France

Asian Biennale: Running alongside the main Biennale for six days last month and providing an alternative Asian focus to the glitter of French furniture, jewels and Art Deco at the Carrousel du Louvre was a new venture. The Biennale des Arts Asiatiques, organised by the Association des Specialistes d’Art Asiatiques, was a Salon of 22 specialist dealers set in a marquee at the other end of the Tuileries Gardens, which ran from September 21-25.

BELGIAN dealer and international interior designer Axel Vervoordt made a big splash in Paris during the 21st Biennale, but although he had a stand at the grand fair his real showstopper was outside in a 44 metre industral barge moored on the opposite bank of the Seine facing the Carrousel du Louvre.

FRENCH auction laws may have been reformed, but monopolies still exist, as Christie’s have just found to their cost.

THIS 75 per cent-complete shell of the extinct South American mammal known as the Glypdodont, pictured right, will be the star attraction of a highly unusual single-owner collection of ornithological and palaeontological specimens being sold by the Moulins auctioneers Enchères Sadde on October 20.

A host of other events have been programmed to attract the international buyers expected in France for the Paris Biennale (September 20-29). These range from auctions – Christie’s sale of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti on September 28, or Prunier’s Haute Epoque sale in Louviers on September 22 – through small, specialist fairs (devoted to Asian Art, Decorative Arts and Tribal Art) – to gallery shows.

PARIS: The knock-on effects of auction reform mean it’s all change for the new season: France’s traditional auction scene has undergone a major overhaul, with commissaires-priseurs retaining their monopoly for court-order sales only, and obliged to create new commercial entities if they wish to stage other auctions.

Christian Deydier, head of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, sees lobbying for change as one of his most important roles. With help from his Vice-President Hervé Aaron, and Honorary President Philippe Kraemer, Deydier promises to “give it everything when it comes to lobbying… We must make the most of current favourable circumstances.”

After decades of wrangling over the reform of their antiquated auction system and a period of uncertainty and inaction among its dealers, the Paris art market starts the 2002 season in an unusually positive frame of mind.

PARIS: A new Paris fair dedicated to Asian Art gets under way later this month. Running from Saturday September 21 to Wednesday September 25, the inaugural Biennale des Arts Asiatiques is timed to coincide with the opening week of the French capital’s Biennale des Antiquaires and takes places at the Carré des Sangliers in the Jardin des Tuileries – just a stroll down the road from the Carrousel du Louvre, where Paris’s most celebrated and glamorous veteran fair is held.

FRANCE: François Curiel has regained his post as head of Christie’s France after the abrupt departure of Dominique-Henri Freiche.

The ceramics highlight of a mixed subject sale at Raymond de Nicolaÿ (17.94/14.35% buyer’s premium) at Drouot on June 26 was this elaborately decorated maiolica charger c.1520, from Deruta, 19in (49cm) in diameter, which made a double-estimate €330,000 (£213,000).

FRANCE: THE Louis XVI pyramid clock, 2ft 1in (63cm) and confidently attributed to bronzier François Vion, soared to a double-estimate €200,000 (£129,000), despite the fact that the escapement and pendulum suspension had been replaced, at De Nicolaÿ (15/10% buyer’s premium) on June 26.

FRANCE: Millon & Associés (17.5/ 13.5% buyer’s premium) June 26 sale included two watercolours taken from an album of drawings by Eugene Delacroix, which the artist presented to Count Charles de Mornay on their return from Morocco in 1832.

TOULON-based, but owned by Britain’s dmg, the Societé Française d’organisation have acquired the Cagnes-sur-Mer Antiques Fair which will be held next in the famous Hippodrome of the town in South-West France from September 12 to 16.

Sales by members of the Paris Compagnie des Commissaires-Priseurs (i.e. all Paris auctioneers bar Christie’s and Sotheby’s) fell 15 per cent in the first half of 2002 to €290m (£187m), as compared to the first six months of 2001.

After 236 years of auctioning wine in London and other international centres, Christie’s will be holding their inaugural sale of fine wines in Paris on September 14.

FRANCE: A stud farm will be the unusual yet appropriate venue for for an auction of all things equines in Orne, Normandy on July 21.

SALES IN PARIS – THE LAFOND COLLECTION: A RAREFIED array of pharmacy jars formed the basis of the former Louis Lafond Collection presented at Briest on June 4. Lafond (1880-1950) was a practising chemist whose unremarkable personal history epitomises that of the dedicated, middle-class, often anonymous buying public that continues to flourish in France and, especially, at the Hôtel Drouot.

Every picture tells a story, but in the case of Théodore Chassériau’s large portrait of Comtesse de Latour-Maubourg, it was condition as much as content that revealed the artist’s state of mind at the time.

Princess Soraya’s father Khalil lived for much of the 1920s in Germany, where he married Soraya’s Russian-born mother Eva Karl in 1926. Soraya was born in Ispahan in 1932, but lived in Germany until she was five, returning to Iran in 1937.