 2023
Gagosian presents The Guitar Man, an exhibition by Anna Weyant. This is the New York-based artist’s European solo debut and follows her first presentation with the gallery, Baby, It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over, at Gagosian, New York, in 2022. Named after a song by Los Angeles soft rock band Bread, The Guitar Man features new figure and still life paintings inspired by classics of American pop culture, including The Addams Family, Clue, Looney Tunes and Playboy. Weyant further develops the dark aesthetic and haunting undercurrent of her earlier work in these striking images.
Find out more details on the Gagosian website.
Takashi Murakami. Understanding the New Cognitive Domain
Gagosian
10 June – 22 December 2023
Gagosian presents Understanding the New Cognitive Domain, an exhibition of Takashi Murakami’s work at the gallery in Le Bourget, focusing on his monumental paintings. The exhibition features five such works, as well as others in smaller formats and several sculptures. This is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery in France.
Understanding the New Cognitive Domain marks the debut of a monumental new painting by Murakami, measuring 5 x 23 metres, based on the iwai-maku, or stage curtain, he produced for the Kabuki-za theatre in Ginza, Tokyo, to celebrate the Japanese Kabuki actor and producer Ichikawa Ebizō XI’s assumption of the name Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII, Hakuen.
Find out more details about the exhibition on the Gagosian website.
Alvaro Barrington. They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY
Thaddaeus Ropac
18 October 2023 – 27 January 2024
For They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY, Alvaro Barrington takes over the Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin, transforming the luminous former factory building into a three-part installation. A monumental self-portrait of his years growing up in New York, the exhibition invites visitors into an exploration of the artist’s personal and cultural memory: what Barrington describes as a love letter to the nyc streetscape of my youth in the form of an art installation.
More details about the exhibition you will find on the Thaddaeus Ropac website.
Irving Penn. The Bath.
Thaddaeus Ropac
23 September – 30 November 2023 Paris Marais
This exhibition is dedicated to a rarely-seen series of photographs by Irving Penn that capture the groundbreaking work of American choreographer Anna Halprin. Taken in 1967, the carefully composed images are the result of Penn’s collaboration with the Dancers’ Workshop of San Francisco, whom he photographed performing Halprin’s improvisational choreography The Bath. The group of fourteen photographs, first printed in 1995, highlights Halprin’s pioneering approach to movement and reveals a more experimental side to Penn’s practice. They have not been shown together in Paris since the 1997 exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.
Ron Mueck
Foundation Cartier
8 June – 5 November 2023
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain invites Australian artist Ron Mueck to present an ensemble of sculptures never before seen in France, alongside iconic works from his career. Visitors will discover his monumental installation Mass (2017), presented outside Australia for the first time, as well as new works created especially for the occasion, illustrating the recent evolution of Mueck’s practice. Mass consists of one hundred huge stacked human skulls, which the artist reconfigures for each location. The installation offers a physical and psychological experience that captivates visitors and encourages them to reflect on fundamental aspects of human existence.
Find out more details on Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain website.
Viviane Sassen. PHOSPHOR: Art & Fashion 1990-2023
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
18 October 2023 – 11 February 2024
The MEP – European House of Photography – presents the first retrospective of Dutch artist Viviane Sassen. The PHOSPHOR: Art & Fashion 1990-2023 brings together more than 200 creations and traces the 30-year production of a protean oeuvre in which photography rubs shoulders with collage, painting and video. It also includes previously unseen archival and mixed-media works combining photography, painting, collage and video, as well as a selection of her fashion photography. The exhibition aims to explore Sassen’s creative process, focusing on her quest for innovation in photographic forms and the importance of the personal in her work.
Find out more on MEP website.
Delcy Morelos. El oscuro de abajo.
Marian Goodman Gallery
14 October – 21 December
Galerie Marian Goodman Paris presents El oscuro de abajo, Delcy Morelos’ first exhibition with the gallery and the artist’s first solo show in France. El oscuro de abajo opens a few weeks after El abrazo, artist’s first US solo exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation in New York. For her Paris show, the artist presents a large-scale installation using earth, the material that has been at the heart of her work since 2012. The exhibition also includes pictorial works on textile, natural fibre and paper created over the past two decades. Morelos’ abstract works, with their formidable evocations, inspire reflection on the interplay between man and the earth, the human body and materiality.
Mode et Sport, d’un Podium à l’autre
Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD)
20 September 2023 – 7 April 2024
In the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games, from 20 September 2023 to 7 April 2024, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris is presenting Fashion and sport, from one podium to the other, an exhibition exploring the fascinating links between fashion and sport, from antiquity to the present day. This major project shows how two seemingly distant worlds are involved in the same social issues concerning the body. The evolution of sportswear and its influence on contemporary fashion is illustrated by 450 garments and accessories, photographs, sketches, magazines, posters, paintings, sculptures and videos.
Mark Rothko
Fondation Louis Vuitton
18 October 2023 – 02 April 2024
The Fondation Louis Vuitton presents the first retrospective in France dedicated to Mark Rothk since the 1999 exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The retrospective brings together some 115 works from the largest international institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Tate in London and the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., as well as from international private collections, including the artist’s own family collection.
Arranged chronologically in all the Foundation’s rooms, the exhibition traces the artist’s entire career, from his earliest figurative paintings to the abstract works for which he is best known today.
Urs Fischer. Wave
Place Vendôme, Paris
14 October – 30 November 2023
Gagosian showcases Urs Fischer’s public sculpture Wave (2018) at Place Vendôme in Paris as a part of Paris+ by Art Basel. Wave is part of Fischer’s Big Clays series, which involves initially molding small pieces of clay by hand. From these numerous clay shapes, one is selected, digitally scanned, and enlarged to monument-like proportions. Despite its larger size, the sculpture retains the intricate texture and details of its smaller model, maintaining a tactile quality.