BIG ART MONEY IS BACK

       Got $24 million for a PicassoM The wheeler-dealers have ventured out of the economic closet again.
       A Pablo Picasso painting of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter was on reserve at US$24 million last week as Paris followed London in seeking to convince billionaires that the time is again right to invest in art.
       The Picasso reserve was placed at the VIP preview of the Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain (Fiac) while collectors such as Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and UK-based Fatima Maleki toured the cast iron-and-glass Grand Palais.
       Fiac, France's biggest art fair, also known as the Modern Art International Fair, follows Frieze in Britain, where dealers reported more sales than last year.
       Demand for contemporary art has fallen since Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. Collectors have been choosing discrete private sales rather than risking auctions, where sales have shrunk up to 80 per cent, and prices dropped by more than 50 per cent in some cases, the London-based research company ArtTactic reported last month.
       "There are some incredible pictures available in the art trade," says US-based dealer Richard Gray, who is offering the Picasso work on consignment from an American colection. "This is an opportunity for dealers to show what we can do."
       He wouldn't comment on the chances of it being sold. "A reserve is a reserve until it's paid for."
       The 1934 Picasso painting, "Femme ecrivant", was one of 24 museum-quality, 20th-century works being exhibited in the new "Modern Project" section.
       Arnault and Maleki were joined by other browsers, such as Billie milam Weisman, director of the Frederick R Weisman Foudnation in Los Angeles, and Alfred Pacquement, director of the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
       New York-based L+M Arts is offering Francis Bacon's 1966 "Portrait of George Dyer Talking", priced at about $40 million. Paris-based dealer Daniel Malingue is showing Fernand Leger's between $20 million and $25 million.
       Piet Mondrian's narrow, upright abstract "Composition with Blue, Red and Yellow", dating from 1935 to 1942, was another work to attract an early reserve.
       "It's one of the last great 'transitional' paintings left in private hands," says Arne Glimcher, presenting the Modrain for New York-based gallery PaceWildenstein.
       He wouldn't say at what price it had been reserved. A 1922 Mondrian abstract sold for a record $32.5 million at Christie's Yves Saint Laurent auction at the Grand Palais in February.
       Fiac, which ends today, provides a showcase for more than 200 dealers, the majority housed in the 19th-century Grand Palais, with another 80 who specialise in works by living artists showing in a temporary structure in the Cour Carree of the Louvre.
       Some gallerics have closed, or reduced the number of art fairs they attend in the financial crisis. Twenty-eight dealers pulled out of this year's Frieze. More than 40 galleries that participated in Fiac last year - including London-based White Cube and Sadie Coles - didn't return this year.
       "Fiac has a much more Old World approach to collecting than Frieze," says New York-based dealer Marianne Boesky, who shows pace in Paris. People look at things, talk about them and have a think. There's also a broader base of galleries than at Frieze."
       A Barnaby Furnas painting of rock band the Cure on a floodlit stage was sold to a French collector at the Grand Palais for $275,000.
       New York-based dealer Skarstedt Gallery was one of 63 new participants. Within hours of the fair opening, the gallery had sold five pieces, including a 1988 Richard Prince painting, "A Husband Came Home", priced at $750,000, and a 1985 Martin Kippenberger abstract, whose title translated as "Monument for Boring Frankfurt", priced at $450,000, says Per Skarstedt, the gallery founder.
       "There is demand for established names at the right price," Skarstedt says. "This is a good time to collect. That Prince painting would have been priced at $1.3 million to $1.5 million a year and a half ago."
       "We're cultivating relationships with collectors that are slower, but perhaps more permanent," says gallery director Vanessa Critchell. "At Frieze the action is quicker. You see a lot more bankers and new people. Here you see a lot of French and Belgian collectors. it's closer to Art Basel than Frieze."
       There were plenty of local French collectors at the preview of Fiac's own version of Frieze in the Cour Carree. Prices were generally lower than at the London fair.
       One of the few works to sell for more than 20,000 euros was Jitish Kalat's photographic installation "Cenotaph", commemorating cleared slums in Mumbai.