TULSA – The 18th annual Cherokee Art Market announced its top winners at a reception on Oct. 13 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa. 

The juried market in October featured the work of more than 150 Native American artists representing more than 50 federally recognized tribes all competing for more than $75,000 in prize money.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. stated that placing funding into art through the Cherokee Artist Recovery Act has had a tremendous impact on Cherokee artisans.

“It has meant over $450,000 worth of direct art purchases from Cherokee artists,” Hoskin said. “That helps lift up artists at the time they need to be lifted up. It’s helped open up the avenues for access to art markets. It’s done something that I think is the most important thing the government of the Cherokee Nation can do for this community and that is to look to the generations that are coming up.” 

Hoskin said continued funding for the future generations of artists will give them the opportunity to explore their culture through creativity.

“What we need to talk about in the years ahead is not artist recovery, but artist resiliency,” Hoskin said. “The resiliency of our artists, the resiliency of our community, we can do that by continuing to invest in what you do. We can continue to do that by lifting up this art market year after year making it better and better.”

CN citizen and artist Demos Glass won of best of show for his piece titled “Two Realms.” He also took the best of class award in the sculpture category.

“Two Realms” is a 5-foot tall, fabricated steel sculpture of a Southeastern-style serpent, using powder-coated steel, stainless steel, ceramic and wood.

“This is one of the characters that was able to go from middle ground to upper ground,” Glass said. “So he’s somebody that had a little bit of a chance to be able transverse from one realm to the next. So that’s why I made him kind of exotic. It almost felt like he was space-ly.”

Glass said he grew up in the arts, learning from his father, Bill Glass Jr.

“The skillset in Native American artwork is just unbelievable. You really do have to get really good at executing your technical skills,” Glass said.

Taking a newer top honor for the Native American Art Magazine Editor’s Choice award was Pati Belgarde for her beadwork titled “Mona Lisa.”

Belgarde, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa tribe of North Dakota, entered an embellished hat that paid homage to the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women movement. She said the piece took her seven months with 16-hour days to complete. 

“It’s always been a really big thing to me about the missing and murdered Indigenous women,” she said. “I cringe every time I see another one missing. I just had this dream of seeing her (Mona Lisa) as a Native woman with the eagle feather and then all of the background where women have been found along the rivers and the trees and forest. I just seen this as a vehicle to tell the story of what’s happening to our women.” 

Belgarde does Iroquois-style beadwork and this is her second time attending the Cherokee Art Market. She also won best of class in the beadwork/quillwork category.

For a complete list of winners, visit www.visitcherokeenation.org.

Top Awards

Best of Show – Demos Glass (Cherokee Nation), “Two Realms.”

Culture Keeper Award ­– Hollis Chitto (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Pueblo of Laguna/Pueblo of Isleta), “Napakanli Um Okla Imma” (Flowers for My Family).

Innovator Award – Monica Silva Lovato (Santo Domingo Pueblo), “Hope for the Future.”

Anna Mitchell Award – Tama Roberts (Cherokee Nation), “Hopeful” & Troy Jackson, “Cherokee Rose.”

Jesse Hummingbird Award – Michael Toya (Pueblo of San Felipe), “Nature’s Medicine.”

Native American Art Magazine Editor’s Choice Award – Pati Belgarde (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota), “Mona Lisa.” 

Best of Class Winners

Painting, drawing, graphics and photography – Bryan Waytula (Cherokee Nation), “The Grass Dancer.”

Sculpture – Demos Glass (Cherokee Nation), “Two Realms.”

Beadwork/quillwork – Pati Belgarde (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota), “Mona Lisa.”

Basketry – Michael Dart (Cherokee Nation), “Wild Thang.”

Pottery – Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation), “Cherokee Rose.”

Textiles – Alberta Henderson (Navajo Nation), “Majestic.”

Jewelry – Abraham Begay (Navajo Nation), “Squash Blossom Necklace.”

Diverse Art Forms – General B. Grant (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), “Today’s Medicine.” 

South African artist Zanele Muholi (previously) has spent the better part of their career challenging portraiture traditions. Often working with quotidian objects and black-and-white photography, Muholi’s works center themself and Black queer people who have long been omitted from the canon. In recent years, they’ve begun to create bronze sculptures with similar motives, some of which are on view now at The Jardin des Tuileries.

Part of Paris + par Art Basel, Muholi’s The Politics of Black Silhouettes encompasses a series of figurative works positioned alongside statues by art historical greats like Auguste Rodin and Alberto Giacometti. While the previously installed sculptures are often presented on pedestals in stately positions, Muholi’s rest directly on the ground, exploring notions of value and reverence. One work depicts a figure sleeping softly on their side, while another shows a subject bound to a chair with belt-like restraints, their hands and feet anxious to move. The artist’s intent is corrective and “to rewrite a Black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in South Africa and beyond.”

The Politics of Black Silhouettes is on view through October 31. Explore more of Muholi’s works across mediums on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article In Paris, Zanele Muholi’s Bronze Sculptures Summon the Stories of Black Queer South Africans appeared first on Colossal.

People elbowed past each other amid the crowds during the first hours of Paris+ by Art Basel, which opened its second edition today (until 22 October). “It’s heaving, and with a lot of Americans,” said a dealer at Pace, standing by a 1956 Rothko painting in shades of red and olive, not seen in public for more than 30 years, and now offered by the gallery for $40m.

Such observations are shared by David Zwirner: “There are more American collectors at Paris+ than there were at [last week’s] Frieze London,” he said. His gallery shifted $20m worth of art today at the fair, including Paris+’s highest-valued reported sale thus far: a 2023 Kerry James Marshall painting, for $6m. The gallery did not report a single seven-figure sale from Frieze London.

A slew of major institutional exhibitions, the launch of the Design Miami/ Paris fair and the opening of three major international galleries in town, are also contributing to a sense of sustained strength within the city’s art scene. The figures say as much too: France’s art market grew from $4.7bn to $5bn in 2022, according to the most recent Art Market report by the economist Clare McAndrew, published by UBS and Art Basel.

“Look at the number of collectors here! There are more than at Fiac,” said the Cologne dealer Thomas Zander, comparing Paris+ to the fair it usurped last year. He will open a gallery in the French capital this week. “Paris+ confirms its major importance,” said Kamel Mennour, one of the city’s most established gallerists, in a statement. “Since the opening this morning, the concentration of international collectors, curators and art world players, is extremely high and energising.” Works Mennour sold at the preview include an oil painting by Eugene Carrière to a private French collection, for €52,000 and a 2023 mirror and marble piece by Ryan Gander, to a private Canadian collection, for £95,000.

“It’s hard to tell yet whether attendance is high or the venue is just small,” said Jason Hwang, a co-owner of High Art gallery, which operates spaces in Paris and Arles, southern France. This is the last edition of the fair to be held in the temporary Grand Palais Éphémère venue. Next year it will shift across the Seine, to the actual Grand Palais, which is currently being renovated. Doing so will allow Art Basel to bump up exhibitor numbers by around 25%, and increase stand sizes too. This year, 154 galleries take part, around a third of which are from France.

A fair amid global tragedy

Heaving or not, the general mood feels muted, and for harrowing reasons. A fatal terrorist attack in France last week, linked to the Israel-Hamas war, has led to the interior minister issuing the highest level of national alert and banning pro-Palestinian protests. Art Basel has responded by installing anti-ram vehicle barriers around the venue, increasing the physical presence of security at the fair and suspending the use of the cloakroom.

“This latest escalation in violence grieves us not only as individuals but as members of a global cultural community whose essential values of humanity, mutual respect, and dialogue are at its core,” Art Basel’s chief executive, Noah Horowitz, wrote in an email sent to Art Basel attendees on Sunday.

A number of dealers approached by The Art Newspaper declined to comment on the subject. Still, some are willing to address the situation. “I am so concerned about events in the Middle East. We don’t realise we are losing part of our civilisation,” said Franck Prazan, the director of Paris gallery Applicat-Prazan. He sold a work by the artist Jean Helion to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (L’atelier, 1953).

The tragedy unfolding in the region is likely to dampen sales, with some collectors understood to have cancelled tickets to France. “Some people I know are not coming because of what is happening [in Israel and Palestine],” said Javier Peres, the founder of Peres Projects, which has spaces in Berlin, Milan and Seoul.

Dealers were more happy to discuss comparisons between Paris+ and Frieze London. Peres agrees that more Americans have shown up for the Paris fair, with Asian collectors roughly the same between both. Some of his clients “chose between the two”. Still, he notes that for him the difference between the two fairs is “pretty minimal” with “similar works, price points, and thought processes” placed behind both stands. The only key difference is “the smaller booth sizes in Paris, which will change next year”. Peres Projects pre-sold five works; its presentation is priced between $5,000 to $75,000, and features a drawing by Rebecca Ackroyd and paintings by Anton Munar.

For the tier of the market that Peres deals in, several months of hiked interest rates and decreased lending by banks have not been as impactful as at the top end, he said. “If you’re taking out loans for a $50,000 painting, I don’t know you and you don’t know my gallery.”

But a downturn in the global financial markets has not deterred gallerists from bringing works in the seven and even eight figures to the fair. Not all of these have been snapped up yet—that $40m Rothko on Pace’s stand is yet to sell. But this is “typical for works like these”, said a Pace spokesperson. “At our most recent Art Basel stand, a $14m Joan Mitchell painting, one of the most expensive works we brought, didn’t place until day three. These things should take time, especially for a work like the Rothko, which hasn’t been seen in decades.” The spokesperson continues that “two conversations” are currently taking place around the Rothko. Delphine Arnault, the daughter of France’s richest man and LVMH owner, Bernard Arnault, was seen eyeing the work, flanked on either side by bodyguards.

Keeping prices somewhat more conservative has worked out for Hauser & Wirth, which sold out its booth by 2pm on Wednesday. The most expensive work shifted was a 2023 George Condo painting for $2.3m. A spokesperson for the gallery points out that while its stand at Frieze London did not sell as quickly, it was dedicated to a solo presentation of Barbara Chase Riboud, making clear comparisons difficult.

Speaking to the wider state of the market, the gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac said: “Last year was an exceptionally good year and in a way that wasn’t sustainable, so it’s no surprise and not a bad thing that things have calmed down this year.”

At lower price points, a strong reception for some unusual works could be observed. At Galerie Poggi from Paris, which opened an expanded space this weekend, three large glass sculptures by Ittah Yoda, filled with perfumes, all sold for $8,000 each. And Fitzpatrick Gallery, established in 2020 and also from Paris, placed a new wall-hanging work by Mathis Altmann, made from an LED Matrix panel, wood and metal, with a private foundation for €20,000.

Still, these offerings remain somewhat few and far between, with Paris’s reputation as a city full of beautiful, tasteful objects, rather than daring and dangerous propositions, still hard to shake. “Everything was so boring, I can’t recall a thing I saw,” a Berlin-based curator, who wishes to remain anonymous, said of several exhibitions at major galleries in the Marais district.

Of course, this is to be expected in such trying times. “Most dealers have focused on steadily navigating what is generally agreed to have been a slow year, and I suspect this will continue until at least this time next year,” said Henry Little, an art adviser at the Fine Art Group. “If you want to stay in business, now is not the time for big gambles on radically uncommercial projects.”

• Paris+ by Art Basel, until 22 October, Grand Palais Éphémère, Paris

One night, a man’s car goes off the road. His life flashes before him, as the synopsis of “Iizuna Fair” says, “In the midst of the frenzy night, a man finds himself lost in the crevasse of time.” Dreamlike scenes unfold in filmmaker Sumito Sakakibara’s poignant short film as it pans across the anonymous protagonist’s buried memories, inhibitions, and unkept promises, as he realizes, “he was the phantom.”

In hand-painted frames that merge gradually from one scene to the next, Sakakibara taps into the nuances of nostalgia, human experience, regret, grief, and what it means to truly be alive. Seemingly unrelated scenes unfold simultaneously, dipping in and out of different time periods and events, centering around a fair that has come to the town of Iizuna. Watch from beginning to end, and you’ll witness how Sakakibara composed the film into an infinite loop.

“Iizuna Fair” was commissioned by Nagano Prefectural Art Museum, where it is currently on view on a massive 26-meter-wide, L-shaped screen, and you can also watch the animation above through December 15. See more on the artist’s Vimeo and website.

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Constructed with an intuitive weaving process evocative of birds, Tadashi Kawamata’s “Nest in Liaigre” is a sprawling, site-specific installation that questions how we interact with our built environments. The towering work perches on the side of the Liaigre architecture firm and winds inside the Paris studio, creating a spiral maze of wooden chairs and furniture that flows between the facade and interior. Using humble, vintage materials, Kawamata invites viewers to relax and socialize within the cozy space, while exploring the links between art and architecture.

“Nest in Liaigre” is on view through March 25, 2024, as part of Paris + par Art Basel. Find more of Kawamata’s works on Instagram.

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How can retailers navigate economic headwinds, shifting consumer behaviours and rapid advances in AI technology to stay relevant and profitable? Vogue Business hosted the Power to the Marketer Festival 2023 in partnership with Emarsys to explore how brand leaders can combine art and science to deliver hyper-relevant experiences, win customers in a volatile market and turn a new generation of shoppers into fans.

This year’s global festival kicked off at Famtain private members club in Munich on 13 June before travelling to The Standard in New York on 4 October. “Marketers are walking a tightrope,” said Joanna Milliken, CEO of Emarsys. “On one side, their customers; on the other side, their business. They have to answer to both and keep both happy. It’s a balancing act.”

Fewer, bigger

In the opening fireside chat, Carolyn Dawkins, CMO of luxury jewellery retailer David Yurman, said the role of the marketer has become increasingly complex. “We try to focus on ‘fewer, bigger’,” she said. “What are the key things that will have the biggest impact? Who are the critical consumers we need to win? How do we acquire them, and how do we retain them? Then we have to galvanise the magic of the entire team around those big moments.”

The jeweller tapped Sofia Richie Grainge to be its newest global ambassador and the face of its Sculpted Cable bracelet collection campaign. “We knew we needed to attract the next generation — and there’s no one who dominates style on Instagram and TikTok more than Sofia Richie Grange,” said Dawkins. “The campaign delivered four of our top-performing marketing assets of all time and took us just three months to launch. Brands have to find that balance between agility and long-term planning.”

Doubling down on DNA

In a panel session on how to future-proof loyalty, Saks CMO Emily Essner pointed to a rebound in luxury spending. According to the latest Saks Luxury Pulse, a periodic online survey of luxury consumers’ attitudes towards shopping, spending and fashion trends, 58 per cent of luxury consumers planned to spend the same or more on luxury in the next three months, representing the first increase in luxury spending plans since the survey began tracking this in May 2022.

“Personalisation is really core to our strategy. We want to demonstrate to our customers that we know who they are and what they’re looking for,” said Essner. “That’s centred around what we call our customer DNA, which is about 250 observed and predicted attributes. That allows us to serve customers with highly relevant content and recommendations while driving retention.”

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Known for her perspective-bending murals (previously), Cinta Vidal explores the nuances of interiors and the myriad ways we interact within architecture in Cohabit, a new body of work presented with Thinkspace Projects in New York. “I’m intrigued by the relationship that people establish between themselves and their immediate surroundings, and now I’m zooming in to find out what’s going on in there,” Vidal says. “In contrast to my most recent works, where I played with darkness, I now strongly illuminate the scenes, which take on more vitality.”

The artist’s background in scenography and set design lends itself to a natural curiosity about how people move around and connect in different places. Notable art and architecture plays a key role in Vidal’s recent paintings, from the seminal Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8, to paintings by the likes of Piet Mondrian, the cool tiles of a subway station, or a Renaissance arcade in a public square.

Vidal’s paintings flirt with perception, filling private rooms and public areas with figures who barely adhere to the laws of gravity. Each composition can be flipped or turned onto its side to reveal parallel narratives unfolding in the same space, suggesting overlapping layers of time. In “Eames,” for example, people and furnishings wander up one of the walls and onto the ceiling, while in “Room,” the composition can be arranged on any of its four sides. The artist achieves this balance by anchoring paintings, corners, and windows around a central vanishing point.

Cohabit goes on view for four days only, from October 18 to 21, at a Thinkspace Projects pop-up location on Broome Street. Find more on Vidal’s website and Instagram.

“Avenue” (2023), oil on canvas, 80 × 80 centimeters

“Hotel” (2023), oil on canvas, 73 × 61 centimeters

“Plaza” (2023), oil on canvas, 61 × 61 centimeters

“Subway” (2023), oil on canvas, 73 × 92 centimeters

“Museum” (2023), oil on canvas, 61 × 61 centimeters

“Parlor” (2023), oil on canvas, 100 × 100 centimeters

“Room” (2023), oil on canvas, 100 × 100 centimeters

“Atelier” (2023), oil on canvas, 81 × 100 centimeters

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This October, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returned to Somerset House for its 11th edition. The event has been a key player in the growing market for work by contemporary African artists since its inception in 2014 and this year was its most ambitious edition yet, featuring 170 artists across 62 galleries. It’s a significant increase from its 47 galleries the year before and a huge leap from the original 15 the event debuted with nine years ago. 

Wider appreciation for contemporary African art and art of the African diaspora has grown dramatically over the last decade among galleries and institutions alike. Significantly, major shows at galleries and institutions across London have also highlighted African artists this autumn, including the Nigerian painter Wura-Natasha Ogunji at Tiwani Contemporary and Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui’s site-specific commission hanging in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. 

As the market for contemporary African art continues to mature, 1-54 offers critical insight into the growing trends in art-making across the African continent. While figuration has dominated the market up to this point, we took note of three other key themes surfacing at this year’s fair and the artists behind them.

Installation view © Jim Winslet

Elevating the Everyday 

El Anatsui’s current Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern is a testament to the fact that the use of everyday items has become an integral part of the practice of numerous contemporary African artists. Composed of thousands of metal bottle caps, Behind the Red Moon is the artist’s largest piece to date and is a commentary on the movement of goods and people under the transatlantic slave trade. The specific liquor bottle tops, sourced in Nigeria, are part of a present-day industry built on colonial trade routes.   

At 1-54, the use of found objects could be seen across many artist’s practices, especially those exploring themes of cultural identity. That includes works by Ghanaian artist Caleb Kwarteng Prah, presented by Nil Gallery. Prah uses the doors of trotros–converted minibuses turned into share taxis—to frame his photographs of members of the Ghanaian working class. His piece Dan x Kofi features a whole white door decorated with religious and floral imagery with two individual pictures of a man inside the door’s windows. 

Meanwhile, at the Paris-based Afikaris Gallery’s stand, Nigerian ceramicist Ozioma Onuzulike’s Beaded Blouse with Two Front Pockets For August Meeting II is a shirt made of natural palm kernel shells, earthenware and stoneware clays, ash glazes, recycled glasses, and copper wire. The artist has recently used palm kernels in his “Palm Kernel Shell Beads” series as a means of recognizing both the cultural and economic value the seed held in West Africa during and after the slave trade.

Ghanaian artist Kwaku Yaro, whose paintings were featured at the Paris-based Septieme Gallery’s 1-54 booth and were priced around $12,000, uses upcycled carrier bags with a distinctive “Ghana Must Go” design, as well as chequered nylon totes strongly associated with migration in West Africa, to create portraits of Ghana’s youths. Also, the Cape Town gallery Whatiftheworld showed works by South African artist Chris Soal, who creates unusual sculptural pieces using mass-produced objects such as beer bottle tops and bamboo toothpicks, as seen in his work Only Thing You Know.

Installation view © Jim Winslet

Beyond the Body

Figurative realism in African art may have been the hottest trend both in primary and secondary market sales in recent years, but several artists are experimenting with the human form in new ways. A notable name among the artists at 1-54 was Senegalese mixed-media painter and sculptor Soly Cissé, whose neo-expressionist style paintings have been garnering interest around the globe. His mixed-media piece Le danseur, shown by La Galerie 38, portrayed loosely drawn figures with both human and animal features.

Sudanese artist Salah Elmur (Vigo Gallery) and Egyptian artist Souad Abdelrassoul reclaim cubism from Picasso’s appropriation of the African-inspired style. Many of Elmur’s pieces draw on memories of visiting his grandfather’s photography studio as a child; the artist steers away from capturing the likeness of his subjects and instead focused on the character and mood of the paintings, articulated through geometric shifts in the picture plane.

Abdelrassoul, whose painting Me You And The Journey  is currently on view on the exterior of the Hayward Gallery in London, transfigures the human body by splicing it with trees and other elements of the natural world. In Orange Tree, priced at $16,000 at Circle Gallery’s 1-54 booth, the eyes and arms of her subject are intentionally misplaced to create an aesthetically jarring composition.

Installation view © Jim Winslet

Rethinking Crafts 

Many African countries have long been known for their craftwork, especially pieces using traditional sculpture and weaving techniques. That said, 1-54 saw many artists break away from customary ways of using craft either aesthetically or technically to create unique, standout pieces.

Reinata Sadimba is considered one of Mozambique’s most important contemporary artists, despite the fact that figurative sculpture is traditionally considered men’s work among her ethnic group, the Makonde. She’s revolutionary in more than her art practice, too. Sadimba took part in the liberation movement against the Portuguese colonial regime and, after Mozambique achieved independence in 1975—and having lost six of her seven children— she dedicated herself to sculpture. Her anthropomorphic terracotta works, brought by Perve Galeria proved a standout at the fair. 

Other sculptural works included new pieces by the renowned Senegalese artist Seyni Awa Camara, shown by The Gallery of Everything. Her terracotta pieces, which often depict mythological deities,  are a celebration of her Jola identity and related to the mystical qualities of motherhood within her community.

However, artists have also been pushing the limits of textile and fabric art as well. The London-based gallery Tafeta showcased the work of the British-Ghanaian textile and performance artist Enam Gbewonyo. Since 2016, Gbewonyo has been developing the series “Nude Me/ Under the Skin,” which explores the history of nude tights. Her piece Cyclical Vein—Concentric Growth 4 ($9,000-$12,000) used nylon stockings of different “nude” colors to create a woven sculptural wall hanging. Hannah Traore Gallery showed textile pieces by the Welsh-Ghanian artist Anya Paintsil. Paintsil is known for intertwining rug-hooking, embroidery, and tapestry-making alongside Black hairstyling techniques such as braids—sometimes even using human hair in her work. 

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As the art world gathers in Paris for the second edition of Paris + by Art Basel this week, French lawmakers will begin examining the 2024 budget, including an amendment to protect the country’s advantageous sales tax on art, bringing it to a flat, 5.5 percent for all transactions. If adopted in the coming weeks, the hard-fought provision would spell a sigh of relief for the local arts sector.

French art professionals were alarmed to learn earlier this year that a new, E.U.-wide rule threatened to raise the existing 5.5 percent tax on many art sales, including imports, up to 20 percent, dealing a blow to the country’s steadily growing market.

Higher art prices, “would have put the brakes on a dynamic French art market, which is experiencing a renaissance after having lagged far behind the U.S. and the U.K. for decades,” said Guillaume Piens, director of the regional Art Paris fair.

Since Brexit, France has become the largest fine arts seller in the E.U., representing 54 percent of sales, according to a report by Clare McAndrews, who runs Arts Economics. Foreign galleries also continue to settle in Paris, where inter-E.U. transactions are less costly. Ranked the fourth largest art market in 2022, France now accounts for about a 7 percent share of the global art market, versus about 18 percent for the U.K., and 45 percent for the U.S. Meanwhile, French imports grew an average 15 percent annually between 2013 and 2022, per the same study.

“One of the biggest dents you can put into [an art market] is to raise the import VAT,” McAndrews said in a phone interview. “You need things to be able to flow in and out,” of a central marketplace, she added, noting that higher taxes would divert business to other hubs with fewer restrictions.

Led by France’s Professional Committee of Art Galleries (CPGA), local dealers lobbied the government against this major tax increase, arguing that a 5.5 percent rate for all transactions would generate an additional $40 million to $650 million in tax revenue via jobs and art sales. On the other hand, they showed via the McAndrews report, that a 20 percent tax could lead to losses of between $320 and $610 million in tax income.

Confusingly, the current French system only requires the standard 20 percent sales tax to apply to the profit margin on resold artworks, as part of an existing compromise aimed at shielding artworks from full taxation at regular rates. The inconsistent approach is part of what prompted the E.U directive, which aimed for greater transparency, and required the French system to pick a single tax for all art transactions. Either the lower, 5.5 percent on the price of imported artworks, primary sales, and secondary sales; or maintain the 20 percent tax on profit margins for secondary sales, but extend it onto imported works, and primary sales as well. The latter would effectively do away with any “cultural exception,” or special, 5.5 percent tax on art, which the country currently enjoys. If the lower duty is approved, as most expect, art sellers making secondary market transactions with low profit margins would be slightly penalized.

The newly standardized 5.5 tax “will allow Paris to remain the most attractive European capital for the art market and will favor the effervescence of the French art scene,” Fabienne Colboc, a centrist National Assembly member said. She spent months working to convince colleagues of the benefits of a lower tax, and was optimistic about how parliament would vote. Short of making predictions, she expressed hope that the amendment “will be adopted by a large majority.”

However, while it is likely to pass, there is no guarantee. “There’s a risk that the measure is misunderstood,” despite consensus in the French government, said Gaëlle de Saint-Pierre, a legal expert in charge of the VAT issue for the CPGA. “The art market suffers from the image that it’s a luxury sector, only for the rich, which is not true. That’s why we are showing how it also supports the livelihoods of some 30,000 artists, small galleries and businesses,” she added.

In addition to French artists, the sector directly employs over 62,000 regional art workers, and over 111,000 indirectly. Plus, France’s multibillion-dollar tourism industry largely owes its appeal to the arts.

It’s unclear whether the sales tax issue will be addressed this week, or next, when both the government, and the majority Renaissance (RE) party present the amendment. At any rate, France’s minister of economics, Bruno Le Maire, told French journalists that the government stands firmly behind the proposal for a lower levy. “After several months of consultations, we have decided with [culture minister] Rima Abdul-Malak to opt for the only, truly viable option, which will allow France to remain at the center of the global art market,” he said.

For now, such promises have reassured French art workers.

Following a busy press conference kicking off the high-stakes Paris + by Art Basel fair week, the franchise’s director, Clément Delépine, shared his take on the tax issue via e-mail: “In a highly competitive international art market, anything that can benefit artists, and the local cultural ecosystem can be considered a positive sign,” he said.

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