Art 41 Basel begins today in Switzerland. The international art show, featuring approximately 300 galleries and 2,500 artists, coming from 30 countries and every continent, will take place from June 16 to June 20. Media include painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and editioned works.
ARTKABINETT savvy collectors are well in attendance. Our social network for fine art collectors would never miss this "Olympics of Fine Art".
Over 60,000 gallerists, art collectors, art dealers, artists, curators, and reporters will flock to the banks of the Rhine, at the border between Switzerland, France, and Germany, to view the works of established masters and up-and-coming talents alike.
Comments about last year's Art Basel:
"The Neue Zuercher Zeitung am Sonntag titled “Die Königin strahlt in neuem Glanz - Von Krise keine Spur.” (The Queen gleams in new brilliance - no sign of crisis.), Le Figaro observed “La Foire de Bale confirme sa place de reine.” (Art Basel remains the Queen) and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says “Die Art Basel ist nicht zu schlagen. Seit vierzig Jahren unaufhaltsam an der Spitze: Diese Messe wankt nicht.” (Art Basel cannot be beaten. Since forty years irresistably on the top: this fair does not falter).
In addition to holding exhibitions in the Art Unlimited sector, Art 41 Basel has arranged an Art Parcours program. Site-specific pieces and performances complementing the gallery exhibitions will dot the city of Basel, offering art-world residents a comprehensive view of the culturally rich city. Featured artists will include Matthew Barney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Félix Gonzalez-Torres, Rodney Graham, and Gabriel Orozco.
Art Basel, one of the world's largest and oldest contemporary art fairs, opens to the public today; about 55,000 people will throng to it and its satellite events. Whether you consider the crowd lemmings or pilgrims may depend upon your bias -- and your bank account -- but one thing is certain: Fairs are a power shift in the art world. For good or ill, they are changing where you buy art, how you look at it, and even how artists make it.
Art Basel, opening today, is one of the more than 100 art fairs this year; 20 years ago, there were only a handful.
The doors fly open on the Messeplatz at a time that art fairs are perhaps at their historical height in power and popularity. Todd Levin, of the Levin Art Group and curator of the art collection of financier Adam Sender, estimates he's been invited to more than 100 art fairs this year, though there were only a handful 20 years ago. But while there are more art fairs, he cautions, there "is no more great art, and there is no less, than there used to be." The growth in fairs is driven not by an aesthetic revolution but by a monetary one. A "ballooning in great amounts of wealth" has created collectors "looking for assets to stick it in," he says.
Art fairs give collectors comfort, says PaceWildenstein Galleries director Marc Glimcher, "because they can say to themselves 'I've seen 100 things and this is the best,' instead of 'I've seen 10 things and I wonder what else is out there.'" But he says that even at art fairs he's shown at, "I walk through . . . and think: This is no way to look at art, hanging on the wall like pelts."
When art fairs work, and they often do, news of a beautiful painting or a ground-breaking sculpture flashes through a crowd with the excitement and urgency of the first few notes of a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo at Woodstock. But the art-fair explosion has a real dark side, and a real downside.
To see what that is, look at your living room -- or, better yet, at a Fifth Avenue penthouse. If you walked into one in 1988, it would likely have had a certain look: English country house, all dark furniture, busy chintz, lots of pillows.
Ten years later, you might have seen doctor's office modern: white furniture, aluminum accents, the ubiquitous black picture frames. Five years later, you would have seen gold mirrors and globes. In the commercial design world, this is called the trend cycle, and the accelerating arc of disposability. Because of the Internet, globalization and chain stores, design fads go in and out of favor much faster than they used to.
In the art world, art fairs are the equivalent of those chain stores, speeding up another trend cycle. An artist breaks out and is shown internationally much more swiftly than even a decade ago. At some fairs, it seems that every booth is showing Andreas Gursky; at others, that "everyone" has Anish Kapoor or Andy Warhol's 1970s portraiture.
This is no accident: Dealers show works similar to those that sold well for other dealers at the last big art fair. Images and themes are repeated so often that you can feel you are looking at posters. As for the hot young artist, he or she has no time to bubble up into consciousness; the work seemingly bursts onto the scene overnight, is shown through a network of international galleries, and can look overexposed by morning.
Talented artist Lisa Ruyter, whose works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco MoMA, wrote last week on ArtworldSalon.com of her "changing feelings on art fairs." On the one hand, fairs have given her "an opportunity to develop a broad and solid international system of support," and to "take much larger risks with my artwork." But at art fairs, "the work will likely be sold and scattered . . . before it is given a chance to stick to anything." She frets it may be more easily forgotten, she says..
More tomorrow on the history of art fairs...
Courtesy, Alexandra Peers at WSJ
