Monday, April 07, 2008

Artparis 08 / The march of the little red dots.

What a great show and so many little red dots. This years Art Fair in Paris was great. It took place in the Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill and runs from the 3rd to the 7th of April. No prefabricated structures here. Just class. Pity about the coffee though, bloody Maxwell House muck.
It was a really enlivening, impressive, colourful, painterly (where did they find all those great painters) and just generally brilliant show. There was a large queue to get in but that's normal, the French love a good queue. I've seen people join them only to get to the end and realise that that didn't really want to be there, so they trail away. There's a sense of solidarity in waiting together.

So why was the ArtParis show so great? There was a lot of art on the walls rather than empty space. There was no sense of boredom in visitors. The displays had a lot of class and each was a bit different to each other, simply creative rather than competitive. There were very interesting effects type art which didn't depend on being plugged in or require a solar panel to work. Just clever. The quality, across the board was really impressive and no one seemed to be trying to foist off bad or boring work on buyers. And there were lots of buyers. I've never seen so many little red dots. Not to mention so many political paintings. Freedom of speech really isn't dead here. It was very impressive.

Here's a selection of photos and video.



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