Briefing

What moved, and why it matters.

Friday

The Grand Palais, home of Art Basel Paris
Art Basel Paris is held at the Grand Palais© Art BaselSource The Art Newspaper

WorldArt fairsGrand Palais, Paris · Closes October 23, 7pm

Art Basel Paris closes two days early

Art Basel Paris ends its fifth edition at 7pm on October 23 and stays closed over the weekend of October 24 and 25. Mass demonstrations across France turned violent last weekend, and more protests are planned for central Paris this weekend. In an email to VIP guests, director Karim Crippa said the safety of everyone at the fair is the priority. The fair opened with its Avant-Première on October 20 and brought together 211 exhibitors from 41 countries and territories. From Korea, Kukje Gallery and P21 take part, with P21 showing a solo presentation of Choi Haneyl in the Emergence sector.

YNPR's View

The fair closes early, but the selling is already done. When the run shortens, the preview becomes the whole fair. The guest list, not the floor, sets the story.

Key points

Korea

Fluorescent Fish Tank Video installed at the Seoul Museum of Art: a blue aquarium video set against a wall of small photographs
Installation view of Fluorescent Fish Tank VideoPhoto: Cocoa Pictures (Kim Yoon-jae), Seoul Museum of ArtSource Newspim

ExhibitionSeoul Museum of Art, Seosomun · Oct 21, 2026-Feb 21, 2027 · Free

Lynn Hershman Leeson, a question sixty years long

Seoul Museum of Art opens a solo show of the American media artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson. It is her first museum solo exhibition in Asia. More than 200 works, from the 1960s to recent years, run across six sections. The interactive works Lorna, Deep Contact and Agent Ruby carry Korean subtitles and services for the first time. A film program follows from November to January.

YNPR's View

Many shows ask about the self in the age of AI. Few artists have asked the same question for sixty years. This show's strength is persistence, not timeliness.

Art weekSeongbuk-gu, Seoul · Oct 20-Nov 1

The first Seongbuk Art Week turns a neighborhood into a gallery

A work by Lee Woo-sung in the yard of Simwoojang in Seongbuk-dong: an orange panel stands beside the hanok
Lee Woo-sung, With a Singing Heart, installed at Simwoojang, Seongbuk Art WeekPhoto: Seongbuk Art MuseumSource Seoul Shinmun

Seongbuk Art Museum, Seongbuk-gu and the Seongbuk Culture Foundation open the first Seongbuk Art Week, themed "Home: A Connected Breath". It combines seven special exhibitions, eleven projects in historic spaces and network shows at 22 art institutions in the district. Seongbuk Art Museum hosts the first joint exhibition of Suh Se-ok and his son Do Ho Suh.

YNPR's View

A neighborhood becomes one exhibition. Do Ho Suh's name opens the door; the hanok and small museums keep the audience.

Also in the news

  • Chungnam Art Museum forum hosts Frac Grand Large and Modern Art Oxford (Oct 21; opening due in the second half of 2027)Gyeonggi News1 · Oct 20

World

This Edition's LeadArt Basel Paris closes two days early

FestivalSouth Kensington, London · June 19-27, 2027

Serendipity borrows London's museum quarter

India's Serendipity Arts brings a festival to South Kensington and Exhibition Road in London from June 19 to 27, 2027. The V&A, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum are partners, joined by the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal College of Art, among others. Six women curators shape a program across visual art, music, dance, new media and food. The annual event in Goa, begun in 2016, has drawn more than one million visitors and participants.

YNPR's View

One country's culture borrows another city's museum quarter whole. The unit of planning is a street, not a show.

CollectionsVenice

Pinault turns Palazzo Grassi into a permanent display

A bright gallery at Palazzo Grassi: a doorway opens onto the next room, and a large red-and-violet painting hangs on the right wall
Installation view of Michael Armitage: The Promise of Change at Palazzo Grassi, on view until January 10, 2027. A temporary show, not the permanent displaySource Impulse

François Pinault is ending the temporary exhibition program at Palazzo Grassi in Venice and replacing it with a permanent display of his collection: 106 works by 54 artists. Temporary shows continue at Punta della Dogana. Pinault set out the plan in an interview with Le Monde on October 15. Michael Armitage's exhibition runs at Palazzo Grassi until January 10, 2027.

YNPR's View

A private collection becomes its own museum. A temporary show is an opinion. A permanent display is a commitment.

Art fairsOne Marylebone, London

Gallery-free Fair Play drew crowds but few sales

A collage by Seana Gavin: jellyfish, fish and coral around a stone arch in an underwater dusk
Seana Gavin, Underwater World, 2019, hand-cut collage. An artist showing at Fair PlaySource London x London

Fair Play, where artists run their own stands, launched in London during Frieze week. There is no stand fee; the fair takes 50% of any sale, VAT included. Founder Ryan Stanier said more than 3,000 people came to the private view. Most artists reported no sales.

MarketLondon

Is the energy of the 1990s back in London?

A pink neon sentence glowing on a building at dusk
Tracey Emin's neon I never stopped loving you at Droit House, Margate. Not the edition in the reportPhoto: Katie Hunt (CC BY 2.0)Source Wikimedia Commons

The Art Newspaper reports interest in the Cool Britannia era across London's exhibitions, auctions and fairs. Three editions of a Tracey Emin neon sold at Xavier Hufkens for £95,000 each. Lisa Panting, co-founder of Hollybush Gardens, sees the period as a market moment shaped by a few players, and says conditions today are very different.

YNPR's View

An era's story sells. Whether this is revival or nostalgia, the next generation of artists will answer, not the market.

Also in the news

Market

The Pace Di Donna Schrader stand at Art Basel Paris, with Modigliani's reclining nude on the right-hand wall
Pace Di Donna Schrader's stand at Art Basel Paris, with Modigliani's Nu étendu (Lolotte) (1917) at rightSource The Art Newspaper

Art fairsArt Basel Paris · October 20-21

Big-ticket works sold in the first two days despite the protests

The Art Newspaper reports that seven- and eight-figure works sold in the first two days of Art Basel Paris despite the protests. Hauser & Wirth sold Gerhard Richter's Rococo Table (1965) for $10.5m at the Avant-Première. Almine Rech sold Ha Chong-hyun's Conjunction 23-96 (2023) for $390,000. Pace Di Donna Schrader offered Modigliani's Nu étendu (Lolotte) (1917) at more than $100m, with no sale reported.

WorkPriceGallery · Status
Gerhard Richter, Rococo Table (1965)$10.5mHauser & Wirth · Sold
Julie Mehretu, Rise of the New Suprematists (2001)$7.8mWhite Cube · Asking price
George Condo$2.2mSprüth Magers · Sold
Ha Chong-hyun, Conjunction 23-96 (2023)$390,000Almine Rech · Sold
Modigliani, Nu étendu (Lolotte) (1917)Over $100mPace Di Donna Schrader · No sale reported

US dollars, as reported by the galleries. Source: The Art Newspaper

YNPR's View

The buyers had arrived before the protests did. Ha Chong-hyun's sale shows Dansaekhwa trading on the same clock as the blue-chip booths.

AuctionsBukowskis, Stockholm · November 19

Hilma af Klint could set an artist record

Hilma af Klint's abstract painting Ser III No. 5
Hilma af Klint, Ser III No. 5, 1920Courtesy BukowskisSource The Art Newspaper

Hilma af Klint's Ser III No. 5 (1920) goes to auction at Bukowskis in Stockholm on November 19, estimated at SEK 6m-8m. The artist's current auction record is $165,825, for The Power of the Spleen (1931), sold at Stockholms Auktionsverk in 2019.

ItemFigureBasis
Ser III No. 5 (1920)SEK 6m-8m (about $600,000-800,000)Estimate, Bukowskis, Nov 19
Current artist record$165,825The Power of the Spleen (1931), 2019. Hammer or with fees not stated

Source: The Art Newspaper

YNPR's View

The market is pricing an artist the museums recognized first. The gap between reputation and price is the story of this sale.

AuctionsK Auction, Seoul · October 28

K Auction's October sale offers 16 works by artists in the SFMOMA show

Park Soo-keun's Gwiro: three figures in white lines on a rough, granite-like surface
Park Soo-keun, Gwiro, 1964Photo: K AuctionSource Newspim

K Auction holds an October 28 sale of 85 works worth about KRW 11.2bn. It includes 16 works by seven modern and contemporary Korean artists featured in SFMOMA's RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me. The top estimate is KRW 680m-1.8bn for Park Soo-keun's Gwiro (1964). The preview is free from October 17 to 28.

WorkEstimateNote
Park Soo-keun, Gwiro (1964)KRW 680m-1.8bnTop estimate of the sale
Lee Seung-jo, Nucleus 87-09 (1987)KRW 130m-450mArtist in the SFMOMA show

Korean won, estimates. Source: Newspim

Artists to watch

Lubaina Himid's ceramic installation: plates and a tureen painted with a portrait face
Lubaina Himid's ceramic installation at the Hollybush Gardens stand, Frieze LondonPhoto: David OwensSource The Art Newspaper

Lubaina Himid

Hollybush Gardens sold most of Himid's works from its Frieze London stand, at £45,000 to £120,000.

Frieze London · Hollybush Gardens

Lee Seung-jo

Lee is among the artists in SFMOMA's RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me. Nucleus 87-09 (1987) goes to K Auction on October 28, estimated at KRW 130m-450m.

K Auction · October 28

Coming up

  1. -

    First Seongbuk Art Week

    Seongbuk-gu, Seoul

  2. -

    Lynn Hershman Leeson solo show

    Seoul Museum of Art

  3. -

    Sotheby's The Paris Sales

    Sotheby's Paris

  4. Art Basel Paris, final day

    Grand Palais · Closes 7pm

  5. K Auction October sale

    Sinsa-dong, Seoul

  6. Bukowskis, Hilma af Klint's Ser III No. 5

    Stockholm

  7. Michael Armitage exhibition closes

    Palazzo Grassi, Venice

Calendar sources
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