Boffo Basel. Basel Art Fair 2010

There's been a tectonic shift in the market to conservative Impressionist, Modern and classic Contemporary art evident at the 41st Basel Art Fair, but I must admit it seemed as though everything was flying off the shelf indiscriminately. There was an orgiastic frenzy of activity from art transactions to hyper-networking, the boom is back. The fair layout reflects a hierarchy of more established, blue chip art on the ground floor and contemporary on the second. Nowadays, I would rather wait till it drops down a floor so there's more wheat, less chaff-its worth the extra hay.


Some of best art in Basel was the graffiti seen through the train window entering town. Seriously, the overall quality of material on display was staggering and would rival the best international institutions. The art market is like a fast train but with no destination. Can it sustain itself? Save for nuclear Armageddon, I fear to say it will, look for continued strong, record-breaking, headline making, art activity in the near future.


There should be a World Cup for hustling invites and passes at fairs. One morning after prodigious Basel party-hopping, I sent my suit to the cleaners and housekeeping returned with my passport, cash, and a large taxi receipt from Basel to Zurich. Rough night; no one ever said the art world was for the feint of heart.


Museums are akin to books, fairs more like magazines: a quick fix for those with short attention spans and a need for immediate gratification. For a while, a 30% discount on art was the new 10%; now, 10% is the new 20%. The walls they were a changing, with passing time the fair replicates itself in new form like a snake shedding it’s skin, as inventory is shifted when shifted and constantly hung anew.


After hours up and down the aisles I was left with a hammering pain in my toe more than any recollection of specific art works—now I know why I had observed so many on crutches. I never realized how anal the Swiss are until being scolded for public phoning on various occasions by locals who practically made citizens arrests. Also, while arguing with hotel security about entering a crowded bar, 15 simultaneously walked past. But the Jean Michel Basquiat retrospective at the Beyeler Foundation...what a site to behold, warranting the astronomical figures the paintings are now fetching. And going some length to explain their ubiquitousness at the fair. When an artist achieves a big museum retrospective or makes an unusually high number at auction, the works flood from the woodwork into the booths and public sales.


Another “new” 9-foot-wide Damien Hirst jewel- cabinet, entitled “Memories of Love,” sold at Basel for $3.5m. The price reflected a 50% decline from an exact work sold at the £111.5m Sotheby’s Sept 08 sale: “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”, the day my headline would have read: “Merrill sold, Lehman fold”. In stocks, such market dumping is known as churn and burn, with Hirst, it should be known as churn and earn.


In 2008 I curated an exhibit with Pritzker Prize winning Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid at Sonnabend Gallery in New York upon which NY Times critic Ken Johnson reflected: “No architect has ever made good art and this is no exception.” Such sweeping generalization is at best dumb and worst dangerous. I wonder if he’s ever bothered to view a Le Corbousier painting. I helped to facilitate another Zaha Hadid show at Gmurzynska Gallery in Zurich during the fair (which fact seems to have eluded the gallery) that is an installation incorporating Constructivist masterworks by Malevich, Rodchenko, and Lissitzsky and Hadid herself. The installation uses the Public Square and façade of the building as a framing device transforming what originated as a 2D rendering into a walk-in line drawing with magical effect. Ken Johnson could cure his myopia if the NYT would splurge on a trip to Zurich sometime before the exhibit ends in September. Architecture as art is an up and coming new collecting category located between design and sculpture and a great new way to domesticate progressive architecture in a home setting. Look for values to progressively rise.