Art Observed is prowling around FIAC. They took these pictures and had a chat with Paul Gray:

The Richard Gray Gallery seems to have been drawn to FIAC for this particular event: “I haven’t been to FIAC in many years but from what I understand it’s made quite a Renaissance”, and Gray has enjoyed walking around the other galleries which are presenting this year. In marked contrast to the general reticence regarding the recession Gray was very frank:

“2007 was the high water mark…2008 was a year when nobody knew exactly what was happening but most of us who have been in the business a long time felt that it was long past time for a downturn in the market…prices can’t go up forever. It doesn’t mean that the art doesn’t still sell, and doesn’t still make record prices but there are fewer people lined up. The thing is you don’t really realize how many fewer people are in the market because if a work sells it hides the fact that there may have only been one person to buy it. Whereas let’s say in 2007 there might have been ten, in 2008 there might have been only been one or two, and in 2009 in the beginning there were none. This was a very difficult year for contemporary art..”

“I think there’s something disingenuous about the idea that an art fair is about education, I mean they’re trying to, in a way, put a different bloom on the rose, which is ok, these events can be very educational but their core is the opportunity for people to see, and buy works of art.”

“I think of what I do, not really sales so much as helping people to understand why they want to collect, and helping them to dispel the doubts that stand between them and doing what they want to do…It would be wrong to define a collector too narrowly because different people come to it for different reasons but I collect because certain times, and it’s fairly rare that it happens but occasionally I come across a work of art which speaks to me. That’s the kind of thing I want to own, something that moves me.”

AO Onsite- FIAC Has Begun in Paris and will run through October 25th (Art Observed)