Basquiat comes of age

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ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
On show
If the hat fits
The profile of graffiti artist JeanMichel Basquiat, who died of a
drug overdose in 1988 at the age
of just 27, has never been higher.
The Beyeler Foundation is
devoting a large-scale retrospective of more than 100 works to
the Brooklyn-born painter,
whose output is limited to just
eight years, but whose critical
acclaim is mirrored by the market interest in his work, with
over 30 works on show at Art
Basel on six stands.
“Basquiat’s strength was in
his ability to merge imagery
from the streets, newspapers and
TV with the spiritualism of his
Haitian heritage, injecting both
into an intuitive understanding of
the language of painting,”
Jeffrey Deitch, the new director
of the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles, says.
Deitch’s opinion is reflected
in the wide base of collectors for
Basquiat’s work. The list of
lenders to the Beyeler show
reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary collecting, including
the Miami-based Rubells and the
Bramans, hedge-funder Steve
Cohen,
London
jeweller
Laurence Graff and tennis champion John McEnroe. The
Pompidou Centre in Paris and
the
Zurich-based
Daros
Foundation have also loaned
works. Other collectors include
star names from pop music and
Hollywood, such as Madonna
and Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Major collectors of modern
art view [Basquiat’s] work as
comparable to that of Picasso
and Dubuffet,” explains Beyeler
director Sam Keller. “He was
prolific, and produced 900 to
1,000 paintings and 2,000 to
3,000 works on paper. This
amount is a condition for an
active and sustained market.”
At auction, the highest price
ever paid for a Basquiat stands at
$14.6m for an Untitled work
from 1981. It was set at the
height of the art market boom at
Sotheby’s New York in 2007. In
November 2008, at the depth of
the financial recession, an
Untitled, Boxer from 1982 still
made $13.5m (in the late 1990s it
had sold for about $800,000). At
the fair there are two works
priced at $12m, at Shafrazi (F7)
and Bruno Bischofberger (C9):
Gas Truck, 1984, at the former,
and the 1982, eight-panel work
The Dutch Sellers at the latter,
who represented the artist worldwide. These two dealers are
among a small, powerful group
of players in this market. But
Edward Tyler Nahem (F15) feels
that the market is so broad today
© Katherine Hardy
Beyeler exhibition aims to place the artist, who died at 27, high in the canon
Untitled (Self-portrait: the King), 1981, at Edward Tyler Nahem,
one of six galleries showing works by the artist
that it is no longer possible for a
few dealers to control it. He is
showing two works, Catharsis,
1984, priced at $9m, and
Untitled (Self-portrait: the
King), 1981, at $2.8m, while
L&M Arts (B18) has a large
work on paper, Ribs, Ribs, 1982,
priced at $2.6m. Yesterday, dealers reported interest but few confirmed sales.
“Like
many
markets,
Basquiat’s is two-tiered,” says
Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of
Christie’s, which sold the
Untitled, Boxer. “The most coveted material is rare, generally
dating from the best period,
1981-83. There are good later
works but overall the quality is
more inconsistent.” Collectors
really want what Gorvy
describes as “emblematic works,
preferably with a single figure
with strong colours and a desirable scale”. Many of the top
works are now with a handful of
collectors: Peter Brant, Eli
Broad, Philippe Niarchos and
Dennis Scholl, and the collector/dealer family of Mugrabis.
They are a major presence in the
market, and passionate about the
artist: Alberto Mugrabi even has
the signature Basquiat crown
tattooed on his wrist.
Below the top level is what
Gorvy calls “a level of good, B+
works that sell for $800,000$3m. These works are often
bought by dealers who sell them
on. There’s a healthy trade here.”
The majority of the works in
the Beyeler show come from private collections. “Museums
missed the boat,” says Alberto
Mugrabi. Now, he says, they will
have to wait for donations. His
rumoured inventory of hundreds
of works “is not as good as it was
because I sold works”.
Since Basquiat’s death in
1988, his market has developed
steadily—in line with overall art
market trends—with a dramatic
peak in 2007 when, at the height
of the art market boom, the global auction volume for his work
was over $115m, according to
Artnet. During the 2008-09
financial crisis, turnover dropped
back to 2006 levels, also reflecting lower volumes at auction.
In May this year Untitled
(Stardust), 1983, depicting a jazz
saxophonist sold at auction for
$7.3m, well over the $2.5m presale estimate, a price that startled
some art world specialists. It was
consigned by the Basquiat estate,
which also has an authentication
committee including John Cheim
of Cheim & Read (A9), collector
Larry Warsh and Basquiat’s
© Katherine Hardy
Basquiat comes of age
Film star Val Kilmer was
spotted for the second
day on the trot in the fair
yesterday, apparently
channelling the spirit of
Joseph Beuys in a
homburg hat and gilet
(right). Unlike Art Basel
Miami Beach, the Swiss
edition is not a magnet
for celebrities although
Chelsea football club
owner Roman
Abramovich and his
partner Dasha Zhukova
appear to be turning into
regulars. Nevertheless,
there was still plenty to
gossip about…see p15
father, Gerard.
“The Basquiat market has
matured in the last few years,
there’s a lot of collectors, not the
old timers, mainly new collectors,” says collector Adam
Lindemann, who lent to the
Beyeler show. “They want
Basquiat, not De Kooning. The
old guard may still wrinkle their
noses but Basquiat is blue-chip.”
Georgina Adam
and Gareth Harris
No return to Brooklyn for Ofili’s Virgin Mary
The painting that caused a political storm when it was shown at the
Brooklyn Museum ten years ago, will not be returning to the institution. A proposed tour to Brooklyn of Tate Britain’s recent Chris Ofili
show, which included the artist’s Holy Virgin Mary, a 1996 painting
of the Madonna decorated with elephant dung and images of bottoms,
has been cancelled. Holy Virgin Mary was shown in Brooklyn in 1999
as part of “Sensation”, a show drawn from the collection of Charles
Saatchi. The then mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, described
the work as “disgusting”, withheld funding for the institution, and
filed a lawsuit to have the museum evicted. A federal judge ruled
against the mayor and the City of New York stating that they had no
right to inflict any retaliation against the museum as a result of the
show. In a statement Tate said: “The success of Chris Ofili at Tate
Britain generated an enthusiastic interest from organisations to tour
the show in North America. Tate has been exploring the possibility of
a tour of the exhibition in the US. However, it hasn’t been possible to
arrange one at such short notice.” Cristina Ruiz and Javier Pes
International
Artists and curators launch art flotilla off Israeli coast
Despite Israel’s fatal attack of
the Gaza-bound Mavi Marra
ship, three flotillas crewed by
artists plan to set off for neutral
waters off the coasts of Tel Aviv
and Haifa today, and remain
until 21 June.
The maritime arts initiative,
called
Ex-territory,
was
launched in mid-2009 by the Tel
Aviv-based artist/curators Ruti
Sela and Maayan Amir. The
three-boat armada, which also
makes a quick stop in Greek
Cyprus, will transform into a
stage for film screenings and
performances by 50 international artists.
“We wanted to create an exhi-
bition that doesn’t promote territory or ideology,” Amir said.
“We are making a space where
everyone who is involved will at
least be temporarily free from
the ideologies and arbitrary circumstances that their home
countries represent.”
Other than the location of the
boat’s departure and the nationalities of several participants,
co-founder Amir asserts a lack
of affiliation with her native
Israel. “With Ex-territory we
can participate in ways that we
can’t when we are inside Israel,”
said Amir. “The project aims to
create a floating platform for
inter-cultural exchange outside
Peace and love boat?
the sovereign territory of any
specific country.”
Both Amir and Sela have
refused any financial support
from Israel for Ex-territory. The
pair has instead turned to initiatives like the European Union
Migrant Artist Network and the
Fondation Maison des Sciences
de l’Homme for funding.
A three-hour sea trial took
place during the 2009 Tel Aviv
International Art Biennial (Art
TLV). Since then, Amir and
Sela have attracted participants
for their Mediterranean Sea
excursion from countries such
as Taiwan, Chile and the US, as
well as a handful from Middle
Eastern nations they consider
too dangerous to disclose prior
to their departure.
Although tension off the coast
of Israel continues to rise—the
Iranian government recently
decided to dispatch their own
boats, and within Israel a movement to send a flotilla to the
Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus is gaining momentum—
both Amir and Sela claim Ex-territory will be carried out as
planned. Indeed, if the chance
arises, Amir claimed she was
open to using the sails of the
Iranian flotilla “as another place
to project art.”
Marisa Mazria Katz
AUCTIONS LONDON
CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING SALE 29 JUNE 2010
CONTEMPORARY ART DAY SALE 30 JUNE 2010
ITALIA 30 JUNE 2010
phillipsdepury.com
2
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
Art Basel
People
Where are the women?
Stella joins new
Manhattan gallery
A list of the artists whose work
you are most likely to see at this
year’s Art Basel, based on the
number of galleries who are
bringing pieces, is headed—perhaps unsurprisingly—by the
prolific Andy Warhol, with
works on show at 28 stands.
Artists making work in the first
half of the 20th century rank
highly, including Alexander
Calder and Pablo Picasso,
although the list is also speckled
with 1960s conceptualists such
as Sol LeWitt and Lawrence
Weiner. But the top 40 most represented artists on show at the
fair are all men (see table).
“I don’t feel that female artists
are being penalised, but there is a
big male contingent here at the
fair,” said New York art adviser
Sima Familant. Gagosian’s stand
(B7) includes just one female
artist amid a sea of men, and she
is hardly given star billing, as of
last night at least. Yayoi
Kusama’s meditative black and
white painting is tucked in a side
room, while sprawling works by
Koons, Prince, De Kooning and
Rauschenberg are dramatically
splayed across the walls. But
Gagosian outdid Paris-based
Thaddaeus Ropac (B17) which is
showing no female artists at all.
Swiss gallery Thomas Ammann
(B2) is caked with glittering
Warhols. The only female artist
on view—and it’s hard to find—
is the late minimalist Agnes
Martin. Her spare black and
white geometric 1961 drawing is
priced at $1.6m.
Dealers say that the imbalance can be partly explained by
prices. Male artists continue to
fetch the biggest sums at galleries and at auction. “Is it true
that a Brice Marden drawing is a
© Katherine Hardy
High priced male artists such as Warhol and Picasso dominate the stands
This major work by Louise Bourgeois was one of the exceptions
zillion times more expensive
than a comparable work by a
woman artist? Yes,” said Barry
Rosen, who advises the estates
of Eva Hesse and Lee Lozano. A
small Van Gogh-inspired 1982
painting by Lee Bontecou, who
is of the 1960s generation of
artists such as Jasper Johns who
command million dollar prices
even for lesser examples, is for
sale at Marianne Boesky (M3)
for $120,000.
The fact that male artists command bigger prices also precludes some collectors from considering works by female artists.
“It’s not only because they are
women,” said Monika Sprüth of
Sprüth Magers, which is showing a number of female artists on
their stand (B12). “There are certain kinds of speculators in the
TOP TEN* RANKING ARTISTS AT ART BASEL
Rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Artists
No of Galleries
Andy Warhol
Pablo Picasso
Alexander Calder
Sol LeWitt, Joan Miró
Jean Dubuffet, Donald Judd
Henri Matisse, Robert Rauschenberg
Frank Stella, Lawrence Weiner
Cy Twombly
Josef Albers, Daniel Buren, John Chamberlain,
Willem De Kooning, Sam Francis, Fernand Léger,
Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Richard Tuttle
John Baldessari, Georg Baselitz, Max Ernst,
Robert Mangold, László Moholy-Nagy, Francis Picabia
Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter, Christopher Wool
Carl Andre, Lucio Fontana, Liam Gillick, Anish Kapoor
Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Jonathan Monk,
Sigmar Polke, Matt Mullican, Thomas Schütte
28
23
20
19
16
14
13
12
11
10
* by numbers of galleries (out of 303) bringing works to the fair
art world who pride themselves
on price, and this tends to favour
certain male artists.”
Several women are edging up
in fair representation, but it helps
to be dead. The late Louise
Bourgeois and Joan Mitchell,
both presented by nine galleries
apiece, rank highest. A series of
28 Bourgeois watercolours, Les
Fleurs, completed three months
before her death earlier this year,
were sold on Art Basel’s opening
day by New York’s Cheim &
Read (A9) to a collector who has
promised the works to a US
museum. The group was priced
at $1.4m.
The gallery was among the
few at the fair with a female
majority, featuring work by Pat
Steir, Ghada Amer, Joan Mitchell
and Lynda Benglis.
Cindy Sherman, who will be
the subject of a retrospective at
New York’s Museum of Modern
Art in 2012, is being shown on
just three stands. A seminal 1979
piece from her career-making
series of “film stills”, portraying
Sherman representing different
archetypes, was sold during the
fair’s opening day by her longtime gallery Metro Pictures (J12)
for $1.5m. The work is from an
edition of ten.
Other coveted female artists
are also in short supply. Julie
Mehretu can be seen at four
stands—compared with ten
stands boasting Jonathan Monk.
Elizabeth Peyton’s moody portraits are also scattered around
just four out of 303 stands.
Perhaps the dearth of female
artists could be considered a
compliment. “It could be that
whoever buys art by women
keeps it,” said Rosen.
Lindsay Pollock
Liste’s laid-back approach appeals to buyers
Dutch dealer Steven van
Grinsven took an unconventional approach to his Zinger
Presents Liste stand (0/10/2). He
collaborated with London book
dealer Conor Donlon to fill a row
of cases with books and works
exploring what it means to be
macho. “Leading Men, Leading
Men”, includes a vintage Easy
Rider paperback, a pair of ballerina slippers and Tom Cruisestyle aviator sunglasses. The
installation was priced $45,000.
“Art fairs can be like shops,”
said Van Grinsven. “But they can
also be a lot more than that.”
The Liste fair, now in the
15th year, is mounted in a former Basel brewery. Some 350
international art dealers vied for
64 spots. Though the likes of
power dealer Larry Gagosian
and Greek collector Dakis
Joannou were among this year’s
visitors, the fair is also known
for its casual atmosphere—in
one corner, a pair of artists stood
smoking, exhaling out of large
windows. The scrappy fair
An eye on Chicago
Downtown Chicago's latest public sculpture, a threestorey-high fibreglass eyeball, Eye, is to be unveiled
on 7 July in a park on the corner of Van Buren and
State Street. The temporary installation by local
artist Tony Tasset was commissioned by the Chicago
Loop Alliance Foundation. The “roadside attraction”
was selected by Art Institute of Chicago curators
Zoe Ryan and James Rondeau, Hamza Walker from
the Renaissance Society, and Nathan Mason from
the city’s department of cultural affairs. Tasset is
also installing 156 street banners depicting birds in
flight, essentially turning the street into a flipbook as
the bird appears to move across each banner. R.L.
exemplifies a certain anti-commercial attitude, but this does
not mean it is not about selling.
“We sold out in one hour,”
said Berlin and Los Angeles
dealer Javier Peres of Peres
Projects (0/7/4) who brought five
large, gritty, Art Brut-inspired
canvases by New York painter
Joe Bradley. “I can’t remember
the last time I said ‘sold out’, or
‘waiting list’.” The paintings,
with titles such as Frankenstein
and Berlin Hermaphrodite, were
priced at $18,000 to $25,000.
“We sold nearly everything,”
said Michael Gillespie of New
York’s Foxy Production (0/7/3)
who presented a group of paintings and sculptures by British
artist Gabriel Hartley. The paintings were priced between $4,000
and $7,500. A wall-sized canvas
entitled Pout was acquired by a
“major English collection”.
“The fair totally exceeded our
expectations,” said Zurich dealer Claudia Groeflin (0/6/2) who
presented a solo show of work
by Swiss artist Athene
Galiciadis, priced at SwFr850 to
SwFr8,500. “The fair is about
young art—before you get into
the white cube. That’s its
charm,” said Groeflin.
The fair has a reputation as a
springboard for artists and dealers who graduate onto bigger
and better things. Well-known
Art Basel figures, including
David Zwirner (E10) and
Maureen Paley (P10), previously exhibited at Liste. Painters
Wilhelm Sasnal and Elizabeth
Peyton also made early appearances at the fair.
San Francisco-based dealer
Claudia Altman-Siegel (-1/2/4),
a Liste newcomer, focused her
stand on conceptual photography, including a triptych of
photographs by Shannon Ebner,
priced $30,000. She sold two
editions and won a prize as
the fair’s best first-time
exhibitor. L.P.
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Ann Freedman, the former
president and director of New
York’s Knoedler & Company, is
launching a gallery, Freedman
Art, in New York this autumn.
Abstract American painter
Frank Stella is among her roster of artists. “It’s time for a
change,” said Stella, adding:
“It’s nice to have a dealer representing you who doesn’t have a
mega number of artists and to
be someplace where you are
comfortable with the other
artists.” Stella had shown with
Paul Kasmin Gallery for the
past ten years. He has a show
on view in Basel at Ficher Rohr
Gallery until 30 July. L.P.
Site Santa Fe names
new director
As it prepares to open “The
Dissolve”, its eighth international biennial this week
(18 June-2 January 2011), Site
Santa Fe also welcomes a new
director, Irene Hofmann. She
takes over from Laura
Steward, who became director
of the art space in 2005.
Hofmann comes from
Baltimore’s Contemporary
Museum where she worked as
executive director since 2005.
Hofmann said she plans to
oversee new initiatives, including an expansion of the institution’s artist residencies and
commissions programme. H.S.
Dia: Beacon director
heads to Texas
The San Antonio-based Linda
Pace Foundation has named
Steven Evans as its new executive director and curator. He
joins the foundation from the
Dia: Beacon in upstate New
York. During his 20-year tenure
at Dia, Evans was responsible
for a range of projects including
an exhibition of 1960s and
1970s Sol LeWitt drawings. In
addition to managing the 500strong collection of contemporary art assembled by the late
philanthropist Linda Pace,
Evans will oversee the Texan
foundation’s support of various
initiatives such as Artpace—an
independent art laboratory. E.S.
Kallat gets political in
Chicago
Mumbai-based artist Jitish
Kallat is to unveil a sitespecific installation at the Art
Institute of Chicago on 11
September. Public Notice 3 will
present Hindu philosopher
Swami Vivekananda’s speech
given at the 1893 Parliament of
the World’s Religion in LED
lights on the risers of the museum’s grand staircase. The illuminated colours will refer to the
Homeland Security warning
system. The speech is considered the first introduction of
Hinduism in the US as well as a
landmark statement on religious
tolerance. R.L.
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Rosso contrario, 2008
Vinyl on unprimed canvas
120 x 160 cm
4
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
Interview: Angela Bulloch
Shining a light on the city
The artist has installed her latest work in the Basel cathedral, as part of the fair’s new Art Parcours project
A
ngela Bulloch, who graduated from Goldsmiths
College in London in
1988, has produced drawing
machines, light and sound
works, and complex interactive
installations that are often underpinned by a common thesis: the
purpose of public structures and
social systems. Her “Rules
Series”, initiated in 1993, placed
banal, everyday regulations
(parking restrictions, the standing orders of Britain’s House of
Commons and Birkenstock
shoe-care tips) in a new context,
highlighting their absurdity.
Since 2000, Bulloch has developed “Pixel Boxes” (in collaboration with computer artist
Holger Friese), a key motif in
her work. These cubes, made in
varying sizes and materials, consist of fluorescent, luminous
tubes—red, blue and green—
which can be programmed to
produce millions of colour combinations. For her Art Parcours,
piece, Night Sky: Mercury and
Venus, Bulloch has transformed
the interior of the Basel Münster,
built between 1019 and 1500 in
Romanesque and Gothic styles.
The Art Newspaper: Is your
Art Parcours piece religious?
Angela Bulloch: There are two
aspects to the piece. First, it is
not religious and neither am I. I
don’t believe in God. But the
work reacts, of course, to the
context of the cathedral. I’ve
made the piece very much with
the space in mind and it addresses fundamental questions such
as “where are you in the world?”
The work provides a [virtual]
representation of the universe,
showing [the planets] Venus and
Mercury. I’ve made something
Basel cathedral
real from a virtual standpoint.
Second, the position of the spectator is key in relation to the
installation which [should] be
viewed at a distance of approximately 20 metres. You can position yourself in relation to the
work in places that you couldn’t
actually visit physically. The
piece incorporates light-emitting
diodes which can be controlled.
It’s quite a demanding context to
work in alongside a permanent
team of engineers but it’s also
thrilling.
TAN: Night Sky: Mercury and
Venus appears to be based on
a very clear concept. Have you
always worked in this way?
AB: Definitely. I learned to be
rigorous technically as well, and
[deduced] how to make my own
circuit boards with silicon chips.
Both the technical and the conceptual have to go hand-inhand. Besides, you need to
know the nature of the material
you’re dealing with.
TAN: That seems particularly
true of your “Pixel Box”
innovations.
AB: Yes, I did a lot of technical
research and developmental
work, following through a process to make something that was
technically quite difficult to
achieve. I had to devise a new
system, focusing on how the
boxes would diffuse light, for
instance, and develop the dimming mechanisms that allow the
pixels to change every second. I
straddled both art and design by
designing the boxes, then turning them into art. But the principles you apply when designing
objects are not the same as those
used when making art.
TAN: How have you taken
this concept forward?
AB: For my last exhibition at
Esther Schipper gallery in Berlin
in March, entitled “Redux”, I
used the language and grammar
of the works in a different way,
producing a “Pixel Box” with
red, yellow and blue fluorescent
tubes, perverting the usual additive colour system. I suppose
you could say that I was “riffing” on my own art.
TAN: Such devices invite the
viewer to respond and participate. Do you consider your
work to be interactive?
AB: It’s such a loose word, it
gives people expectations and
then usually disappoints. All art
is interactive after all because a
painting needs to be perceived.
People come to recognise the
“cause and effect” concept at
play within an installation but
only because they become
aware of it over time during the
course of the work; I would
describe this process as interpassive rather than interactive.
TAN: So who’s in control?
You or the spectator?
AB: Control is an important
issue in our lives. It depends on
the context and the situation.
Certainly I use the dynamics of
control within my work.
TAN: Is art simply about
shifting context then? I’m
thinking about your “Rules
Series” which showed how
irrational regulations can be.
AB: Context is an important
consideration. Where you find
information often has a strong
influence on how the information is understood or perceived.
One “Rules Series” that I love is
the Din-A4 paper standardising
system, the subject of a recent
“Rules” piece [“A4” identifies
the 210mm x 297mm paper size
decreed under the International
Organisation for Standard-
isation]. It’s amazing that all
countries, except the US, work
with the same paper size; there’s
something extraordinary about
this consensus and international
discourse over a sheet of paper.
The beauty of this mathematical
system really appeals to me.
TAN: What are your future
projects?
AB: I’ll be heading straight for
Johannesburg in South Africa
after Basel where I’m participating in a Parcours-style
project called “X-Wohnungen”,
initiated by the HAU theatre in
Berlin, that coincides with the
football World Cup. I
Interview by Gareth Harris
Art Parcours
Art Basel’s Art Parcours,
curated by Jens Hoffmann,
director of the Wattis
Institute for Contemporary
Arts in California, aims to
transform historic locations and landmarks
throughout the city by the
creation of site-specific
works and performances.
Participating artists
include Daniel Buren,
Ryan Gander and Nathalie
Djurberg. Sites include the
Old University of Basel,
the Natural History
Museum and the banks of
the River Rhine. The
events will be staged over
a three-night period, from
17-19 June: tonight’s are by
invitation only, with the
second two nights open to
ticket-holding members of
the public.
www.artbasel.com/
parcours
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Paula Modersohn-Becker, Girl with Straw Hat and Child on her Lap (detail), 1904,
Auction May 2010, price realised € 375,300
Keeping it Real
Whitechapel Gallery
The D. Daskalopoulos
Collection
An Exhibition in Four Acts
10 June 2010–22 May 2011
Supported by:
Act 1: The Corporeal
10 June–5 September 2010
Sherrie Levine Fountain (Buddha): 5, 1996, Cast bronze, 42.5 x 40 x 30 cm.
© Sherrie Levine. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Photo: Tom Powel.
whitechapelgallery.org
Act 1
Act 2
Act 3
Act 4
10 June–5 September 2010
17 September–5 December 2010
17 December 2010–6 March 2011
18 March–22 May 2011
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Jean-Michel Basquiat in his studio at the Great Jones Street,
New York, 1985, In front of Untitled, 1985,
Private Collection, Photo: Lizzie Himmel ©
© 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich
Specific Objects without Specific Form
9.5. –
5.9.2010
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7
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
Culture clash
The same, but different
Crossing the Atlantic—in either direction—to curate a museum, can be a shock, as today’s Art Basel Conversation will explore
Ofer Wolberger / BRANSCH
A
ccording to conventional wisdom,
we’re converging on a globally
unified art culture. You run into
the same art everywhere you go.
Galleries and museums are
variations on the same white box
and brand-name architecture. The same pack of
collectors and dealers trots from Basel to Venice
to Miami and back. Traveling exhibitions circle
the globe while the internet submerges all in a
planetary soup of discourse.
But look again. It turns out that local
traditions do matter. Although globalisation is
erasing some differences, underneath the surface
culture stubbornly asserts itself. These days, as
economic crises prompt anguished soul
searching and budget cuts, we may even see a
reversal of homogenisation, as decision-makers
at various longitudes and latitudes discover old
habits of mind about what “the arts” mean and
how they ought to be run.
An appreciation of distinctions between
Europe and the United States is especially
timely. Today, as part of Art Basel
Conversations, three renowned curators—Klaus
Biesenbach, Lynne Cooke, and Ann Goldstein—
will explore what it means to advance art on both
sides of the Atlantic. Each one has recently
switched to a new continent to assume a
leadership role in a major museum—
MoMA/P.S.1 in New York, the Reina Sofía in
Madrid, and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam,
respectively. As such, they are in a unique
position to consider the subtle and not-so subtle
transatlantic variations in the visual arts.
Old stereotypes about the two continents
persist, of course. Americans admire Europeans’
love of leisure, culture, history, and politics.
Europeans are wowed by America’s scale,
diversity, optimism, its balance of innovation and
stability—what philosopher George Santayana
meant when he wrote: “America is a young
country with an old mentality.” On the flip side,
Europeans disdain America’s extreme
consumerism, conformism and religiosity, while
Americans object to Europe’s inflexibility and
bouts of xenophobia. Tony Judt summarised the
contrasts by way of amusing metaphor in The
New York Review of Books, in 2005: “Consider a
mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere.
Being largely without flavour it can be diluted to
taste. What it lacks in allure it makes up in size. It
is the most democratic method ever devised for
introducing caffeine into human beings. Now take
a cup of Italian espresso. It requires expensive
equipment. Price-to-volume ratio is outrageous,
suggesting indifference to the consumer and
ignorance of the market. The aesthetic accessory
to the beverage far outweighs its metabolic
impact. It is not a drink; it is an artefact.”
So how do such differences play out in the
arts? It is likely that the panellists will argue,
first and foremost, that “America” and “Europe”
are, in fact, fictions that mask a multifarious
array of national practices in the arts. Even the
contrasting role of the state and the market—that
most basic transatlantic polarity—turns out to be
more of a spectrum, with many shades of grey.
At one extreme is the pure statist scenario, most
closely linked with France. Its proponents hold
that the market is a menace to art, with the state
insulating culture from private interests. On the
other end is the pure private model, identified
with America, proponents of which believe
exactly the reverse: that market forces not only
lend dynamism and filtering to the arts, but they
also shield them from political meddling.
In reality, most national and institutional
scenarios are hybrids, and turning more so.
American museums enjoy tax benefits and
exempt donations, and a surprising number
receive direct public subsidies. In Europe, with
governments strapped for cash, the trend is
toward the “Americanisation” of support. The
Netherlands, for example, has a history of
keeping funding decisions at an arm’s length
from government, and more recently it has been
demanding that private sponsors pick up part of
the tab for culture. The UK and Scandinavian
countries are following a similar “middle way”
path. Whatever the mix of public and private
influence, museum leaders everywhere must
obey multiple masters.
Even so, there are discernible areas of
difference. First, in terms of art’s overall place
and function in society. In Europe, for better or
Klaus Biesenbach, left, originally resident in Berlin, now heads MoMA’s P.S.1; the Reina Sofía’s Lynne Cooke, right, was born and studied in
Australia and worked in London and New York before her move to Spain. They join Los Angeles native Ann Goldstein who in January became
director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in an Art Basel Conversation on the art world on both sides of the Atlantic
worse, art is an embodiment of national identity
and cultural institutions have evolved to serve a
relatively undifferentiated public that shares
many core values. Because art is a public matter,
it also receives more serious attention in the
press, especially in Germany. In America, there
is no such shared frame of reference, nor the
attendant sense of art being at the heart of life.
Second, there are differences in museum
administration. Reliance on the state offers
“
It turns out that local
traditions do matter. Although
globalisation is erasing
some differences, underneath
the surface culture
stubbornly asserts itself
”
European museum directors a measure of stability.
Government patrons are more likely to accept an
“art for art’s sake” approach and stay out of
creative decisions. But state support can lead to
stagnation and exposure to political machinations.
For Americans accustomed to private institutions,
“the biggest shock,” as Ann Goldstein put it in a
pre-Basel interview, is “encountering a very
different sense of public ownership. The Stedelijk
Museum’s collection and buildings are owned by
the city of Amsterdam, not the museum.” Yet,
reliance on private patrons is not without its own
burdens. It means contending with interpersonal
politics and financial instability, and a greater risk
of conflicts of interest and challenges to
curatorial independence. “It’s the difference
between boards and politicians,” is how Lynne
Cooke summed it up.
The third and arguably most interesting
difference is in what transpires in the gallery
space itself—the contrasting attitudes,
expectations, and cognitive frames that are
brought to bear in the encounter between
museum-goers and exhibited objects. The
curators in the Art Basel panel should tease out
these subtle differences. Suffice to say, that
contending with European and American
audiences, funders and staffs will necessarily
demand different strengths from institution
leaders.
But before we get too wrapped up in the
subtleties of the Euro-American relationship, it is
worth opening the lens a little wider. For in a
crucial respect, Europe and the United States are
extremely similar.
As it happens, I wrote this article in South
Korea, while attending a Unesco conference on
arts education. Not surprisingly, issues tied to
globalisation loomed large on the conference
agenda. A passage from the opening ceremony
brochure read: “The digital natives of the 21st
century have learned to transcend the limits of
concrete reality, and, like nomads or Vikings of
old, are free to roam the plains and oceans of the
internet.” Yet despite such optimism about
liberation from the constraints of time and space,
what strikes the visitor to this thriving, bustling
country is the enduring cultural specificity of
Asia—how very different a place it is from either
Europe or America.
Seoul, with its clogged, six-lane boulevards,
air conditioned subway stations, and tightly
woven neighbourhoods—all pulsing with energy
in a way that no American or European city
does—is an emblem for a rising continent that
most Europeans and Americans still regard as
somewhat of a distant, unconnected reality.
There is enthusiasm for Euro-American culture
here, but in the city’s ultra-refined galleries
Western art remains the exception. Korean artists
steeped in global art trends are addressing issues
uniquely connected to this place. They are
speaking in a confident vernacular voice that
demands attention. The city is adding 1,000
public art works a year. The mission of the Seoul
Foundation for Arts and Culture is:
“Transformation of Seoul into the world’s best
creative cultural city.” They mean it.
As the world’s point of gravity continues to tilt
to Asia, will there be a new-found appreciation of
the cultural kinship of America and Europe? Yet
Seoul and its fast evolving regional neighbours
confront European and American art leaders with
a pressing need as well as an enormous
opportunity. The time is here for a deep
engagement with Asia, from an aesthetic as well
as an institutional point of view. This means
going beyond the franchising of Western ideas
and models, toward genuine two-way exchange
based on mutual learning and respect.
What might that look like, and how will it
change European and American institutions?
Every panel discussion must have a “what’s
next” question, and for today’s Art Basel
conversation, this may well be it.
András Szántó
J The conversation Public/Private: Crossing the Atlantic, will
take place at the Art Unlimited Hall (Hall 1) Auditorium, 10am-11.30
am. Klaus Biesenbach, former director of the Kunst-Werke (KW)
Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, is director of P.S.1 and chief
curator-at-large of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Lynne
Cooke, Dia curator-at-large, is deputy director and chief curator of the
Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Ann Goldstein,
former senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles, is director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. András
Szántó is a professor of art business and a consultant to cultural and
philanthropic organisations; born in Budapest, he lives in New York
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
Expert eye
Christoph Grunenberg, the director of Tate Liverpool, on his pick of Art Basel
People have really pulled out all the stops at this year’s fair. There are always fantastic works, but this time there are more
than ever. I’ve decided to go for blue-chip works, partly because there are so many fantastic artists on show here—I’ve seen
some outstanding museum pieces. There are lots of great contemporary works as well, but I’ve plumped for a more
historical selection
‘There is a real
sense of sadness’
Harry Callahan, Women Lost
in Thought, 1950, €250,000,
sold to Belgian collector
(Galerie Thomas Zander, C11)
Photographs are always great
things, but for me the best
pieces come from the 1920s
and 1930s. These shots are like
a conceptual work of art. It’s a
series of 20 pictures that
Callahan secretly took of
women walking down a
Chicago street. It’s completely
weird. The photographs are
hung in a grid and are all
close-ups in the same format,
and everyone seems to be
completely lost in thought.
There’s a real sense of sadness
in the photographs, of living in
a city in the 1950s and working
in an office job, of conformity
and organisation. They are
really quite moving and
depressing—no-one is smiling.
You get this immediacy from
secret shots of people. How do
you get people to not look at
the camera, to not be selfconscious? That’s what makes
these works so effective.
‘A complete museum piece’
‘The work really reminds me of Matisse’s cut-outs’
Gerhard Richter, Philodendron, 1967,
€1.25m (Löhrl, B3)
This is an absolutely classic 1960s
photorealist, grey, smudged painting.
Gerhard Richter has taken a very banal
domestic scene of a plant, and painted a
woman standing next to it. There’s
something very middle-class and bourgeois
about it. But, underneath the spectre of
normality, Richter sees the potential for evil
to breed, referring to Germany’s postmodern
history. And the way the plant comes
sprawling out is an attraction in itself.
Philodendron really reminds me of
Matisse’s cut-outs, his late obsession with
plants and his plant drawings.
‘This looks more
like Bauhaus’
Shirley Jaffe, The Black Spot,
1972, €60,000 (Obadia, H7)
This is a very unusual painting
by an artist I had never heard
of before. The composition and
colours immediately attracted
me. It looks very fresh. The
work is a wonderful, large,
geometric abstraction—which
is unusual in that it doesn’t
look like anything else from
that period. It looks more like
Bauhaus, or a re-take on some
1920s abstract work—I had to
check the date because I
thought it was perhaps by a
younger contemporary artist
taking a cue from Oskar
Schlemmer or someone else
from that period. It’s a curious
combination of rigid geometric
composition and more organic
round shapes. The great thing
about art fairs is that you see a
lot of work in a concentrated
space, and always find new
things. But, you have to look
very hard for smaller works.
‘It’s a brilliant piece and one that I had never seen before’
Francis Picabia, Villica Caja,
1929, price undisclosed,
reserved by European
collector (Hopkins-Custot, C6)
This Picabia is a first-class
work—it’s a complete museum
piece. It’s a really complex
composition with a classic
overlapping of layers of
painting. He did quite a few of
these paintings, and this side of
his output is valued more than
the dadaist and abstract works.
It’s a wonderful composition—
he has taken a mythological
scene and overlaid it with
portraits and other figures. It’s
an unusually large Picabia for
that period. Any museum
would be glad to own this
painting, if they could afford it.
“
I’ve gone for
blue-chip works as
there are so many
fantastic artists on
show here
”
Fernand Léger, Décoration
bleue, 1941, $950,000
(Michael Werner Gallery, B5)
One of the earlier works I’ve
chosen is by Léger, and is a
wonderful mixture of
decoration and abstraction—I
tend to go for decorative
eye-candy. It is a large-scale
picture with a blue background
covered in abstract biologicaltype blobs, and is really quite a
strange non-object work. Later
on in his career, Léger did lots
of big, decorative scenes and
this work certainly points in
that direction. It’s a brilliant
piece and one that I had never
seen before.
Interviews by Anny Shaw.
Photographs by Katherine
Hardy
© Cy Twombly
CY TWOMBLY (b. 1928)
Untitled (Gaeta) · acrylic on wooden panel in artist’s frame
overall: 1081⁄4 x 82in. (274.9 x 208.3cm.) panel: 991⁄4 x 72.3⁄4in. (252.1 x 184.8cm.)
Painted in 2004 · £2,000,000 – 3,000,000
Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction
London · 30 June
Highlights on View
Contact
19 – 23 June
Francis Outred
foutred@christies.com
+44 (0)20 7389 2270
8 King Street, SW1Y 6QT
Auction Viewing
26 – 30 June
christies.com
10
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
Design
The nightclub: a travelling tribute
Designer of the Future winner Graham Hudson, on his monument to excess
In the June main edition
Our current edition contains 120 pages packed
with the latest art world
news, events and business
reporting, plus high profile
interviews (and a smattering of gossip)
News Find out what’s
behind the latest appointment at über collector
François Pinault’s troubled
Venice venues (top)…
Biennials Shanty town
roofs, recordings of
extinct dialects and fields
of scrap metal celebrate
the vanquished, dispossessed and marginalised
at the 17th Sydney
Biennale (middle)…
All photos © William Oliver
Museums Early signs of
Design Miami Basel has selected four individuals/collectives
to showcase in its Designers of
the Future award, sponsored by
the W Hotels chain. The resulting commissions will be on
show throughout the fair. The
four were chosen from a shortlist of new and emerging
designers assembled by a committee of design luminaries,
including outgoing Design
Miami director Ambra Medda
and Marcus Fairs, the editor-inchief of dezeen.com.
All four finalists—Beta Tank,
Graham Hudson, Random
International and Zigelbaum &
Coelho—will be interviewed by
curator Cédric Morisset this
evening as part of the Design
Talks programme (Hall 5
Mezzanine, 5.50pm-6.30pm).
The Art Newspaper caught up
with Hudson earlier to find out
about his winning commission.
Responding to a brief set by
W Hotels to create a DJ booth
that can travel to its various
international sites, Hudson has
produced a large-scale, modular, scaffolding-frame bar and
venue, complete with beer
stains, drawing on the history
of the disused nightclubs in
London’s Kings Cross area. He
treated the project as a continuation of work produced during
a residency in Kings Cross, due
to be exhibited in October at
the German Gymnasium development on nearby Pancras
Road. The project, titled The
End of The End, takes its name
from the closing of notable
nightclub The End, one of
many London clubs that shut
their doors in the early part of
Hudson’s memorial to the death of 1990s club culture (above)
this decade.
Hudson sees the closing of
these venues as socially significant, the end of a movement in
popular culture. “Has there
been another comparable counter-culture movement since then,
other than the emergence of
online communities?” he asked.
“I was not a huge fan of the
club scene itself but I am interested in the subtle way that
laws were changed around that
time, giving bars later licences
while cutting club licences
back. It moved people from
nightclubs into late-night bars,
which were in a way easier to
monitor and control. I am using
the closing of clubs as a
metaphor for the state interest
in personal freedom.”
Hudson also cites the integration of house music into the
mainstream, along with the rise
“
Has there
been a comparable
counter-culture
movement since
then?
”
of the internet, as reasons for the
closures and subsequent demise
of 1990s club culture. “The
music had become available
everywhere, and so the specialist scene that surrounded it was
diluted,” he explains.
The Designer of the Future
installation can be made from
new or reused materials, giving
each build a different look. It
consists of a bar with dance
floor and raised DJ booth, and is
designed as a blueprint that can
be used to create the work
responding to the new location’s
differing spatial restrictions.
The aesthetic is inspired by
the remnants left in the empty
Kings Cross clubs, which have
been Hudson’s workspaces for
the last year. His raised DJ
booth is based on venues including The Cross, Bagleys and
Turnmills, and is intended as an
“icon to the creative source, the
DJ”, in keeping with the design
typical of late 1990s clubs. He
has clad sections of the scaffolding in heavyweight black twill,
and dirtied the structure, including spilling beer on certain
areas. “I want the work to feel
like something that has seen a
better day, and definitely not be
seen as an object of high
design,” he said.
Hudson’s travelling bar is a
way of commemorating the
defunct venues and what they
stood for. “I want the bar to be
used, and to be best seen when
you are interacting with it and
other people. But it is also a
memorial to the death of this
culture, and to that episode of
society,” he said.
Hudson has regularly used
scaffolding in his work. It is the
ability to build something that is
“ultimately an exoskeleton
which gives you a sense of scale
without entering into the re-creation debate” that he says interests him. Previous works have
included the large-scale installation An Insignificant Extension
sibling rivalry as the director of the Centre
Pompidou-Metz insists
that the new E72m centre
is not an outpost
(bottom)…
Art Market Should art
fairs feel threatened by
the increasing number of
gallery weeks?
Features
Analysis:
finding money for the arts
in a global financial crisis…
Artist interview
Belgian-born, Mexicobased artist Francis Alÿs
on running into the centre
of tornadoes, failing to
sabotage the art market
and the appeal of
living in Mexico…
Books Better with age:
five new books devoted to
British octogenarian sculptor Anthony Caro…
Get your free copy
from Stand Z13
On our website
in Space and a Considerable
Extension in Time (Prototype
for a Fendi Museum, Milan),
2010. The piece consisted of a
huge scaffolding “museum” for
the high-fashion Italian brand,
complete with sectioned rooms
and display objects bearing the
Fendi logo.
While some of his previous
works have been—at least in
part—interactive, the W Hotels
commission is the first of
Hudson’s projects that is both
fully functional and a work of
art. Although the work invites
discussion of whether it is art or
design, Hudson doesn’t want his
work to be categorised. “It’s
good for artists work to be
shown in Design Miami Basel.
Why not? I think working
across platforms gives a certain
freedom and it means that the
functionality of an object, and
its aesthetic and ideology, are all
focused,” he said.
William Oliver
J Graham Hudson’s installation is situated
next to the Design Miami Basel HSBC
Lounge on the mezzanine floor of Hall 5, and
is open to the public.
Knoebel creates windows for Reims Cathedral
Design dealer O’Brien is on the move
The German artist Imi Knoebel, best known for his colourful minimal works, is designing six stained glass windows for a €1.3m project in one of France’s greatest churches, Reims Cathedral. The
design, based on one of Knoebel’s 1970s’ paper collages, is being
realised by technicians at Duchemin and Simon Marq, who began
making the six lancet windows last month. They are due to be
installed in February 2011, near windows by Chagall. Knoebel, who
is represented by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (B17), has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, rather than by the
Church, because the medieval cathedral is both sacred and secular.
The mayor of Reims’ suggestion that local residents should have a
say in the project was politely declined, said a spokeswoman. J.P.
Liz O’Brien, who specialises in modern design and decorative arts,
has moved to a new gallery in the Interior Design building on East
61st Street. She has left her former space on Fifth Avenue, where she
had been based for ten years. “Both collectors and interior designers
tell me that the new gallery is far more convenient,” said O’Brien,
who has taken it over from the Historical Design gallery, which now
trades privately. O’Brien, whose inventory includes works by
Samuel Marx, Maison Jansen and Gabriella Crespi, said that 80% of
sales made on Fifth Avenue were to designers and architects: “Even
private clients like Valentino and Aerin Lauder use a designer, and
they are coming on their own to my new location,” she said. She is
also expanding her own line of home furnishings. B.S.M.
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Coming up in July
News Round-up of the
6th Berlin Biennale…
Country house treasures
going to auction… Iceland
to buy back art from its
beleaguered banks…
century had become a cult
figure by the 21st…
Museums Mixed
Interview The gambling
millionaire David Walsh is
building a museum in
Tasmania that will be
unlike anything you’ve ever
seen before; we take an
exclusive first look…
reactions to Hadid’s
MaXXi… Where the
Whitney goes next… Cuts
at the Hamburg
Kunsthalle… Neo Rauch
donates painting to his
hometown of Leipzig…
Opinion With government cuts looming, cultural historian Robert
Hewison offers a “rational” argument for arts
funding…
Features We commemorate the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death
by looking at how an artist
largely ignored in the 19th
Conservation Dürer
altarpiece restored after
1988 acid attack…
Books Getting to know
the Victorians through
their jewellery…
Art market An analysis
of the upcoming June
impressionist, modern and
contemporary sales in
London…
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12
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
What’s On Basel 2010
FAIRS
Art Basel
Halls 1 and 2, Messe Basel
Messeplatz
www.artbasel.com
15 June, VIP Preview 11am-9pm
16-20 June, 11am-7pm
Design Miami/Basel
Hall 5, Messe Basel
Messeplatz
www.designmiami.com
15-20 June, 11am-7pm
© 2010 Jon Kessler, Photo: Andrew Ohanesian
Liste—the Young Art Fair
Werkraum Warteck PP
Burgweg 15
www.liste.ch
15-19 June, 1pm-9pm
20 June, 1pm-7pm
Scope Basel
Kaserne Basel
Klybeckstr 1b
www.scope-art.com
15 June, VIP Preview 3pm-7pm
16-19 June, 11am-7pm
Volta6
Dreispitzhalle
Dreispitz Areal, Gate 13,
Helsinki Strasse 5,
Münchenstein
www.voltashow.com
16 June, VIP Preview 2pm-4pm
16 June, Public View 4pm-8pm
17-20 June, noon-8pm
NON-COMMERCIAL
SHOWS IN AND
AROUND BASEL
AARAU
Aargauer Kunsthaus
Aargauplatz
www.aargauerkunsthaus.ch
15-16 and 18-20 June, 10am-5pm
17 June 10am-8pm
Ugo Rondinone:
the Night of Lead
Until 1 August
Markus Uh
Until 1 August
Abstractions II:
Non-Representative Tendencies
in the Collection
Until 1 August
BASEL
Antikenmuseum Basel
St Alban-Graben 5
Today’s highlights
17/06/10
Art Basel Conversations:
Crossing the Atlantic
10am-11am
Hall 1, Auditorium, Messe
Basel, Messeplatz
Author and arts consultant
András Szántó moderates a
discussion on the similarities and differences between
the art world in Europe and
America. Speakers include
New York’s P.S.1 director
and MoMA curator Klaus
Biesenbach, Lynne Cooke,
Dia Foundation curator and
deputy director and curator
15-18 June, noon-6pm
19-20 June, 11am-5pm
Hassan Khan
Until 8 August
Plug.In
St. Alban-Rheinweg 64
www.iplugin.org
15-20 June, 10am-6pm
Eva&Franco Mattes aka
0100101110101101.org AD/HD
Until 19 September
Kunstmuseum St Gallen
Museumstrasse 32
www.kunstmuseumsg.ch
15 and 17-20 June, 10am-5pm
16 June, 10am-8pm
Press Art: Works from the
Annette and Peter Nobel
Collection
Until 20 June
Ambigu: Contemporary Art
between Abstraction and
Narration
Until 12 September
S AM Schweizerisches
Architekturmuseum
Steinenberg 7
www.sam-basel.org
15 and 17-20 June, 10am-8pm
16 June, 10am-10pm
Environments and Counter
Environments: Experimental
Media in ‘Italy: the New
Domestic Landscape’, MoMA
1972
Until 27 June
Hot Art Fair
Claramatte Parkhaus
Klingentalstrasse 25
www.hot-art-fair.com
15 June, 4pm-11pm
16-19 June, 1pm-9pm
20 June, 1pm-6pm
The Solo Project
St Jakobshalle
Brüglingerstrasse 19-21
www.the-solo-project.com
16 June, VIP Preview 10am-noon
16 June, Public View noon-8pm
17-19 June, 10am-7pm
20 June, 10am-5pm
Robot Dreams
Until 9 September
Tinguely for Karola
Until 20 June
Robot Dreams
Museum Tinguely
Until 9 September, www.tinguely.ch
Taking its name from a short story by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, “Robot Dreams” focuses
on contemporary artists engaged in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. Over 1,000 sq. m
of gallery space will be devoted to works of art highlighting the lastest advances in research and
technology and the dark side of automation: the machine with a mind of its own. New York-based
mixed media artist Jon Kessler shows Kessler’s Circus, 2009 (above), an army field tent filed with
technology; German video artist John Bock’s films combine literature and automata; and Niki
Passath investigates robots ability to react to people. Also included are works by older artists that
have inspired the current generation: Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Richard Kriesche and
Nam June Paik. The exhibition has been curated in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Graz.
www.antikenmuseumbasel.ch
15-20 June, 10am-5pm
Hermes versus SMS:
Communication in Antiquity
Until 15 August
Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101
www.beyeler.com
15-20 June, 9am-8pm
Basquiat
Until 5 September
Felix Gonzalez-Torres:
Specific Objects without
Specific Form
Until 29 August
Kunsthalle Basel
Steinenberg 7
www.kunsthallebasel.ch
15, 17-20 June, 10am-8pm
16 June, 10am-10pm
Strange Comfort (Afforded
by the Profession)
Until 22 August
at Madrid’s Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofi?
a
and Stedelijk Museum director Ann Goldstein.
GlassLab: Design
Performances
Wendell Castle, 2pm3.30pm; David Wiseman,
4pm-5.30pm; Tomás
Libertiny, 6pm-8pm; Vitra
Design Museum, CharlesEames-Strasse 1, Weil-amRhein
Design Talks: The Fresh
Approaches of the
Designers of the Future
5.50pm-6.30pm
Hall 5, Mezzanine Level,
Fabio Marco Pirovino:
Razzle Dazzle
Until 28 November
Moyra Davey:
Speaker Receiver
Until 17 June-29 August
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
15-20 June, 10am-6pm
Gabriel Orozco
Until 8 August
Rosemarie Trockel: Drawings,
Collages, and Book Drafts
Until 5 September
Matthäus Merian d. A.
(1593–1650)
Until 25 July
Kunstmuseum Basel Extension
Until 19 September
Schaulager
Ruchfeldstrasse 19
www.schaulager.org
15 and 17-20 June, 10am-6pm
16 June, noon-6pm
Matthew Barney: Prayer Sheet
with the Wound and the Nail
Until 3 October
BERN
Kunsthalle Bern
Helvetiaplatz 1
www.kunsthalle-bern.ch
15-18 June, 11am-6pm
19-20 June, 10am-6pm
Animism
Until 18 July
Kunstmuseum Bern
Hodlerstrasse 8-12
www.kunstmuseumbern.ch
15 June, 10am-9pm
16-20 June, 10am-5pm
Albert Anker
Until 5 September
Chantal Michel, Honey, Milk and
First Violets: a Confrontation
with Albert Anker
Until 5 September
Don’t Look Now
Until 20 March 2011
Museum für Gegenwartskunst
St. Alban-Rheinweg 60
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
15-20 June, 10am-6pm
Rodney Graham: Through
the Forest
Until 26 September
LUCERNE
Kunstmuseum Lucerne
Europaplatz 1
www.kunstmuseumluzern.ch
15-16 June, 10am-8pm
17-20 June, 10am-6pm
Olaf Breuning: Yes? No?
Until 1 August
Stefan à Wengen: the Mission
Until 1 August
Reference and Affinity: Art of
the 21st Century from the
Collection
Until 27 June
Kunstmuseum Basel
St. Alban-Graben 16
Museum Tinguely
Paul Sacher-Anlage 2
www.tinguely.ch
15-20 June, 11am-7pm
ST GALLEN
Kunsthalle St Gallen
Davidstrasse 40
www.k9000.ch
Messe Basel, Messeplatz
French curator and design
consultant Cédric Morisset
interviews the 2010 W
Hotels Designers of the
Future Awards winners Beta
Tank, Zigelbaum & Coelho,
Graham Hudson and
rAndom International.
temporary films such as
Ei Arakawa’s “Peaceboat
Revisiting MRTA” (2009)
and “Still Life with
Phrenology Head” (1979) by
Cerith Wyn Evans, to show
how the Japanese post-war
aesthetic has influenced
contemporary artists.
Art Film: Focus Japan
10pm-11pm, Stadtkino
Basel, Klostergasse 5
Marc Glöde shows two
Japanese films, “The Silver
Wheel” (1955) by Katsuhiro
Yamaguchi/Toshio
Matsumoto and Kiyoji
Otsuji’s “Kinecalligraph”
(1955/86), alongside con-
Art Salon
Hall 1, Auditorium, Messe
Basel, Messeplatz
2-2.30pm, Book Launch for
“Unleashed: Contemporary
Art from Turkey” edited by
Hossein Amirsadeghi and
Maryam Homayoun Eisler.
Turkish journalist Ipeknur
Cem Taha moderates a dis-
cussion on the contemporary art scene in Turkey
between Turkish collector
Saruhan Dogan, Kerimcan
Güleryüz from Istanbul’s Xist Gallery and Istanbulbased artist Erinç Seymen.
4pm-4.30pm, Frankly
Speaking, the Serpentine
Gallery’s Hans Ulrich Obrist
speaks with Canvas magazine editor Myrna Ayad
about Middle Eastern art.
5pm-5.30pm, South Africa:
New Art and New Markets,
a talk with Liza Essers,
director of Johannesburg’s
Goodman Gallery, art collective Rosenclaire and
journalist Camilla Péus.
Kunsthaus Baselland
St Jakob-Strasse 170
www.kunsthausbaselland.ch
15-16 and 18 June, 11am-6pm
17 June, 11am-8.30pm
19-20 June, 11am-5pm
Leopold Kessler: VoksShoeshine Machine
Until 4 July
Keren Cytter: Repulsion
Until 4 July
Agnieszka Brzezanska
Until 4 July
Karin Suter: Dwelling on Matter
Until 4 July
WINTERTHUR
Kunstmuseum Winterthur
Museumstrasse 52
www.kmw.ch
15 June, noon-8pm
16-20 June, noon-5pm
Rita McBride: Previously
Until 5 September
WEIL-AM-RHEIN
Vitra Design Museum
Charles-Eames-Strasse 1
www.design-museum.de
15-16 June, 10am-6pm
17-20 June, 9am-9pm
The Essence of Things: Design
and the Art of Reduction
Until 19 September
ZUG
Kunsthaus Zug
Dorfstrasse 27
www.kunsthauszug.ch
15-18 June, noon-6pm
19-20 June, 10am-5pm
Ilya Kabakov: Orbis Pictus
Until 20 June
ZÜRICH
Haus Konstruktiv
Selnaustrasse 25
www.hauskonstruktiv.ch
15 and 17-18 June, noon-6pm
16 June, noon-8pm
19-20 June, 11am-6pm
Ryan Gander: Zürich Art Prize
Until 8 August
Franz Mon
Until 8 August
Kunsthalle Zürich
Limmatstrasse 270
www.kunsthallezurich.ch
15-16 and 18 June, noon-6pm
17 June, noon-8pm
19-20 June, 11am-5pm
Rosemarie Trockel
Until 15 August
Kunsthaus Zürich
Heimplatz 1
www.kunsthaus.ch
15 and 19-20 June, 1pm-6pm
16-18 June, 10am-8pm
Adrian Paci
Until 22 August
Thomas Struth
Until 12 September
6pm-6.30pm, Book Launch
for “Creamier: Contemporary Art in Culture” by
Zolghadr Tirdad, Chus
Martinez and Catherine
Wood with a discussion
between Spartacus
Chetwynd, chief curator
and deputy director of exhibitions at the Hammer
Museum in Los Angeles
Douglas Fogle and Phaidon
Press editor Craig Garrett.
Art Club
11pm-3am
Campari Bar, Kunsthalle
Basel, Steinenberg 7
Concerts and DJ
performances
Gc\Xj\m`j`kljXk8ik9Xj\c#9ffk_<(Ale\(-Æ)'
18 East Seventy Ninth Street, New York, New York 10075, 212 734-6300, www.acquavellagalleries.com
Alberto Giacometti, Le Vide-Poches, 1930–31
Plaster, 6¾ x 115/8 x 7 7⁄8 inches (17 x 30 x 20 cm)
The Collection
18 works of contemporary art
Galerie Marc de Puechredon
E-halle
11:00 am - 07:00 pm / June 17 - 20, 2010
Erlenmattstrasse 7-11, CH-4058, Basel
AMANDA ROSS-HO • ANNE HARDY
CLAIRE HEALY & SEAN CORDEIRO
DANWEN XING • ELLIOTT HUNDLEY
FEFE TALAVERA • FRANCESCA GABBIANI
FRANCESCO CUOMO • GULLAUME LEBLON
JONATHAN JONES • MODOU DIENG
MARCELLA VANZO • MUSTAFA HULUSI
SEHER SHAH • THUKRAL & TAGRA
TJORG DOUGLAS BEER • WILFRID ALMENDRA
Louise Bourgeois 1911–2010
5`OaaW\U Chen Yung-Hsien
JULY 24 2010 >/@/27A=
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL WATERMILL SUMMER BENEFIT
THE WATERMILL CENTER
benefit@watermillcenter.org & watermillcenter.org/benefit
03<347B/C1B7=<
AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
MARINA ABRAMOVIC, DAVID ADAMO, MONICA BONVICINI, CAROL BOVE
FRANCESCO CLEMENTE, MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN, ROSSON CROW
SHEPARD FAIREY, PIERRE HUYGHE, JOAN JONAS, ANISH KAPOOR
ANSELM KIEFER, MARILYN MINTER, YOUSSEF NABIL, SHIRIN NESHAT
OTTO PIENE, LOU REED, PIPILOTTI RIST, TARYN SIMON, ROBERT WILSON AND MORE.
auction@watermillcenter.org & watermillcenter.org/auction
Cheim & Read
15
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 17 JUNE 2010
ART BASEL DAILY EDITION
Contributors:
Georgina Adam is The Art
Newspaper’s editor at large. She is
also art market correspondent for
the Financial Times
The last word…
Lamé a go-go
ramshackle rickshaws were
told by the pedal-pusher which
watering holes local legend
Roger Federer likes to let his
pony-tail down at.
Charlotte Burns is The Art
Newspaper’s assistant editor (art
market). She previously worked for
Anthony d’Offay, Hauser & Wirth
and Bolton & Quinn
Katherine Hardy is The Art
Newspaper’s photographer. She
studied at the Royal College of Art
in London and has had a number of
solo shows
Gareth Harris is The Art
Newspaper’s editor at large. He
also writes for the Financial Times
and the Independent
Lindsay Pollock is a New Yorkbased writer who has been covering
the art market since 2000. Besides
The Art Newspaper, she writes
regularly for Bloomberg News
Cristina Ruiz is a former editor of
The Art Newspaper and is an arts
correspondent for The Sunday
Times
Anny Shaw is a freelance
journalist based in London. She
was a staff writer at Art World
magazine
Jean Wainwright is the presenter
of The Art Newspaper TV. An art
critic and art historian, she has
published extensively as well as
appearing on television and radio
Ossian Ward is the visual arts
editor of Time Out London and is a
former editor of Art Review
Editorial and production:
Carry on cruising
Temptations abound at the
Fondation Beyeler’s Felix
Gonzalez-Torres retrospective,
“Specific Objects Without
Specific Forms”(until 29
August). While piles of
wrapped candies will appeal to
sweet-toothed visitors, those
more thrilled by the pleasures
of the flesh should look out for
a buff-bodied dancer—dressed
only in sneakers and silver
lamé shorts—who comes on to
a small platform to strut his
funky stuff for five minutes
each day. Gallery director Sam
Keller is particularly proud of
the positioning of the 1991
piece, Untitled (Go-Go
Dancing Platform): “He has
the body of an Adonis, so the
women love it. But we put him
in the gallery with all the nude
Picasso women because usually
everyone is looking longingly
at them, so it’s about time that
they got a beautiful view.”
Catch him if you can.
C’est charmant, non?
Deep throat
Artist Rob Pruitt is one person not suffering from fair-fatigue.
The happy punter, on his third visit to an art fair in 20 years,
said: “It’s like a reunion! Sadie Coles’s stand (H1) was like
being in a room of my friends.” The artist was also pleased
with his self-portraits at Gavin Brown’s stand (N6): “Look at
the one of me with a 12-inch plastic dildo in my mouth!”
They are just like
“
any other loved-up
couple looking for
furniture for their
home
”
Dealer overheard at Design
Miami Basel, talking about
Dasha Zhukova and Roman
Abramovich, who were
browsing the one-off pieces
on display
Editor: Jane Morris
Deputy editor: Javier Pes
Assistant editor: Emily Sharpe
Copy editors: James Hobbs,
Simon Stephens
Designer: Emma Goodman
Editorial researcher/picture editor:
William Oliver
Contributors: Robert Bound, Alex Coles,
Brook Mason, Iain Millar, András Szántó,
Linda Yablonsky
Editorial assitance: Katharine Albritton,
Rob Curran
Group editorial director:
Anna Somers Cocks
Managing director: James Knox
Associate publisher: Patrick Kelly
Advertising sales UK:
Ben Tomlinson, Louise Hamlin
Advertising sales US: Caitlin Miller
Advertising executives: Julia
Michalska, Justin Kouri
Push the button
tunic and sporting her
trademark two-tone hair, paid
homage to her dealer, the
cheeky cinéaste got fresh with
other gallerists: “It is
wonderful to be among you,
collectors, curators
and…snake-oil salesmen.”
Tough questions
Legendary LA artist Paul
McCarthy was introduced by
curator Massimiliano Gioni at
the Art Basel Conversations
yesterday with the question
whether, beneath his “crazy
expressionist” reputation, he is
really an incredibly erudite,
intelligent and thoughtprovoking artist? “Umm,
well… ah… yeah,” came the
gravely voiced reply.
Game, set and...
Veteran film director and
grande dame of the French
New Wave, Agnès Varda, was
on fine form at a dinner thrown
in her honour by the Nathalie
Obadia gallery (H7). While
Varda, resplendent in a silk
If the raucous after-party to the
dinner hosted by Design Miami
Basel’s director Ambra Medda
and gallerist Emmanuel
Perrotin almost got out of
hand—revellers threatened to
break the flimsy floor of
floating river disco Das
Schiff—the actual repast was
no less throbbing. On board
was a real pro—sex-toy
saleswoman Tatjana Sprick
(real name), who was most
forthcoming about styles,
colours and, yes, design.
Those sick of World Cup
football fever and pining for
tennis at Wimbledon missed a
trick this week. VIPs ferried
from the Schaulager to the
nearby Volta fair on a fleet of
An interactive treat on Martin
Klosterfelde’s (J11) stand for
anyone with a God complex
keen to try their hand at
dystopic town planning. An
architectural model of a
German town is fitted with
push buttons that allow visitors
to create mayhem by turning a
serene street scene into a
calamitous car crash, or a
sleepy shopping precinct into a
toxic road spill. Two security
men took a keen interest in the
pile-up on main strasse.
Touchy feely
There were gasps on the
Messeplatz as a shadowy figure
took a broom to Heimo
Zobernig’s imposing Black
Cube, 2010. “It’s being
Mea culpa
It was indeed a long night
in TAN’s editing office on
Tuesday, when we dropped
a few clangers, for which
we apologise. The errors
have been corrected online,
but for the record:
Left: This is what Hauser &
Wirth’s stand looks like
(B19). Right: And this is
Sprüth Magers’ (B12). We
mixed them up (p7).
Left: Luc Tuymans at Zeno
X (M7) Dalida (detail), 2010,
sold for €600,000. Right:
Luc Tuymans at David
Zwirner (E10) The Stage,
2010, sold for $760,000. We
got this wrong, too (p1).
At Design Miami Basel,
Nacho Carbonell's Bush of
Iron, 2010, is at Galleria
Rossana Orlandi (G04) not
Galleria Rossella
Colombari (G26, p2).
defaced!” cried one onlooker.
But there was relief all round
when the mysterious interloper
turned out to be a technician
trying to get rid of the
rainwater. Passers-by haven’t
been much more respectful—
several have rapped their
knuckles on Ai Weiwei’s blueand-white porcelain work,
Field, 2010, despite the
looming “Do Not Touch” signs.
Published by Umberto Allemandi & Co.
Publishing Ltd
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All rights reserved. No part of this
newspaper may be reproduced without
written consent of copyright proprietor. The
Art Newspaper is not responsible for
statements expressed in the signed articles
and interviews. While every care is taken
by the publishers, the contents of
advertisements are the responsibility of the
individual advertisers
Confessions of an art dealer
Borkur Arnarson,
the director of i8
Gallery, Reykjavik
(K12)
My biggest mistake...
was agreeing to do this.
My secret passion...
is not a secret (stand K12).
The museum I’d like to lead...
no thanks, not today.
The artist I should have
signed...
The Rolling Stones.
Things that keep me awake at
3am...
Fondation Beyeler F1, Hall 2.0
www.fondationbeyeler.ch/acanthes
www.nationalesuisse.ch/artas
I always sleep like a baby at
3am.
I last cooked for...
Lawrence and Alice Weiner.
I should have been...
an astronaut.
I enjoy the company of...
humans.
Dealers are misunderstood
because...
is it because what they deal in
doesn’t have a barcode?
Fairs are important...
for us they are very important
—is this where I mention that
the gallery is located at K12?
Small talk is...
the most painful.
A
recurring
nightmare
involves...
small talk in a dream within a
dream, within a dream.
I was happiest when...
I finished installing the last
show, the one before that, etc.
My greatest achievement is...
yet to come.
The most under-rated art
movement is....
Súm [a 1970s, Iceland-based
art movement].
The next big thing...
is going to be the two artists
that I am showing at Basel.
I wish I had met...
you.
Travel broadens the mind...
Interview by
yes, it does...
Gareth Harris
The Gulf rather than Europe
(or vice versa) because...
I have yet to visit the Gulf.
Life’s too short to...
read this nonsense.
My favourite person in
the art world is...
an elderly gentleman
that I spend an hour on
the phone with every
day—he is not a
Borkur
client.
Arnarso
n
My
Art
Basel
dream is to.....
have no works of art
to ship back.
Art awakens new ways of seeing the world. At UBS, we are proud to be in our
17th year as the main sponsor of Art Basel, the world’s leading international
art show. Sharing new perspectives with people is one of the purposes of art.
We believe in making that possible through the sponsorship of important events.
www.ubs.com/sponsorship
© UBS 2010. All rights reserved. Quote: The purpose of art is to make visible the invisible. Artist: Franco Fontana. Some of his works are represented in The UBS Art Collection.