Art World Weekly Digest — Art Basel Paris Week 2026x

1 day ago

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Hey friends,

London just packed away its Frieze lanyards, and the whole art world is now hopping the train to Paris for Art Basel. This week we've got the receipts from London (yes, including that Mondrian), a new art centre on an old car-factory island, Ibrahim Mahama taking over the Fondation Cartier, maybe the world's oldest shipwreck, and Monet's very relatable first London show. Grab your coffee (or your pumpkin spice potion) and let's go.

Frieze week in London: the receipts

Last week I promised we'd check on Piet Mondrian's Composition III. The verdict: it hammered at £21.5 million (£25.2 million with fees) at Christie's on Oct 14, within its £20 million to £30 million estimate, The Art Newspaper reports. The top lot was actually Kandinsky's Das bunte Leben (1907), restituted in 2023, at £31.6 million with fees, and Christie's two evening sales made £218.6 million in total. Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale was more muted at £45.9 million, per The Art Newspaper, though Willem de Kooning set a European auction record for the artist and a David Hockney iPad drawing made £1.9 million, a record for his iPad works (digital art gang, rise up). At Phillips, all 20 lots sold for £14.8 million, per Artnet. At the fair, ARTnews says Hauser & Wirth sold over $11 million across Frieze London and Frieze Masters, including a Jan Brueghel the Elder flower still life for around £5 million (galleries self-report, so grain of salt). The mood? "Collectors are not willing to take big risks," as dealer Thomas Stauffer put it. Careful, but the rare stuff still got paddles up.

A giant new art centre on Renault's old island

Installation view of Imaginary Engine at Large. In the foreground: Bertrand Lavier, R23-F1 (2026). At the back: Jean Tinguely, Requiem pour une feuille morte (1967). © Adagp, Paris, 2026. Photo: Aurélien Mole. Via The Art Newspaper.

Large (or "le Large") has arrived on the Île Seguin in Greater Paris, where Renault ran its main car plant from 1919 to 1992, The Art Newspaper reports. It's a non-profit from the Emerige group with no collection of its own, focused on public access and the French art scene, and ARTnews says about 40% of its public spaces are free to enter. The opening show, Imaginary Engine, curated by Cecilia Alemani, pairs Renault's art collection with 17 new commissions, including Bertrand Lavier's Formula One Renault, repainted in his thick brushstrokes. Large's own site says it welcomes visitors from Wednesday, Oct 21, and the show runs through March 7, 2027, per Large. A race car as a canvas? Vroom vroom, baby.

Ibrahim Mahama takes over the Fondation Cartier

Ibrahim Mahama, Parliament of Ghosts, 2023. ©Ibrahim Mahama/Photo Ernest Sackiety/Courtesy Red Clay. Via ARTnews.

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama opens The Harvest Season this Thursday, Oct 22, filling the whole Fondation Cartier in Paris with nine associate artists and collectives through Feb 28, 2027, per Fondation Cartier. He calls it "the most ambitious exhibition I've done" in ARTnews. His Parliament of Ghosts returns with about 200 restored royal stools from the Asante Empire that visitors can access freely, not behind glass, and a new work rebuilds an abandoned Ghanaian glass bottle factory that will later go on permanent display in Kumasi. Money from his sales funds the art institutions he founds in Tamale, Ghana. "I think the artist is just a vessel," he says. Art built by and for a community is my favorite kind.

Could this be the world's oldest shipwreck?

An underwater archaeologist approaches one of the clay containers, which were found lying on a slope. Photo: Hakan Öniz/Akdeniz University. Via The Art Newspaper.

Archaeologists have found about 30 ceramic jars off Kekova, on Turkey's south-west coast, believed to come from a ship that sank some 4,500 years ago, The Art Newspaper reports. That would beat the current record holder, a wreck of about 4,200 years found off the Greek island of Dokos. Some jars still hold residue of their cargo, and the wooden ship itself was probably eaten by a wood-boring mollusc. Best detail: the team first figured the jars were Ottoman, "just another wreck, one of 434," until excavation leader Hakan Öniz spotted similar pottery in an Egyptian archaeology publication. "I thought, 'By God.'" Ghost ship season, but make it science.

Monet's first London show: rave reviews, zero sales

A new book, Claude Monet: A Life in Letters, includes a letter about Monet's first solo show in London in 1889, organized by Theo van Gogh, Vincent's brother, writes Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper. "Nothing sold, but the exhibition was very well received by the public with praise from all the English newspapers," Monet wrote. One critic called him "the art-hero of the hour," yet his next London solo show didn't come until 1936, a decade after his death. (Theo did better in Paris, selling more than 60 Monets between 1887 and 1890.) So if your last show was all compliments and no sales, you're in excellent company.

Looking ahead

Jenny Holzer: J'ai vu at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Oct 20 to Feb 21, 2027, with text projections on the museum's Seine-side façade during opening week, per Paris.fr.
Art Basel Paris, Grand Palais, Oct 23 to 25, with 211 galleries, a free Public Program at nine Paris locations, and an Oh La La! rehang on Friday and Saturday themed "Myths & Legends" (hunt for the stickers), per Art Basel. After a weekend of unrest in France that also saw student protesters close the Louvre on Monday, Art Basel says "the fair is proceeding as planned" with extra security, per ARTnews.
Sotheby's New York, Nov 18, with a 1944 Edward Hopper sailboat painting from Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, high estimate $30 million, per ARTnews.
Rubaiya Qatar, a new quadrennial opening Nov 21 across Doha with more than 120 artists, per ARTnews.
Art Basel Miami Beach, Dec 4 to 6, per Art Basel, which is staying in Miami Beach through 2031 after a deal cutting its rent from nearly $1 million to $500,000 a year, ARTnews reports.