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ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 12-14 JUNE 2009
Sales report
Surprise success: Art Basel dispels
credit crunch blues
No return to the boom, but is the worst really over so soon?
Art Basel’s 40th edition continued to defy the worldwide financial slump yesterday, after the
NetJets crowd had flitted off,
leaving trails of cigar smoke,
empty magnums of Cheval
Blanc and throngs of prosperous
European art lovers behind. Brad
Pitt, Naomi Campbell, Roman
Abramovich and music producer
Pharrell Williams were among
the celebrities who showed up.
Major collectors including Eli
and Edythe Broad, and Maria
Bell, from Los Angeles; Don and
Mera Rubell, from Miami;
Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson,
from Chicago, turned up from
the US; alongside a host of
wealthy Europeans including
Ulla
Dreyfuss,
Harald
Falckenberg and Christian
Boros.
Many of the 300 exhibitors
came to the fair with low expectations and were surprised to
find conditions less bleak than
forecast. “I think the crisis is
over in the art world,” said
Basel-based dealer Miklos von
Bartha (2.0/N5), who specialises in constructivist and non-figurative works. He sold ten
pieces during the first two days
of the fair, including French
sculptor Bernar Venet’s wispy
wood, 1982, One Indeterminate
Line for €160,000 to a Zurich
collector. Venet’s work was also
on view as part of the Venice
Biennale which helped prime
sales all over the fair.
The consensus among collectors, curators and critics was
that dealers had brought important works—including rare
examples by artists ranging
from Agnes Martin to Joseph
Beuys. The recession compelled
the trade to bring their best.
Collectors were eager to buy,
but wary that prices were right.
“It feels like there is a lot of
sniffing,” says New York art
adviser
Mary
Hoeveler.
“Everyone’s trying to find out
what the discount is.”
When dealers were able to
adjust prices, sales took place. A
Richard Prince “Joke” painting
from a consignor was priced
$1.3m and found no takers. A
more realistic price for the work
today is about $800,000, says
New York dealer Per Skarstedt
(2.0/C2). “People who own
good material are in a position
to have greater flexibility with
prices,” he says, adding that he
owns 90% of what he brings to
a fair. He sold a 1995 Martin
Kippenberger painting, I Am
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am), 1987, sold for
just under $1m from Thomas Ammann Fine Art (2.0/G4)
Too Political, for $1.4m—under
the $1.5m he recently paid for
the work. “Everything we
bought in the last year-and-ahalf—we overpaid.” He says he
doesn’t mind cutting his losses
since other deals are profitable.
He also sold Mike Kelley’s
1990 Empathy Displacement,
including a black-and-white
painting and a handmade doll
for $225,000. The 2008 price
was $450,000, Skarstedt says,
and he was initially asking
$275,000. “We are keeping our
prices low,” agreed New York
and Berlin dealer Achim
Moeller (2.0/R3), who had
Mark Tobey’s 1947 tempera
Arena of Civilizations available
for $250,000. “People are still
taking their time.”
New York’s Galerie St
Etienne (2.0/V3) also lowered
The days when art was sold
when it was still in packing crates in
artists’ studios is over
—Iwan Wirth
prices. “We’ve rolled back
prices to where we were in
2006,” said director Jane Kallir.
“We essentially popped the bub-
wrapped in a Persian carpet,
Saraye Bouali, for €150,000 to
an unnamed European collector.
Austria’s Galerie Krinzinger
(2.1/K1) sold Gavin Turk’s
These Memories of Joseph
Beuys, 2009, for €48,000.
“This piece I could have sold
many times,” said Thomas
Krinzinger.
Barbara Kruger’s 1987
Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am)
embodied this sentiment.
Zurich’s Ammann (2.0/G4) sold
the painting for just under $1m.
George Frei, Ammann’s director, said: “The fair was really
like in the old days: they came,
they saw and they bought.”
Torino Galleria Franco Noero
(2.1/M7) sold Pablo Bronstein’s
2009 diptych New Design for
the Treatment of Walls for the
Display of a Painting in Oils for
£16,800 to UK collector
Michael King.
The fair got off to a speedy
start on Tuesday. As the week
progressed, dealers observed
there were fewer American collectors, despite the Venice
Biennale the week before Basel
began. Dealers said Europeans
did the majority of buying.
“People were talking about the
fact that they didn’t have anything left to sell,” Marc Spiegler,
Art Basel co-director, said.
At a selection committee
meeting for the upcoming
Miami edition of Art Basel, talk
turned to the successes of the
week. Still, Basel may not have
been the best seller of all. “The
Venice Biennial was the best
fair this year,” said dealer
Gérard Goodrow of Cologne’s
Kewenig Galerie (2.0/J4),
which sold out works by Pavel
Pepperstein on view at the
Russian Pavilion.
Lindsay Pollock, with additional reporting by Georgina Adam
and Cristina Ruiz
Works sold across the board
Martin Kippenberger, I Am
Too Political, 1995, sold for
$1.4m from Per Skarstedt
(2.0/C3)
Ernst
Kirchner,
Two
Reclining Female Nudes,
1908, sold c.$200,000 from
Galerie St Etienne (2.0/V3)
CONTEMPORARY AR T
AUCTIONS
ble. This means we don’t have a
crash—we have a correction.”
Kallir’s stand was stocked with
German and Austrian expressionist works-on-paper, including consignments from a victim
of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi
scheme.
Zurich and London dealer
Iwan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth
(2.0/D1) also adjusted prices.
“We don’t have 2007-08 prices:
it is a different atmosphere,”
says Wirth. “The days when art
was sold when it was still in
packing crates in artists’ studios
is over.”
Theories as to why buying
had improved bounded around
the fair. “Most people who had a
billion in the bank still have a
billion in the bank,” says
London dealer Helly Nahmad
(2.0/Q3). Many art world
denizens said the continued art
buying had a psychological
root, that die-hard collectors
were still attracted to the sport,
financial melt-down or not.
“People are tired of thinking
there is a crisis,” said Belgian
dealer
Rodolphe
Janssen
(2.1/J5) who sold Wim
Delvoye’s 2009 stuffed pig
29 JUNE
w w w.phillipsdepury.com
2009
LONDON
Paul McCarthy, Piggies
Stainless Steel, 2008 (ed three),
two sold for $1.5m each from
Hauser & Wirth (2.0/D1)
Mickalene Thomas, Kerry On,
2009, sold for around $65,000
from
Lehmann
Maupin
(2.1/F2)
“She has an erotic
energy, which is
both comic and
drastic.”
Curator Bice Curiger on
Sue Williams, see page 6
Galleries
Gagosian
doubling
space in Los
Angeles
Soon to expand: Arnie and
Larry in the Gagosian
Gallery, Beverly Hills
Galleries hit by the recession
may be closing in New York and
London, but Larry Gagosian is
undertaking an ambitious
expansion of his space in
Beverly Hills. In addition to his
gallery in Los Angeles,
Gagosian oversees three spaces
in New York, two in London
and one in Rome, and also
organises temporary shows in
Moscow. Now he has asked
architect Richard Meier to double the size of the Beverly Hills
gallery to 11,600 sq. ft. The
New York-based architect
designed the original Gagosian
gallery in Los Angeles in 199495 by converting an existing
storefront. The newly expanded
gallery will open next year.
Gagosian declined to comment.
Meanwhile in New York,
Steven Kasher Gallery is moving to a bigger space—a onetime Gagosian gallery in
Chelsea. “I could not resist the
opportunity to move into
Gagosian’s old space,” says
Steven Kasher. The photography dealer’s relocation into a
ground floor space this month
close to doubles his square
footage on West 23rd Street.
Growing sales is the motivation.
“I’ve had to work twice as hard
and I’ve picked up over a dozen
new clients,” he says.
Brook S. Mason
2
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 12-14 JUNE 2009
Trends
Art Basel listings 12-14/06/09
Inside the world of the art adviser
Auction house layoffs make consultancy a smart
career move for the experts
12/06/09
Art Basel Conversations—
The Future of the
Museum: Digital Frontiers
10am-11am, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
© Katherine Hardy
Art Basel Weekend
Presentations and Events
11am-7pm, Hall 1.0, 2.0
and 2.1, Messe Basel,
Messeplatz
www.artbasel.com
A programme of exhibitions, book signings, film
screenings and performances. Today’s events
include the display of 100
portraits of Henri CartierBresson at Galerie
Françoise Paviot (12noon,
Hall 2.0/U2).
Even before the Art Basel fair
opened, the Paris-based dealer
and art adviser Philippe Ségalot
had bought Matthew Day
Jackson’s installation of four
hanging skeletal figures in mirrored coffins, Dymaxion Family,
2009, in Art Unlimited (Blum,
054). The piece went, for an
undisclosed price, to a “private
collector”. Ségalot has unprecedented access to works of art—
among his major clients is
François Pinault, whose new
Venetian museum Punta della
Dogana already features three
works by Day Jackson. Then, at
the fair’s VIP opening, other
advisers were closing deals:
Stefano Basilico bought a
Louise Lawler, Triangle, 2009,
from Metro Pictures (2.1/G1) for
one of his clients, while Todd
Levin snared a Warhol
silkscreen from the “Death and
Disaster” series. It wasn’t on
view, and he would not even
reveal the name of the stand
where he bought it. Allan
Schwartzman, whose clients
include the major Dallas collector Howard Rachofsky, was only
prepared to say he had “bought a
number of works at the fair”.
Welcome to the highly
Adviser Stefano Basilico at Art Basel yesterday
discreet world of art advisers,
consultants, agents—call them
what you will—terms that cover
everything from a curator for a
major corporation to a young exgallery staffer with a cell phone
and a blue-chip address book.
Anyone can become an adviser. “With the auction houses and
galleries letting staff go, we are
seeing many more people setting
up,” says Gérard Goodrow of
Galerie Kewenig (2.0/J4), who
in his career has been a curator,
an adviser and a fair director as
well as now being a dealer.
So what do the advisers do?
“The good ones give us, as dealers, access to great collections,”
says Andrew Silewicz of Sprüth
Magers (2.0/D4). “They focus
their clients and do the legwork
for them.” This means, as well
as buying art, they are curating,
keeping abreast of the art world
and dealing with loans and exhibitions. And according to
Basilico, the adviser can have an
educational role for newcomers
to the market: “He or she can
turn a new buyer into a speculator—or a collector,” he says.
But for every good one, say
Performa 09 commissions Candice Breitz
Performa, the New York-based biennale of performance art, has
announced a new commission from Candice Breitz for its next edition
(1-22 November). The Berlin-based video artist’s first live performance, Factum, is set to feature a cast of identical twins performing in
public spaces. Breitz is the tenth recipient of a Performa 09 commission, with others including Omer Fast and Yang Fudong. Total funding
of more than $350,000 is available for the new works. Backers include
the Toby Fund, the private foundation of US collector Toby Devan
Lewis, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. G.H.
Ullens buys Tayou in Venice
The contemporary collectors and
founders of the Beijing-based Ullens
Centre for Contemporary Art
(UCCA), Guy and Myriam Ullens,
have bought part of Pascale
Marthine Tayou’s Human Being @
Work (2007-ongoing), on show at the
Venice Biennale. The group of
crystal figures with bright bead
necklaces sold in the region of
€160,000. Tayou is represented by
Continua (2.1/X1), which sold two
other examples on the first day.
Belgian sugar magnate Guy Ullens
and his wife Myriam founded UCCA
in 2007 and recently raised $22.2m
when they sold 18 works of Chinese
art at auction in Beijing. G.A.
dealers, there are plenty of less
recommendable individuals.
“You have to be very careful,”
says Goodrow. “They come to
your stand, reserve pieces, take
jpegs and then shop them
around, adding 20%. Then
another agent takes them on and
adds another 20%. Pretty soon
your work of art is being offered
around at double the price.” He
cites the case of an abstract
Gerhard Richter at Art Cologne,
tagged at €2.2m. By the time it
had passed through various
advisers it ended up at €4.5m
before finally selling for €2.5m.
Another questionable practice is
“double dipping”, when the
adviser is taking a cut from both
his client and the vendor. The
industry norm is to take 10%
from the client on the purchase
price, or work on a retainer, or a
pre-agreed combination of the
two. “I prefer a retainer,” says
Levin, “because otherwise the
temptation might be to advise a
more expensive purchase, to get
a bigger cut.”
But there are other pitfalls to
avoid, he says. “A major problem as an adviser is avoiding
conflicts of interest, in what is an
unregulated market. If you represent artists in any way, you
can’t be an adviser too,” he says.
“And an adviser should not be
sourcing the same sort of work
for different clients,” he adds.
“If you are offered one work and
three clients collect in that field,
how do you choose who to give
it to?”
So how do you find a good
adviser? Word of mouth is worth
its weight in fine art. “We typically get our clients through recommendation,” says Basilico.
“We check new clients very
carefully before accepting reservations,” says Goodrow. And
Schwartzman advises the starter
collector to be guided by their
local museum community.
“Lots of people travel in
monied circles and they don’t
actually know anything except
what was in the magazines last
week,” says Basilico. “Recently
a curator told me how he met a
27-year-old who had worked in
two galleries and now was going
to be an ‘art adviser’—that’s
ridiculous. To do this job, you
need to have a bit more
experience before you advise
other people.”
Georgina Adam
Contemporary Art
Collecting—Paula Cooper,
Daniel McClean and Seth
Siegelaub
1pm–1.30pm, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
Art Lobby Talk: Biennials
and Nationality—Nicolaus
Schafhausen, Valie Export
and Tirdad Zolghadr
2pm–2.30pm, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
Art Lobby Artist Talk:
Good Words, Good
Thoughts and Good
Deeds—Art Practice in the
Time of Crisis and War
3pm–3.30pm, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
Art Lobby Discussion:
Analysing the Current
Chinese Art Scene—Lu
Jie, Sylvain Levy, Zheng
Shengtian and Chen Yang
2pm–2.30pm, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
Mark Leckey Lecture
Performance at the
Kunstmuseum Basel
7.30pm–9pm,
Kunstmuseum Basel,
Museum fur
Gegenwartskunst,
Alban-Rheinweg 60
Art Lobby Artist Talk: Igor
Makarevich, Elena Elagina
and Hans Ulrich Obrist
3pm–3.30pm, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
ArtFilm—“Storylines”:
Curated by Marc Glöde
10pm, Stadtkino Basel,
Steinenberg 7
Volta Talk: Urgent Art
for Urgent Times, a
Presentation of the 53rd
Venice Biennale’s
Emergency Pavilion,
curated by Jota Castro
3.30pm-5pm,
Markthalle,
Viadukstrasse 10
Design Talks: Design
expert Li Edelkoort, dealer
Murray Moss and designer
Maarten Baas discuss the
relationship between
designer and patron
6pm-7pm, Hall 5, Messe
Basel, Messeplatz
Art Club
11pm–3am, Campari Bar,
Kunsthalle Basel,
Steinenberg 7
14/06/09
Art Basel Weekend
Presentations and Events
11am-7pm, Hall 1.0, 2.0
and 2.1, Messe Basel,
Messeplatz
www.artbasel.com
A programme of exhibitions,
book signings, film screenings and performances.
Today’s events include a
film presentation of Guido
van der Werve’s “Chess
Scope
until 14 June
Sportplatz Landhof
Riehenstrasse 78a
www.scope-art.com
The Solo Project
until 14 June
St Jakobshalle
Brüglingerstrasse 19-21
www.the-solo-project.com
Volta5
until 13 June
Markthalle,
Viadukstrasse 10
www.voltashow.com
Exhibitions
Giacometti
until 11 October
Franz West
until 6 September
Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101
www.beyeler.com
Danh Vo
until 23 August
Lucy Skaer
until 14 June
Kunsthalle Basel
Steinenberg 7
www.kunsthallebasel.ch
Hagar Schmidhalter
until 28 June
Michael Bauer
until 28 June
Javier Téllez:
Mind the Gap
until 28 June
Kunsthaus Baselland,
St Jakob-Strasse 170,
Muttenz
www.kunsthausbaselland.ch
Vincent van Gogh,
Between Earth and
Heaven: the Landscapes
until 27 September
Kunstmuseum Basel
St Alban-Graben 16
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
Artists Talk: Franz West
and Hans Ulrich Obrist
8pm, Fondation Beyeler,
Baselstrasse 101, Riehen
“Il Tempo del Postino”:
A Group Show
8.30-11pm, Theater Basel,
Theaterplatz
ArtFilm—“Bending
Identities”: Curated
by Marc Glöde
10pm, Stadtkino Basel,
Steinenberg 7
Art Club
11pm-3am, Campari Bar,
Kunsthalle Basel,
Steinenberg 7
13/06/09
Art Basel Conversations
Public/Private
Institutions: a Time of
Crisis and Opportunity?
10am–11am, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
Art Basel Weekend
Presentations and Events
11am-7pm, Hall 1.0, 2.0
and 2.1, Messe Basel,
Messeplatz
www.artbasel.com
A programme of exhibitions, book signings, film
screenings and performances. Today’s events
include a film presentation
of Laleh Khorramian’s film
“Water Panics in the Sea,
Scene 9”, 2009, at
Galerie Krinzinger (3pm,
Hall 2.1, K1).
Art Lobby Discussion:
Legal Issues in
Basler Meister’s Portrait of the Hieronymus Tschekkenbürlin
with Death, 1487, on view at the Schaulager
Piano”, 2009, at Galerie
Juliette Jongma (3.30pm4pm, Hall 1.0, K6).
Art Lobby Book Launch:
Looking Back at Art
Basel–Kurt Wyss and
Guido Magnaguagno
1pm–1.30pm, Hall 1.0,
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
Satellite Fairs
Design Miami/Basel
until 12 June
Hall 5, Messe Basel,
Messeplatz
www.designmiami.com
Hot Art Fair
until 14 June
Brasilea Foundation,
Westquaistrasse 39,
Dreilandereck
www.hot-art-fair.com
Liste—the Young Art Fair
until 15 June
Burgweg 15
www.liste.ch
Little Theater of Gestures
until 15 August
Museum für
Gegenwartskunst
St Alban-Rheinweg 60
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
Armour & Evening Dress
until 30 August
Museum Tinguely
Paul Sacher-Anlage 2
www.tinguely.ch
Holbein to Tillmans:
Prominent Guests from
the Kunstmuseum Basel
until 4 October
Schaulager
Ruchfeldstrasse 19,
Münchenstein
www.schaulager.org
The New Acropolis
Museum: Architecture
and Collections
until 24 June
Skulpturhalle Basel
Mittlere Strasse 17
www.skulpturhalle.ch
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4
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 12-14 JUNE 2009
Satellite fair reports
Volta: prices under pressure
as fair expands
“I want to keep my galleries in
business,” said Volta director
Amanda Coulson as she hotfooted it around Basel’s
Markthalle, an expansive former fruit and vegetable market.
The move to the 1920s
Markthalle provides plenty of
space for the 110 galleries in
the satellite fair’s fifth edition,
42 more than in 2008. And the
stands are more affordable for
dealers. This concession failed
to persuade galleries from
London and New York, many
of whom stayed away.
Not everyone agreed that a
bigger Volta was necessarily
better. Coulson denied that she
had been under pressure from
the new owners of Volta, the
US-based Merchandise Mart
Properties, to expand at the
expense of quality. She underlined that Volta’s selection
committee, which is made up
of international curators rather
than dealers, resulted in a wide
range of artists and galleries
selling significant work. “I
asked all exhibitors to outline
their concept and stick to it,”
said Coulson.
With some buyers looking to
haggle, dealers had to decide
whether to negotiate or not.
“I’m sticking to my guns,” said
Steve Sacks of Bitforms
Gallery, New York (G12).
“People are coming here looking for a 20% to 30% discount,
but I’ve already priced the
works to take the economic climate into account,” he said. He
was wrangling with a collector
who wanted a discount on URam Choe’s kinetic stainless
steel and LED sculpture Una
Lumino Portentum, 2008 (edition of six), priced at $80,000.
His policy worked for Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive
LCD screen Make Out, 2009,
which went to a new Australian
© Katherine Hardy
Dealers benefit from satellite’s lower overheads, but New York stays away
Volta: bigger than ever at the Markthalle, a former food market
collector for the asking price
of $90,000.
Miguel Ángel Sánchez of
ADN Galería, Barcelona (G13),
spoke for dealers with disappointing sales so far, saying that
meeting curators was an important part of the fair. Eugenio
Merino’s disturbing Pretty
Murakami, 2009, €32,000, was
still on sale. But a curator at
Volta invited the Spanish artist,
who caused a stir with his sculpture of a suicidal Damien Hirst
earlier this year, to the 2010
Shanghai Biennial.
There were some big prices
for a few dealers. The Voges
Gallery, Frankfurt am Main
(C1), was dominated by Winter
+ Hörbelt’s Circle of Fifth,
2009, a doughnut-shaped bench
made of steel mesh and green
acrylic resin, doubling as a
chill-out zone as it played the
12 tones of the harmonic scale.
It was bought by the newspaper
Süddeutsche Zeitung for the
foyer of its Munich headquarters for €120,000. A Shanghai
collector also commissioned a
piece for his museum.
Pippy Houldsworth, London
(F8), had success with some
big-ticket pieces: ten sets of the
Royal Art Lodge collective’s
Learned Helplessness, 2009,
went to a new Korean museum
for €170,000. The Smart
Museum in Chicago is negotiating with the artist to make
another three sets.
Lithuanian artist Zilvinas
Kempinas’s Flux, 2009, a mesmerising installation made of
magnetic tape, a fan and plywood, sold three of the edition
of six at the Spencer
Brownstone Gallery, New York
(F1), at €35,000 each.
Modest pricing and small
editions were the key to success
for most dealers. Tot Taylor of
Riflemaker, London (G7),
reported that most of his stand
was sold by the third day, with
prices between £3,500 and
£32,000. José-María Cano’s
Nicolas Sarkozy, 2009, went to
a European collector for
£32,000, one of the series of
newsprint style images of political figures in paraffin encaustic pigment and wax. Simon
Henwood’s painting of Kylie
Minogue as a naked boy went
to a British collector for
£14,000; his star looks set to
continue to rise after making
Kanye West’s latest video,
which the singer commissioned
after buying one of his
works at a recent Riflemaker
solo show. Viv Lawes
Scope hangs on
And benefits from proximity to Art Basel
Having narrowly avoided cancellation following a legal wrangle over its proposed venue—
the dispute was only settled in
late May—Scope reaped the
benefit of its move close to Art
Basel, attracting a steady stream
of collectors and sales.
Local residents had objected
to the Scope tent being set up on
the publicly owned Sportplatz
Landhof, and fought the fair
through the courts even though
Scope had a contract with Basel
city council. “We won’t be
making any money from this
fair, but at least we’ve created a
platform for our dealers to survive,” said Scope president
Alexis
Hubshman,
who
revealed that the US and
Chinese consulates had joined
the battle.
The importance of the location was illustrated in a backhanded compliment from Elena
Micheletti of Primo Marella
Gallery, Milan and Beijing
(A100), which is participating
in both Volta and Scope. “Volta
is a better fair, with better galleries and a better building,” she
said. “But Scope is doing much
better business because of
the location.”
Beth DeWoody was among
the prominent private collectors to visit Scope, where she
bought two bootleg versions of
Paul McCarthy’s Santa with
Butt Plug—she owns an original—by Eric Doeringer, 2009,
for $1,000 each from Hardcore
Art Contemporary Space
of Miami (C198). She also
bought a large Swiss army
knife, El Cuchillo, 2009, by a
student group called Merger
for $17,000.
Scope is now regrouping
ahead of its Miami edition in
December, having cancelled the
Hamptons fair this summer; it
will also miss Frieze week in
London in October. “I can only
march so far,” said Hubshman.
“We’ve done 30 fairs in eight
years and we all deserve a
break.” Scope Miami will be
50% bigger than Basel, however, with a new Latin American
contemporary section in addition to the Art Asia programme.
Bruce Millar
Mexican spice at Hot Art
The wrestling ring in front
of Hot Art, the satellite fair
of mainly Hispanic artists,
wasn’t
an
outdoor
sculpture, but it was part
of the art. Installed by
Mexican collective Jinetes
Sample@dores de Imágenes
(C4), it was the work of
nine artists exploring
Mexico’s
mania
for
wrestling. As well as staging
actual contests, the group is
showing prints and videos,
with prices ranging from
€1,500 to €8,000. Inside
the fair, attendance was sparse, as were sales on the first two days.
There were a few buyers, however—a European collector
purchased a semi-abstract painting, Premoniciín, 2009, from the
stand of Mexican artist Ulises González (E2) for €8,000. Lucía
Muñoz of Trafico de Arte + Lart 23 Tres, Mexico City (D4), said
she had no sales so far, only serious interest. J.P.
My road to Basel 2009
Alicja Kwade on fleeing Poland, working for other artists and winning prizes
Born in Poland, Alicja Kwade
has spent most of her life in
Germany. When she was nine,
her father loaded his family into
a tiny Fiat and escaped the thencommunist country, ostensibly
going to a wedding in France.
“You couldn’t leave Poland just
like that then, a whole family
was not allowed to go together,
so we could take nothing, but
we had hidden some gold in the
headlights,” she recounts. “He
had the second most important
private art gallery in Poland, but
there were always problems
with the State, which often
objected to what he was showing—every week the windows
were smashed,” she explains.
On the way, the family stopped
in Hanover, where they eventually stayed on and still live.
After studies at the Berlin
Studium der Bildenden Kunst,
Kwade ignored her parents’
desire for her to teach or be a
designer and launched herself as
an artist. While her work is primarily in sculpture, she also
makes video and photographs,
and prefers to be called simply
an “artist” rather than a sculptor—“I try to choose the most
honest material to say what I am
trying to say,” she says. These
are everyday objects—lights,
mirrors, painstakingly polished
stones or her favoured item,
clocks, from which she produces glossy, elegant works that
are always precisely and carefully thought-out and arranged.
Among the works in her
Hamburger Bahnhof show last
year was a neat cone, made of
pulverised champagne bottles;
the same show also featured
clocks, still ticking, but their
faces mirrored. At Art Basel
Statements she has produced
Different Condition (State of
Aggregation) 2: five bent
objects made of different materials—steel, plastic, wood, brass
and glass—leaning on a wall as
though they were elastic.
The Art Newspaper: When did
you realise you wanted to be
an artist?
Alicja Kwade, Different Condition (State of Aggregation) 2,
2009, showing at Johann König (2.1/U6), left; the artist
Alicja Kwade: My father ran a
gallery in Poland so I was in
touch with art from the beginning; he was always pushing me
to draw like crazy every day.
TAN: What was your first big
break?
AK: The really big step was last
year when I won the Piepenbrock sculpture prize [2008]
and had a huge, huge show in
the Hamburger Bahnhof (“Von
Explosionen
zu
Ikonen”,
Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum
für Gegenwart, Berlin). It was
over 1,000 sq. m, and I had to
do it in three months, but it got
a lot of attention. That was a big
step for me.
TAN: And your worst
moment?
AK: After my studies, in the
beginning it was hard. I had
huge money problems, I had to
work for other artists, I didn’t
feel I was going forward. But
things are much better now.
TAN: If only I had known…
AK: I can’t give much advice as
I am only really starting my
own career but I think it’s
always important to give full
power in what you do—it’s
important to take every little
show really seriously, even if
it’s a grubby little event, to give
it your maximum.
TAN: What do you think of
art fairs?
AK: It’s difficult to make good
work for a fair, because you
have to deal with a lot of compromise. Of course, the dealer
wants to sell, and it’s a very
commercial situation, but as an
artist I want to find the best way
to present myself. It’s much
cooler just to be able to make a
statement. But on the other
hand it’s a big chance and there
will be thousands of people
there and it makes you much
more visible.
TAN: How does a young artist
make that jump from art
school to Art Basel?
AK: I think it’s important to do
a lot of shows, give people the
chance to see you, to keep your
visibility up. For example, with
Johann König we were talking
for a long time and I invited him
to all my shows before he represented me.
Interview by Georgina Adam
Biography
Born Katowice, Poland, 1979
Lives and works in Berlin
Showing for first time at Art
Basel, with Johann König, Berlin (2.1/
U6). Also represented by Galerie
Christina Wilson, Copenhagen
(exhibiting at Liste)
Modern and Contemporary Art
Valuations and consignments for our upcoming auctions
David Salle
price realised € 107,900
Palais Dorotheum, Dorotheergasse 17, 1010 Vienna
Tel. +43-1-515 60-570, client.services@dorotheum.at, Catalogues online: www.dorotheum.com
Piero Manzoni
price realised € 1,112,000
5
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 12-14 JUNE 2009
Museums
The shock of the old
Schaulager’s radical rehang of Kunstmuseum Basel’s collection bridges the generation gap
© The artist
Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel
K
enneth Clark made his mark as the new
young director of the National Gallery in
London in 1934 with a radical rehang of the
collection. He gave more wall space to each painting, allowed the dangerously modern Cézannes
and Manets greater prominence, and threw out the
potted palms. Hanging paintings is “a curious art”,
wrote Clark. “One never knows what pictures are
going to say to one another till they meet. Like
two placid babies passing each other in their
prams, they may either stretch out their arms in
longing or scream with rage.”
The density of display and sheer variety of
works on show at Art Basel is an ideal environment to experience the push and pull of works of
art against each other. A more deliberate example
is the Schaulager’s summer exhibition, which has
the added dynamic of big age gaps between the
works on show. In “Holbein to Tillmans:
Prominent Guests from the Kunstmuseum Basel”
(until 4 October), 180 historic paintings and
sculptures have left their natural habitat. The
Holbein of the title is paired with a monumental
photograph by Rodney Graham, Jeff Wall’s
Citizen, 1996, with Edgar Degas’s Jockey Blessé,
1896-98, 17th-century Dutch still-lifes with early
20th-century cubist ones.
Theodora Vischer, the curator of “Holbein to
Tillmans” and the director of the Schaulager,
wanted to find love not hate from such pairings.
“The starting point was the [Kunstmuseum’s] collection and my desire to show it in a different and
attractive way at the Schaulager.” And if works
rejected her efforts to matchmake? “When something turned out to look bad, although in my head
it seemed ideal, I changed it, of course,” she says.
Abandoning a chronological hang, the traditional convention of the art museum, with an ahistoric
installation, has its own history. Curators have
long experimented with new ways of presenting
historic art, often with the aim of showing its contemporary relevance. In 1966 the Museum of
Modern Art in New York staged an exhibition of
the work of J.M.W. Turner, hanging oil paintings
and watercolours on white walls, sometimes
frameless. Mark Rothko is reputed to have said on
seeing the show: “This man Turner, he learnt a lot
from me.” That meeting of minds is the starting
point of a current display at Tate Britain,
“Turner/Rothko” (until 26 July).
In the 1950s, the Italian designer and architect
Carlo Scarpa took old master paintings off the wall
and hung them, easel-like, on angled stands at
Castelvecchio in Verona and the Accademia in
Venice. His student, Lina Bo Bardi, went a step
further when she designed the brutalist-style
Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp) in the 1960s.
In one vast, uninterrupted gallery, Bo Bardi and
her husband, the curator, hung paintings each on
Distant relatives: Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam, around 1530, left; Wolfgang Tillmans, Anders Pulling Splinter
from His Foot, 2004, right
its own toughened glass panel, mounted on a block
of concrete, all facing the same way. Looking at a
Matisse or Gauguin, the viewer’s eye might fall on
a Rembrandt or a work by Mantegna.
Even venerable art museums were experimenting with aesthetic minimalism in the 1960s. At the
National Gallery in London, for example, the
ornate decor of its 19th-century galleries was
being tamed by gallons of off-white paint, false
ceilings and soft carpeting. “There was a determination to get away from the characteristics of an
historic hang by abolishing damask and disguising the Victorian architecture, which was then
regarded as heavy, distracting and over-ornate,”
says Charles Saumarez Smith, secretary of the
Royal Academy of Arts, and a former director of
the National Gallery in London.
For its supporters, thematic hangs help rescue
art from the “conveyor belt of history”. The
movement developed partly as an antidote to the
evolutionary idea of art, and partly because of a
renewed interest in subject-matter. Even 19thcentury narrative paintings can be respectable
again when thematically relevant.
Bringing together paintings and sculpture of
different periods and styles can reveal unexpected
connections and unlikely affinities. But there is a
danger that it can jar visually as much as histori-
“It’s about the collection being shown like a diva”
Theodora Vischer (right) is the director of the
Schaulager and the curator of “Holbein to
Tillmans: Prominent Guests from the
Kunstmuseum Basel”.
The Art Newspaper: How did the project come
about?
Theodora Vischer: A year ago it became clear
that [the Kunstmuseum] would have to remove
parts of the collection to make space for their Van
Gogh exhibition. I thought it would be fantastic to
make an exhibition with works from the collection. I went through the inventory of works and
made my ideal list. I know the collection very
well. I knew it when I worked there years ago.
TAN: Were any of the Kunstmuseum staff
surprised at your choices?
TV: The conservators and the technicians were
often pleased to see a painting long remembered
or others they had almost forgotten.
TAN: Did the museum agree to all requests?
TV: I did not ask for paintings that I thought had
to be at the museum. For example, I did not ask for
the Dead Christ by Holbein, which is a key work
and also a fragile one because it is on wood.
TAN: A year is a short time for many museums to organise such a lot of loans. Did that
cause any difficulties?
TV: The collection kept at the Schaulager—the
collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann
Foundation—is on permanent loan to the
Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel (Basel Public
Art Collection); we are used to working together.
TAN: What first attracted you to the idea of
mixing the historic and contemporary in the
Schaulager?
TV: The Schaulager provides a new solution for
collections in store [the majority of the gallery’s
space is for works in storage]. For me, the collection of a museum that has been built up over
centuries is something very precious and wonderful—it is a kind of memory of a community. The
other thing that guided me in the selection of
works was to consciously look at them with contemporary eyes, be the works old or more recent,
and to find out which ones were open and accessible to me, and which ones stayed mute.
TAN: The classic modernist hang allows lots
of space around individual works of art, but
you’ve triple hung the first wall, almost salonstyle. Why?
TV: I wanted to find a way to make visible the
reason for the exhibition: that the work will have
to go back into storage. The huge wall of the
ground floor of the Schaulager is a challenge.
Mostly I don’t use it, it stays blank. In this case I
immediately had the idea of a storage wall.
TAN: Were you worried about the criticism
often made of thematic shows, that the hand of
the curator is too obvious?
TV: I wouldn’t like that to happen because I
don’t think a curator should be too obviously
important. So I don’t think it is necessary that
people have to understand every connection I
have made. Visitors are capable of making their
own associations.
TAN: Did you think about inviting an artist to
guest-curate the exhibition?
TV: I thought briefly about asking an artist. But
then I decided it should be about the collection,
not an artist-curator, or a curator curating. It
should really be about the collection being shown
like a diva.
TAN: Was it easier—and cheaper—to work
with dead rather than living artists?
TV: We were expecting the cheaper question.
When we started, this issue related to the recession was not a question at all. And it didn’t turn
out to be less expensive than organising another
exhibition. I missed the personalities of living
artists, I’d have loved to have met and worked
with Holbein in person. But in the end what
counts is always the work, be it from a living or a
dead artist. J.P.
cally. “It can be extremely interesting. Or it can be
rather banal, or downright cussed to force paintings into conversation,” says Sandy Nairne, the
director of the National Portrait Gallery, London,
who worked closely with Nicholas Serota by
making the ongoing rotation of the Tate’s collection a new orthodoxy.
The move away from chronology to anthology,
and the sometimes provocative juxtapositions that
result, has not always been well received by the
critics, detecting curatorial egotism and power play
at work. When Tate Britain reopened in 2000, the
critic and curator David Sylvester lamented at the
number of works that looked ill-at-ease. The “argumentative” juxtapositions, he wrote, were less
about making works look good than asserting the
curators’ “territorial rights”. But “hanging anything
next to anything is valid, provided they rhyme. Sort
of,” wrote Waldemar Januszczak, art critic of the
Sunday Times (London).
Taking historic paintings and hanging them on
pristine white walls is meant to foreground the art.
But white walls can be an unforgiving background
for works in gold frames that object to looking
modern. For examples visit the Groeninge
Museum, Bruges, or for a variation on bare concrete, the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria.
The scale of travelling exhibitions of historic
paintings has, perhaps inadvertently, relaxed the
conventions of presentation. It is one such show,
of works by Van Gogh (“Vincent van Gogh,
Between Earth and Heaven: the Landscape”, until
27 September) that displaced many of the paintings from the walls of the Kunstmuseum Basel
that are on show at the Schaulager.
Will the stock of the permanent collection rise
as the economics of such blockbuster-type shows
become less affordable? Smart directors of art
museums may well think about making the most
of the collection as opposed to staging temporary
exhibitions to attract visitors and sponsors.
Banking on one to the exclusion of the other is
risky. As Pontus Hultén, the late Swedish curator,
said: “The day someone decides [a kunsthalle] is
too expensive, it’s all over. A few catalogues, and
that’s it.”
And as any collector who regularly rehangs
their collection knows, the result can be a new
painting, without the purchase price.
Javier Pes
J “Holbein to Tillmans: Prominent Guests from the Kunstmuseum
Basel” is at the Schaulager until 4 October, www.schaulager.org
6
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 12-14 JUNE 2009
Expert eye
Bice Curiger, the curator of the Kunsthaus Zürich
and editor-in-chief of Parkett, on her pick of Art Basel
Sue Williams,
Unconfirmed, 2009
(Regen Projects, 2.1/R5)
This is a newly found, three
minute, little super-8mm film. I
think this is such an effective
piece, so simple really, and
Boetti is an artist that I admire.
What is striking in this poor
quality film is to see the lowkey approach in today’s hightech world.
Boetti plays with a balloon
in front of a red and yellow
Frank Stella painting. There
the artist also balances a long
grey tube. So you have this
contrast between the controlled, angular, rational forms
of the painting and the playful
behaviour of Boetti—between
the calculated and chance. The
film is shown on a video
screen. It made me stop; I was
enchanted. I have extensive
knowledge of the artist’s work,
and this is archetypal Boetti.
The piece embodies his philosophy and his interest in duality
and opposites.
Il Tempo del Postino, Theater Basel
I was totally mesmerised by this performance. It was such a wonderful experience. It demonstrated
everything that is good about theatre and about art. This was an incredible achievement: art world
people, trained in conceptual thinking, succeeding in using this huge machinery of a theatre or opera
house in a light and enlightening way. They used the power to bring out this potential to rupture
everything associated with theatre and art. What was brilliant was that it was billed both as a group
show and about occupying time.
The money was not used to fly in big virtuoso stars, but instead to have, for instance, a bunch of
Midwestern cattle auctioneers come to perform their astonishing fast-speaking singing act. A beautiful, rich ballet was danced by the big red curtain, accompanied by the Basel Symphony Orchestra.
Very softly, you see the jumping movement of the curtain, which opens and closes little by little.
I especially like the story behind the title, which is a deliberate mistranslation. When co-curators
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno devised the piece, Parreno mentioned “facteur temps”.
“Facteur” means both “fact” and “postman”. It subsequently became “postman” when it was translated into Italian, the language of opera; after all, can you imagine calling it “Time Factor”?
Sigmar Polke, Cloud Paintings, 1992 (Art Unlimited, Werner, U47)
© Katherine Hardy
This is a new installation of the piece that was first shown at the Stedelijk Museum [Amsterdam] in
1992 and hasn’t been seen since. Here, it’s just perfect—the size of the room, the effective lighting.
There’s even a meteorite in the middle of the room. It’s like stepping into another world.
What you see is elementary, you can see how he deconstructs the painting process. He does not use
canvas, but very banal textiles, such as a polyester curtain; the pattern is visible. His use of acrylic lacquer varnish makes the surface transparent. The result is that you see the bars of the stretcher behind
the surface. In addition, he uses liquid gesso, which is poured in big splashes, evoking a feeling of
energy and movement. The canvas is no longer a canvas, it becomes immaterial. He is an intelligent
manipulator of materiality; it’s mind-blowing. Look at the meteorite with its cosmic energy—it sends
you into space.
While Rothko’s work is all about metaphysics, Polke’s work is based on physics, nature and
the everyday.
Fabrice Gygi, Table-tente, 1993 (Galerie
Chantal Crousel, 2.1/N8)
This piece consists of a well-worn kitchen table from the 1950s,
which is probably from a poor household. The drawers and table
legs are prominent. The entrance to a triangular tent, which only
small children can enter, is through the legs of a stool. The tent,
which is made from blue fabric and hangs behind the table legs, has
holes that are neatly sewn through which you can put your arm. It’s
all quite claustrophobic.
Gygi’s later work deals with this idea of finding shelter but is this
meant to be a protective cover? Or threatening? He focuses on the
question of power in the public sphere, like Cady Noland. His is
very much a unique voice in the context of Swiss contemporary art;
Gygi has influenced French-speaking artists in Switzerland. Go into
the Swiss Art Awards across the Messeplatz and you’ll find three
artists considered his descendants. This is a softer work than his
2002 piece La Vigie, which was shown in Art Unlimited last year.
(This is apparently down to the fact that he made the work after his
girlfriend told him she was pregnant.) Gygi is getting the recognition he deserves as he’s also the Swiss representative at this year’s
Venice Biennale.
© Katherine Hardy
© Katherine Hardy
I have always been impressed by
Neel’s work. She has remained
outside of every school and
movement, and always done her
own thing. She is one of the
greatest portraitists; her work has
a special quality that is even
more noticeable at a busy art fair.
This piece forced me to stop and
look. It calms you down, it
involves you. It looks like a non
finito, with only a troubled,
introverted face, and one of the
thinker’s hands depicted. The
ears are not painted, just drawn;
the body is sitting in a relaxed
manner. The intimacy of the
drawing process is apparent,
you’re very much aware of how
she put the piece together. This
work has even more poignancy
in an art fair, sharing qualities
with the work of Tacita Dean.
© Katherine Hardy
Alice Neel, James
Hunter Black Draftee,
1965 (Haas & Fuchs,
2.0/V4)
© Katherine Hardy
Photograph: Peter Schnetz
Her thoughts and reflections are concerned with sexuality, she has an
erotic energy, which is both comic and drastic. She uses references
that indicate her refined knowledge of painting, with connections to
Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings and Willem de Kooning.
I organised a show of US painting in 1997 at the Kunsthaus
Zürich that included work by Williams. I was particularly interested
in showing artists in the exhibition who work in an ambiguous way,
between figuration and flatness. These artists react to the orthodoxy
of the late US art critic Clement Greenberg, but also fight against
that dogma at the same time.
Williams’ work deals with ambiguities; what looks like an
expressionist painting stroke could also be a sexual organ. This new
painting shows how detailed her current work is, using all sorts of
comic strip elements to allude to painting and anatomy. It seems that
she has found a complex visual vocabulary to quote all sorts of
painterly effects, and, at the same time, comment on them in a
“dirty” way. She’s not just expressing a philosophy of the libido.
Alighiero Boetti,
Untitled (Stella
Performance), 1969
(Marco Noire, 2.1/L5)
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8
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 12-14 JUNE 2009
Design
Lindemann turns to design
In 2006, the New York-based art
collector Adam Lindemann published his first book, Collecting
Contemporary (Taschen). Now,
buoyed no doubt by the success
of that volume, which was translated into three languages, he has
tackled his second field of interest in a new book, Collecting
Design, to be published next year.
At the outset, Lindemann
charts the route he and others
have taken from art into design.
“Art collectors like myself who
hung beautiful contemporary
paintings on their walls suddenly
saw their furniture looking sad
and tired. Now we live with furniture by Franz West, George
Nakashima, Marc Newson,
Maria Pergay and my first discovery, Paul Evans; soon you
will too.”
The whole point of the book,
as he makes clear, is not so much
for Lindemann to educate us, but
for him to educate himself—a
process he then shares with the
reader as he sits down with 25 of
the world’s foremost design
experts and picks their brains:
people such as collectors Peter
Brant and Ronald Lauder, dealers
Murray Moss and Patrick Seguin,
tastemakers Jacques Grange and
Ian Schrager, and auction house
experts Alexander Payne of
Phillips de Pury and James
Zemaitis of Sotheby’s.
The book turns out to be
enlightening and sometimes
downright funny. We get more
than the occasional glimpse of
the way personal experience can
influence taste. The art dealer and
design
collector
Bruno
Bischofberger recalls his disappointment on meeting the USJapanese furniture designer
Photo: Anders Bjorkholm
But will the crash mean tougher times for the author of Collecting Contemporary?
Adam Lindemann: market still fundamentally strong
George Nakashima. “I was
expecting some kind of saint,
or…Buddhist monk…Instead, I
found…a strong businessman
trying to sell us great pieces of
wood to make a table for $60,000
or $100,000.”
Sections of the book will have
to be updated before publication
to take the economic slump into
account, much to Lindemann’s
frustration, although he is convinced the market for design is
still fundamentally strong. “This
obsession with 20th-century
design, which is in its infancy, is
not going to change,” he told us.
“The reality is that this is an
exceptionally interesting market
despite the bumps in the road, a
market that has real value and
where things are mispriced all the
time, which means you can still
make new discoveries.
“In the 1980s, just over 20
years ago, you could buy an
Eileen Gray chair for $25,000.
One was bought for $28m at the
YSL sale in January, and the
price is never going back to
$25,000. The YSL sale and others
in the future highlight the fact
that certain rare pieces of furniture are as historical as great
pieces of architecture.”
What has changed with the
recession is that the market overall will have less money, which
should in turn mean greater levels
of connoisseurship. “Not everything is going to jump off the
shelf,” Lindemann said. “It won’t
be a question of simply buying a
Zaha Hadid or a Ron Arad—it’s
got to be the best examples.” His
greatest fear is that young designers will be the ones to suffer most
in the current climate, at a crucial
stage in their careers.
Lindemann showed that he
has lost none of his enthusiasm at
this week’s fair, picking up works
for his new home designed by
David Adjaye on New York’s
Upper East Side. He bought
Takahashi Murakami’s Flower
Ball rug, 2009, on sale for
$33,750, and a Pharrell Williams
chair, Perspective (Black), 2008,
on sale for $20,000, both from
Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin. He
also commissioned a new light
from Kwangho Lee’s “Woven”
series, 2009, from Johnson
Trading Gallery. Bruce Millar
Leading contemporary collectors
François Pinault
Luxury brand billionaire François Pinault, 73, whose holding
company Artemis S.A. owns Christie’s, is best known
for his contemporary art collection showcased in
Venice. However, he is a serious collector of design,
frequently outbidding others. He has considerable
depth in Jean-Michel Frank, Paul Dupré-Lafon and
Diego Giacometti. “When it comes to icons of the
French 1930s to the 1950s, Monsieur Pinault is unrivalled,” says
a Paris dealer who prefers to remain anonymous.
Brad Pitt
Hollywood star Brad Pitt has been turning heads in the design
world for more than a decade. Like Barbra Streisand,
Pitt began with Tiffany glass but he quickly crossed
over to iconic design. Over seven years ago, he
snapped up Marc Newson’s Lockheed Lounge
privately for a low-ball figure of just over $100,000.
He made a string of spectacular purchases of work by
Atelier Van Lieshout at this year’s Design Miami/Basel, including the eight-room Mini Capsule Hotel, 2009, installed on the
grass at the fair entrance.
Craig Robins
Miami real-estate developer Craig Robins jump-started Design
Miami four years ago and since then has added considerably to his own collection. While his collection of
over 200 examples is concentrated on Gio Ponti, Jean
Prouvé and Ron Arad, a growing focus is on younger
designers like Maarten Baas and Aranda/Lasch. The
Madrid architecture firm Abalos & Herreros is designing his 40,000 sq. ft private museum, which will open within a
year in the Miami Design District. His most recent purchase is
Buckminster Fuller’s 1970 aluminium Rowing Needle, now on
display at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.
Frank Cohen
British contemporary art collector Frank Cohen is a passionate
advocate of architect-designers, particular Mies van
der Rohe and Le Corbusier. His house is even
designed on a Bauhaus model. His recent design buys
include a Gaetano Pesce lamp, a Danny Lane glass
chair and a Stefan Zwicky concrete-and-steel chair,
Grand Confort, Sans Confort, Dommage à Corbu,
1980. His latest purchase, from Galerie Patrick Seguin at Design
Miami/Basel, was a pair of Corbusier concrete outdoor lights,
around 1952-56, for €22,000 each.
UK at the Venice Biennale
53rd International Art Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia
June 7 – November 22
Steve McQueen
Great Britain
John Cale
Wales
Martin Boyce
Scotland
Susan MacWilliam
Northern Ireland
Steve McQueen British Pavilion, Giardini di Castello 30122
www.britishcouncil.org/venicebiennale
John Cale Capannone 1, Ex-Birreria, Giudecca 800/o
www.walesvenicebiennale.org
Martin Boyce Palazzo Pisani (S. Marina), Calle delle Erbe, Cannaregio 6103
www.scotlandandvenice.com
Susan MacWilliam Istituto Provinciale per L’Infanzia, Santa Maria della Pietà, Castello 3703a
www.northernirelandvenice.com
11
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 12-14 JUNE 2009
ART BASEL DAILY EDITION
Contributors:
Georgina Adam is The Art Newspaper’s
editor at large, who has been an art market reporter for over 20 years. Also art
market correspondent for the Financial
Times, she writes regularly for RA
(Royal Academy of Arts) magazine and
lectures at Sotheby’s Institute of Art,
London
The last word…
Will the real Stuart
Parr please stand up,
please stand up?
Life’s a (Basel) Beach
border. Reh means deer in
German and berger means
mountain. So, I’m Mr
Deermountain.”
Brown goes bonkers
over Büchel
Louisa Buck has been The Art
Newspaper’s contemporary art
correspondent since 1997. She is the
author of Moving Targets: a User’s
Guide to British Art Now, and the coauthor of Owning Art: the Contemporary
Art Collector’s Handbook. She is also a
regular contributor to Vogue UK, Art
World and BBC radio
Viv Lawes is a reporter for The Art
Newspaper, who has been writing about
the art market for ten years. She
regularly writes for The Guardian
newspaper and the Antiques Trade
Gazette, teaches the history of design
and is the academic coordinator for a
post-graduate conservation course
Lindsay Pollock is a New-York based
writer who has been covering the art
market since 2000. Besides The Art
Newspaper, she writes regularly for
Bloomberg News. She is the author of
The Girl with the Gallery, a biography of
the art dealer Edith Halpert
Cristina Ruiz is the former editor of The
Art Newspaper. Now the paper’s features
editor, she is also an arts correspondent
for The Sunday Times
Jean Wainwright is the presenter of The
Art Newspaper TV, interviewing leading
artists, photographers, film-makers and
curators. An art critic and art historian,
she has published extensively as well as
appearing on television and radio
Linda Yablonsky is the US art critic for
Bloomberg News, a columnist for
Artforum.com’s diary, and a regular
contributor to the New York Times, Art
News and Art in America
Brook S. Mason is The Art Newspaper’s
New York-based design and art market
correspondent. She also contributes
regularly to the Financial Times
Bruce Millar is The Art Newspaper’s
acting art market editor. He is the former
editor of Tate magazine and has been an
arts journalist for over 20 years
Editorial and production:
Group editorial director:
Anna Somers Cocks
Editor: Jane Morris
Deputy editors: Gareth Harris, Javier Pes
Assistant editors: Rosie Spencer,
Emily Sharpe
Copy editor: James Hobbs
Designer: Emma Goodman
Art director: William Oliver
Photographer: Katherine Hardy
Reporters: Georgina Adam, Viv Lawes,
Bruce Millar, Brook S. Mason, Louisa
Buck, Lindsay Pollock, Cristina Ruiz,
Jean Wainwright, Linda Yablonsky
Editorial interns: Rob Curran,
Brigid von Preussen
Managing director: James Knox
Project manager: Patrick Kelly
Acting head of sales UK: Ben Tomlinson
Head of sales US: Caitlin Miller
Advertising executives: Julia Michalska,
Justin Kouri
Published by
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© 2009 The Art Newspaper Ltd
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Beatrix Ruf, he suddenly
declaimed, in characteristically
stentorian tones, “What am I
doing here? I’ve forgotten my
lines!” Later he was at pains to
inform all that this was actually
in the script of the piece,
although he did express some
disappointment, that, although
the famously culinary
proficient artist was on hand to
serve his guests, the piece
wasn’t long enough for any
food to be consumed.
Motherfucker, moi?
Few people can have a more
dramatic professional double
life than Stuart Parr, the fasttalking New Yorker who runs
Australian wonder-designer
Marc Newson’s practice. Stuart,
a self-confessed Lucio Fontana
nut, has spent the week running
the stand devoted to Newson at
Design Miami/Basel. In his
other life, Stuart is co-manager
of the recently rehabbed rapper
Eminem, and his
accomplishments include
producing the hit movie “Eight
Mile” in his first foray into film
production. Come to think of it,
perhaps he should add artist
Pharrell Williams to his
management stable, and have a
hip-hop artist and furniture
designer (Emmanuel Perrotin,
2.1/M4) in one package.
Where’s my upgrade?
Word reaches us that Londonbased Anita Zabludowicz, one
of our favourite Newcastle art
patrons, was understandably in
a state of some anxiety on
discovering that she was
travelling back to the UK from
Basel on—ye gods—the
esteemed budget airline EasyJet
(easily confused, give or take a
letter, with NetJets). All’s well
that ends well, though, as the
generous soul apparently
bought drinks for everyone in
the airport bar with the money
saved—cheers Neet!
For those needing to soak up some rays between the
week’s downpours, look no further than the somewhat inauspicious site of the ninth floor of the multistorey Messe car park situated opposite the fair. Here
a bar-cum-beach, complete with swimming pool and
sunloungers, has been recreated. This little piece
of Miami in Basel has already provided a popular
site for both the Scope and Volta parties, as well
as attracting visits from Russian billionaire Roman
Abramovich and supermodel Naomi Campbell,
neither of whom, however, chose to sample the
swimming pool…
shots were fired. The mysterious
smash apparently came from an
object crashing to the ground at
a nearby gallery on the first floor
of Hall 2. Accidents will happen.
The hot seat
Bullets over Basel
An almighty bang sent White
Cube honcho Jay Jopling into a
spin yesterday at Art Basel. The
London dealer was seen running
around a corner in the fair,
hollering: “Has someone been
shot?” But panic not Jay, no gun
Mischievous German artist
Tobias Rehberger is causing a
stir at Art Basel with his
stylish, angular, black-and-
white table and chairs at
Neugerriemschneider (2.1/B4).
The gallerist is offering the
grooviest set of furniture seen
in the Swiss city for a long
while—and now the seating
arrangement has an extra
cachet as Rehberger has just
won the Golden Lion for best
artist in the “Making Worlds”
show at the Venice Biennale.
Editions of the very same
show-stopping chairs appear in
Rehberger’s award-winning
stripy, psychedelic bar-cafeteria
at the Biennale’s Palazzo delle
Esposizioni (left). So fairgoers
can purchase a piece of the
Venice Biennale (sort of) for a
snip this week with prices from
€3,000 to €8,500. All this
from an artist who once said:
“My name comes from a place
in Austria near the Czech
Hell hath no fury like a gallerist
defending his stable. A nearapoplectic Gavin Brown was to
be found fulminating in the
aisles of Art Basel yesterday at
the somewhat close similarity
of Christoph Büchel’s Home
(duplicate), 2009, (top right)
illustrated on the front cover of
Wednesday’s The Art
Newspaper, to Rob Pruitt’s Idea
No 3, Sell a Collector the Key
to Your House, produced a
decade earlier, in 1999 (top
left). Büchel’s piece consists of
a set of keys to the artist’s
Basel apartment with lifetime
access to the residence.
However, as Pruitt’s work is
part of a series entitled “101 Art
Ideas You Can Do Yourself”,
perhaps Büchel simply decided
to follow this advice and make
his own version. Perhaps great
minds think alike.
Break a chicken leg
For the insecure art lover it’s
hard enough trying not to get
mowed down by Matthew
Barney and Jonathan Bepler’s
throng of musicians as they
rampage through the Theater
Basel during “Il Tempo del
Postino”—especially when you
are trying to edge discreetly to
the front of the bar queue. But
now a new source of status
anxiety is sweeping through the
Il Tempo interval crowds with
the news that artist Rirkrit
Tiravanija is seeking candidates
for his fictitious onstage dinner
party directly after half time.
Seasoned old-stager and exRoyal Academy impresario Sir
Norman Rosenthal caused a
certain frisson among the first
night’s audience when, once
settled around the table with
various luminaries including
Zürich Kunsthalle curator
Embracing the view that it is
better to be parodied than
ignored, collectors have always
relished being mocked by
artists, but this year they seem
to be displaying a particularly
masochistic streak, judging by
the way in which collector
critiques seem to be walking
off the gallery stands. A
particular crowd-puller has
been Motherfuckers Never Die,
a work by Jota Castro at
Massimo Minini Gallery
(2.1/N4), a black mirror with
the title inscribed on the top
which underneath lists major
collectors such as Charles
Saatchi, Steve Cohen, the
Rubells, the Rachofskys, Mick
Flick, David Geffen, Adam
Lindemann et al. Apparently,
über buyers are stopping by to
check if they are on the list;
two of the work’s five editions
have been sold to a couple of
those enshrined, although the
gallery refuses to say which
ones. Among the other pieces
that delight in biting the hand
that buys them are Mark Dion’s
Collector in Repose, a
sculpture of a taxidermied red
squirrel on a chest of treasure,
which Kargl (2.1/W3) has sold
to a European collector.
Confessions of an art dealer…
Gerd Harry Lybke,
director of Eigen +
Art (2.1/Q3)
My biggest mistake…
is that I didn’t recognise
French curator Catherine
David when she visited my
gallery. I spoke to her in
German for about 15 minutes without realising that
she could not speak a word
of the language. We then
spoke in English and I
asked her to visit some
nightclubs in Berlin with
me. The next day, a colleague of mine phoned and
said that it was cool that
I’d been out with Katarina
Witt, who’s a German ice
skater. I misheard and
thought I’d been out with a
famous sportswoman.
My secret passion…
is shoes and clothes, all of
them handmade by Fame
and Glory and Yoshiharu
Ito. I only wear Trippen
shoes.
The museum I’d like to
lead…
is the Museum der
Bildenden Künste Leipzig,
but I’d like to be a permanent curator working under
a director. I’m from Leipzig
and the museum architecture is incredible.
The artist I should have
signed…
too many. I love visiting
artists in their studios.
Things that keep me
awake at 3am…
I’m not asleep at 3am. It’s
too early.
I last cooked…
for the owner of Rolling
Stone magazine.
I should have been…
an actor or a theatre manager. I actually acted for
ten years and was also a
nude life model.
I enjoy the company of…
artists and my family.
Dealers are
misunderstood…
I am not a dealer but a gallerist. But we are businessmen also and we aim to
make money. Artists need
money as well. I make
things possible for artists.
Fairs are important…
for presenting “curated”
shows. I presented a solo
show of work by Matthias
Weischer at the Armory in
March. It’s not just about
selling material in a market
place. I’ve asked my artists
to create works for Frieze
in October, for instance,
based on the theme of
portraits. There’s nothing
more political than saying
“I am”.
Small talk is…
fantastic. It means I can
relax. I like to talk about
my holidays, which I spend
every year at the Baltic
Sea in Poland.
Life is too short…
to die.