Art Basel: fireworks and nuance, Lynn Barber on her artist interviews, Guillaume Lethière at the Clark

The Week in Art

This week: it’s arguably the best loved of the major art fairs among collectors and dealers, but what have we learned about the art market at this year’s Art Basel, in its original Swiss home? The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, Tim Schneider, tells us about the big sales in Switzerland amid the wider market picture. The journalist Lynn Barber has a new book out, called A Little Art Education, in which she reflects on her encounters with artists from Salvador Dalí to Tracey Emin. We talk to her about the highs and lows of several decades of artist interviews. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Woman Leaning on a Portfolio (1799) by Guillaume Lethière. Lethiére was born in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean to a plantation-owner father and an enslaved mother, but eventually became one of the most notable painters of his period in France and beyond. We talk to Esther Bell and Olivier Meslay, the curators of a major survey of Lethière’s work opening this week at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, US, and travelling later in the year to the Louvre in Paris.

Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland, until Sunday, 16 June.

A Little Art Education by Lynn Barber, Cheerio, £15 (hb).

Guillaume Lethière, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, US,

15 June-14 October; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 13 November-17 February 2025

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