PARIS – A month after the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, and barely a fortnight after the Paris women’s season, the city has once again geared into hyperdrive: France’s biggest art fair returned to the newly-renovated Grand Palais for the first time since 2019, rebranded and reborn as the first-ever Art Basel Paris.

After the country’s long-running art event FIAC lost its contract to Art Basel in 2021, the fair was condemned to two years of sombre purgatory, taking place inside the Grand Palais Éphémère—a black box venue on the Champ des Mars under the awkward moniker of…