THIS WEEK'S HOT TOPIC
Every year around this time, the center of the art universe shifts to Switzerland, where Art Basel—the OG version of the fair—kicks off. Founded in 1970, Art Basel is among the most influential events of its kind; you can see its DNA in the hundreds of expos that have crowded the art world calendar since. And yet, this flagship fair, located in a city of less than 200,000 people, remains the king of them all. Come to think of it, maybe a better galactic metaphor is Jupiter, the oldest and biggest of the planets—and the one that still has the strongest gravitational pull.
How has the fair retained that status over all these years? Well, the art world loves tradition and taste, two qualities that Art Basel Basel (as the fair has come to be known in the years since its parent company expanded to Miami, Hong Kong, Paris, and Qatar) embodies more than any of its competitors. But the real factor is quality. It consistently draws the most powerful dealers, who in turn bring some of their best art. Ask virtually any insider, and they’ll tell you that the Swiss fair is, like the country's watches, simply the best.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t evolve with the times. This year’s version of the fair will introduce a new initiative, called Art Basel Exclusive, in which some galleries will withhold a selection of artworks they’re showing until the VIP opening of the fair. It’s a small gesture, but one that should at least add some drama (or not) to the first days of the fair. More on this experiment below.
Shifting gears, let’s pour one out for the great David Hockney, who died last week at the age of 88. The news was both inevitable and shocking.
On one hand, the painter—who was known for his vivid, effortless depictions of 1960s LA and his courage to come out as gay earlier that same decade, when homosexuality was still illegal in his home country of England—was a prolific smoker, which was bound to catch up to him eventually, if other ailments didn’t get their first. (A cause of death has not been reported.) On the other hand, there was something timeless about the artist, too. Much in the way his work simultaneously shaped the 20th-century canon while evolving outside it, Hockney both embodied his era and transcended it. That’s the definition of an icon.
3…THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ART BASEL
1
Art Basel is where galleries bring some of their most expensive and coveted works to market. There’s been chatter about the original fair being dethroned by its Parisian counterpart, but the Messeplatz in Basel remains the place where heavyweight advisors, collectors, and gallerists gather. This is not a fair geared toward entry-level buyers looking to spend a few thousand dollars on works by recent art school graduates. Basel is an arena for major transactions, replete with secondary-market trophies that carry both historical value and astronomical price tags. Since COVID, fewer Americans have been strolling the aisles, owing in part to rising shipping costs and the growing number of art fair options closer to home. Still, for collectors who want to see top-notch works gathered under one roof (and eat one of the iconic wursts sold inside), Basel remains well worth the trip.
2
Art Basel Unlimited provides a platform for (literally) monumental projects that many other fairs simply cannot accommodate. Housed in a 16,000-square-meter hall adjacent to the main fair, Unlimited dispenses with booths altogether. Instead, galleries present ambitious large-scale installations, sculptures, and environments, often dedicating their space to a single artist. This year’s edition is curated by Ruba Katrib, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at MoMA PS1, and includes presentations by Ai Weiwei, Peter Hujar, and Isa Genzken. Many works are jointly presented by multiple galleries, as is the case with the latter two artists’ projects. While Unlimited can feel museum-like in scale, it remains very much a part of the commercial fair experience, and the works are indeed for sale.
3
If you can afford time off at the bookends of your trip, there is a lot of art worth seeing on either side of the fair. Ahead of Art Basel is Zurich Art Weekend, located in the country’s capital, which is just a quick train ride away from the main action. Every other year, many art-world travelers head from Basel to Germany for Manifesta, a nomadic biennial that relocates with each new edition. This year’s Manifesta, the 16th since the show’s founding in 1994, will activate numerous historic churches in the Ruhr region as sites for artistic and social engagement. And, of course, there is always Italy. Visiting the Venice Biennale after the opening crowds have dispersed can be one of the most rewarding ways to experience the exhibition, allowing for slower and more thoughtful encounters with its many pavilions and projects.
A NUMBER TO KNOW
82.8%
The share of the exhibitor list participating in Art Basel Exclusive, the new initiative that asks galleries showing at the flagship fair to hold back at least one work from their preview campaigns so that collectors can only see it for the first time IRL at Tuesday morning’s VIP opening. As of this weekend, 192 of the 232 dealers manning booths this year had said yes to Exclusive.
Art Basel conceived the program to restore the sense of anticipation and FOMO degraded by the sell side’s years-long embrace of PDF previews, online viewing rooms, and other avenues to close deals before fairs actually welcome collectors inside. The hope is that it can make “Basel Basel” feel a little more like it used to in the pre-digital glory days, when industry insiders were so determined to get the drop on their competitors that they sometimes resorted to absurdist chicanery, like disguising themselves as art handlers to sneak in during install.
Will Art Basel Exclusive actually work? To me, basic human psychology all but guarantees there will be some leakage. Show me a dealer too principled to text a few discreet photos to top clients at the risk of losing a deal, and I’ll show you a dealer who will probably be out of business in five years. But the point is that Exclusive should at least reduce the sheer wantonness of dealers that have been conditioned, since the COVID shutdowns, to take the “spray and pray” approach with every last bit of inventory. It’s a baby step in the right direction—and my guess is that, privately, that’s all Art Basel is asking for.
—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market
ASK: ACCESS SOPHISTICATED KNOWLEDGE
We ASKed: Art Basel turns 56 this year. In your opinion, how has it retained its elite status all these years, despite an increasingly crowded fair landscape?
Josh Baer for NoReserve: I have been attending Art Basel since maybe the early ‘80s, before the era of the fax machine, even. With a wife from the country, I’m still of the mind that the Swiss are often the best. It remains the best fair for quality of art, but it has outgrown the charm of the city for many long-term collectors, mostly due to bad and overly expensive hotels and restaurants. That's why Art Basel Paris has been such a great addition to the Art Basel portfolio.
The fair has fought to stay “elite” while also consistently staying fresh; the new Zero 10 platform for digital art is a great example. For me, it's still the place. If you were to only go to one fair a year, this should be the one. I hope it lives to 100 (maybe me too!).
Have your own question for the NoReserve team? Reply to this email or reach out to us on Instagram, @no.reserve. Readers whose submissions we choose get a special prize—six free months of our paid newsletter, The Baer Faxt.
2 MINUTES WITH…
Kenny Schachter is tired of art world doomsayers and their persistent narrative that the market as we know it is headed for demise. For the artist, critic, and iconoclast, one thing has always been true: “art is resilient.” Ahead of Art Basel, we were reminded of our interview with Schachter at last year’s fair, in which he made a compelling case for positivity in the face of unprecedented times, doomers be damned. See clips from the conversation below, or head here to watch the whole video.
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