‘When I was 17, I met the French Minimalist and Conceptual art scholar and critic Ghislain Mollet-Viéville, who had a gallery opposite the Centre Pompidou. I went to all his talks; I didn’t understand a thing, but what he said fascinated me. My first discovery was the American sculptor Richard Nonas. Later, when I went to Los Angeles, I was deeply struck by the works of Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Dan Flavin. Since then, Minimalism and Conceptual art have been my guiding lights.

‘I went to LA in 1980, and I lived there for 23 years. In those days, Venice Beach was where it all happened for the older generation (Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Joe Goode, John Baldessari, Sam Francis, et al.), and Pasadena was the place for the younger generation, being near CalArts where they all taught. They were all making work that was critical of America at a time when that simply wasn’t done: Richard Jackson, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Catherine Sullivan, Sam Durant, Diana Thater, Andrea Bowers, Sharon Lockhart, Jason Rhoades. . . I met Kelley through his first gallerist in LA, Rosamund Felsen, and I discovered him for real thanks to a Lebanese collector whose entire house had been made into a kind of immense Mike Kelley. He is an artist I really committed to right from the beginning of his career.

‘I started out collecting photography in the 1990s. At the time, I had a tab at Sonnabend and at Metro Pictures. It would cancel itself out when I sold works from those galleries to other collectors and the commissions covered what I owed. That’s how I acquired more than half the works in my collection, including photographs by Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Louise Lawler, Ana Mendieta, Thomas Ruff, and Cindy Sherman. I’m also particularly moved by sculpture, which got me interested in Paul McCarthy and Franz West, along with Fischli and Weiss. For me photography and sculpture go hand in hand and that’s an important aspect of my collection. 

‘I’ve always been close to galleries. What I like most is to be able to see an entire exhibition, speak with the gallerist, develop a relationship with a body of work, follow its progression and then, only later, meet the artist and visit the studio. Galleries are extremely important to me, and I think they are essential to artists.

‘I see art as a silent symphony. For me, the works are like musical notes, and the hanging is the score. The quality of an exhibition is essential to me. Years ago, I had a little apartment in New York with only three works on the walls (Baldessari, McCarthy, and Christopher Wool), but they didn’t resonate with each other, and it made me so sick I wanted to go and sleep in a hotel!

‘Among all the exhibitions in Paris this fall, I can’t wait to see the Kelley show at the Bourse de Commerce, and I expect the Mark Rothko show curated by Suzanne Pagé at the Fondation Louis Vuitton will be phenomenal. I’m also very excited about Tarik Kiswanson being shortlisted for the prix Marcel Duchamp 2023. He recently staged wonderful exhibitions at the Carré d’Art in Nîmes and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico. And, finally, Vincent van Gogh and Peter Doig at the Musée d’Orsay; Amedeo Modigliani and Hermann Nitsch at the Musée de l’Orangerie; Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, and Toulouse-Lautrec at the Petit Palais are all shaping up to be must-see events.

‘I see my work as a deep dive into each artist’s body of work. For me, being an art advisor means having a vision, looking at an artist’s work and knowing it in depth, being able to explain it, stand up for it, and help galleries promote the artist. You have to go and see as many exhibits and fairs as possible and keep traveling to keep informed about everything that’s happening all around the world.

‘I’ve defined a strict, radical line of thought. I’m known for being committed to certain artists, and clients come to me for that reason. It’s a profession that requires you to be particularly honest, with your clients of course, but above all with yourself. My references all come from art history, which I see very conceptually. What interests me in art is to be confronted with a personal style, something daring. I want the work to disturb me, make me question myself. For me, art is never about staying in your comfort zone.

‘I worked with Bernard Arnault for six or seven years: I would organize visits of museum exhibitions guided by their curators for him, along with visits to a highly focused selection of galleries. Our first meeting was in New York in 2003 at the Jason Rhoades exhibition at David Zwirner. He immediately loved Rhoades’ work and went onto acquire major pieces.

‘That year, I came back to live in Paris. My return arose from a desire to present there a Californian art scene with which I had developed very strong ties. In 2022, I created a space I called No Name. I had always dreamed of starting a Parisian “salon”, like the ones you used to find in the eighteenth century. It isn’t a gallery – it’s a meeting place that invites artists, writers, curators, and collectors to make the space their own. This fall, for our fourth project, we’ve invited Lauren Taschen, a very engaged leading figure based part of the time in LA, to create a pop-up exhibit entitled “Flesh & Flowers, Made in America”.

‘Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico, where I curated several exhibitions at the Museo Jumex, among other projects. Eugenio López Alonso, with whom I’ve worked since 1994, asked me to invite the Mexican artists we’ve been championing since the 1990s – and who are now internationally known – to create permanent monumental installations in a new factory complex in Monterrey, on the Mexico-United States border. I found an extremely dynamic and stimulating artistic scene in Mexico.

‘The list of artists I follow closely is too long for me to name them all here, but I’ll mention Ser Serpas, whose subtly subversive work I discovered three or four years ago. I’m so delighted to see her show at the Bourse de Commerce alongside Mike Kelley’s. There’s a new map of the art world being drawn, and I firmly believe it includes Mexico and France.

‘Today, Paris+ par Art Basel is bringing new energy to Paris. The big international galleries have arrived (Hauser & Wirth, Mendes Wood DM, Esther Schipper, Stuart Shave/Modern Art) and a number of major galleries have returned to the fair after an absence of several years (Blum & Poe, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, kurimanzutto). Together with the first-time participation of other heavyweights (Acquavella Galleries, Bortolami, Pilar Corrias), this has laid the groundwork for Paris to be reborn as an artistic platform like it was at the beginning of the previous century. I also think a new type of French gallery is starting to emerge that will help strengthen our image internationally and, I hope, bring good things for French and European artists.’

Patricia Marshall will participate in the Paris+ par Art Basel 2023 Conversations program:

10 Things to Know About Buying Art in 2023

Philippe Dian, collectionneur, Paris
Felipe Dmab, co-fondateur, Mendes Wood DM, Bruxelles, São Paulo
Patricia Marshall, art advisor, Paris
Moderator: Dr. Jeni Fulton, Head of Editorial, Art Basel, Zurich

Thu, Oct 19, 2023
5:30pm - 6:30pm
Musée national Picasso-Paris

You can find our upcoming Conversations in Events.

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Florence Derieux is an art historian and curator.

Published on October 6, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Patricia Marshall's art collection : Claude Rutault : definition/method 295. the challenge of painting, 1973 - 2019. Courtesy of The Estate of Claude Rutault and Perrotin. 2. Jumex factory, Monterrey (Mexico). Image courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City. Work by Alejandra Laviada, Sans titre, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

English translation: Peter Behrman de Sinety.