art basel 2008, issue 4

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ART BASEL WEEKEND EDITION 6-8 JUNE 2008
Market keeps moving,
but the brakes start to go on
Good deals, but buyers take longer to make up their minds
Dealers played Sudoku, lounged on
designer chairs and grazed on sushi
yesterday afternoon in Art Basel’s
vast convention hall. As usual, by
day three, many big collectors had
come and gone. Across the fair
dealers agreed that sales at the 39th
Art Basel were strong but noticeably slower than in recent years.
“It’s not going gangbusters, but
it feels solid and grounded,” said
dealer Marianne Boesky (2.1/V3).
Fair organisers declared the week a
success, and given the challenges—competition from auction
houses, the weak dollar and the
west’s economic downturn—they
were probably right. “A lot of dealers are coming up to me with happy
faces,” said Art Basel co-director
Marc Spiegler.
Despite the presence of ultra-rich
and acquisitive collectors like
Roman Abramovich and Anita
Zabludowicz—and 8,000 others on
the opening day according to fair
organisers—a frazzled economy
and boom-market pricing transformed some of last year’s buyers
into this year’s browsers.
Much of the slow-up was blamed
on Americans who opted to stay
home. San Francisco dealer John
Berggruen (2.0/J3), who usually
sells exclusively to US collectors,
said this year all his buyers were
Europeans. “Normally in the first
half hour of the fair, I sell 80% of
the booth to Americans,” said
dealer Per Skarstedt (2.0/C2). “This
Sold for $1.3m, after five visits: Martin Kippenberger, Untitled, 1993
year I had to work.” Deals included
a $1.3m Martin Kippenberger
painting, Untitled, 1993, sold to an
American buyer, but the transaction
took time. The collector came back
to the stand five times before
sealing the deal. On the first floor,
Acquavella (2.0/R1) sold two
Lucian Freud portraits ($12m and
$1.8m)—but overall dealers found
buyers more picky than usual.
“There’s less urgency,” said Josh
Baer, a private dealer who publishes
the Baer Faxt, an art market report.
“If last year they sold nine things in
the first two hours, now [it’s] six
things in the first two days.”
European dealers noticed that the
weak dollar presents opportunities
for those with strong euros. “You
talk about a nice piece with an
American and they say ‘It’s too expensive!’ and you say ‘But I
haven’t told you the price yet’,”
said Gerd Harry Lybke of Eigen +
Art (2.1/Q3). His priciest work,
Neo Rauch’s House, 1995, sold for
€800,000 to a German collector.
Buyers keen to make a multiple choice
Despite patchy sales at some of the
bigger galleries, print dealers—
considered the poor relations at
some fairs—reported brisk trade at
Art Basel this week, with several
stepping off their traditional turf of
one-dimensional prints to net some
rich gains for editioned sculptures
and installations.
“My expectations were blown
away,” New York print dealer Carolina Nitsch (2.1/C8) told The Art
Newspaper, citing major sculptures
sold within an hour of opening on
Tuesday. She sold an untitled set of
three figures from Richard
Dupont’s series “Terminal Stage”
(2008) for a six-figure sum to the
Flag Art Foundation, a new contemporary art space in Manhattan.
“There’s more interest in sculpture
compared with last year,” Ms
Nitsch said.
“Across our stand, there’s not
much we haven’t sold something
of,” said Neil Warren of Alan
Cristea (2.1/L1). The gallery sold
one of three editions of Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell’s 2008 neon
light installation Bozar: Musac (A
Muse Um) for €19,500 and several
of Rachel Whiteread’s two new sets
of modelled cutlery and teacups
(priced €13,000 and €16,500).
José Aloy, director of the Polígrafa print gallery from Barcelona,
had made a calculated move to
branch out into three-dimensional
works. “The public is looking for
something not so flat,” he said.
Pace Prints
sold one of five
editions of Ryan
McGinness’ Rainbow McTwist,
(pictured),
a colourful fan
of
painted
skateboards,
for $60,000,
director Kristin
Hemming said.
Several print
sellers reported a
surge in attention
from Korean and Indian
buyers, while most
reported a decline in attention from US buyers.
Roland Lloyd Parry
Across the fair, the hot names
still sold first and fast. Milan’s Galleria Massimo De Carlo (2.1/T4)
sold Rudolf Stingel’s Baroque inspired mural-sized plaster wall
piece for $1m to a European collector. London’s Lisson Gallery
(2.1/J1) sold Anish Kapoor’s Two
Holes, a concave white fibreglass
installation, for $900,000 but didn’t
sell to Brad Pitt either of the
$50,000 Peter Joseph grey canvases
the movie star had admired.
“Some of the prices are aggressive, but the market is aggressive,”
said New York-based art consultant
Sandy Heller. On the weak dollar,
he suggests a stiff upper lip: “We
have to deal with it, just like the
high price of gas.”
There was, however, a sense that
price tags might soon be more flexible. New York art adviser Wendy
Cromwell said she plans to wait until
after the fair has closed to negotiate
some big ticket purchases when sellers may be ready to bargain.
Meanwhile, like the rest of the
dealers, collectors and museums,
fair organisers are starting to get
ready for life after Art Basel.
“Sleep is not as necessary as I had
thought,” said fair co-director Marc
Spiegler, adding that this week he
had discovered “how far you can
go on adrenaline.” Next week, he
said, work begins on the next Art
Basel Miami Beach, now only six
months away.
Lindsay Pollock
Sold!
Big Buddha
snapped up
Takashi Murakami’s eight-ton,
platinum-leafed Oval Buddha,
2007, on view at Art Unlimited
(Blum & Poe, B3), has sold for
$8m to the New York-and
Paris-based art advisors
Giraud, Pissarro, Ségalot,
according to sources at the
fair. The firm has a number of
high-profile clients including
Christie’s owner François
Pinault. Contacted by The Art
Newspaper, Mr Ségalot refused
to comment. G.A.
J (Art Unlimited report, see p4)
Abramovich buys
Giacometti statue
The Russian billionaire
Roman Abramovich has
concluded the purchase of
Giacometti’s elongated
Femme de Venise I,
1956, which had
caught his eye during a
visit to the Krugier
stand (2.0/B4) on the
preview day. Mr
Abramovich returned
to the fair the following
day and now the $14m
statue has been sold,
according to market
sources. Asked whether
Mr Abramovich was
the successful buyer,
gallery staff would only
give a
terse “no
comment”.
G.A.
CONTEMPO RARY ART
AUCTIONS
29 & 30 JUNE
2008
LONDON
+44 20 7318 4010 www.phillipsdepury.com
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 6-8 JUNE 2008
2
Diary
Sam Keller,
the Great Soprendo
The artist as shaman is an ancient
tradition that is alive and well in
Art Basel. It won’t be too long
before we see Art-Cadabra,
perhaps. Ever the early adopter,
Sam Keller received his first lesson
in magic today at the Fondation
Beyeler stand (2.0/M4), where
artist Philippe Parreno played grand
master, teaching Keller to inscribe a
magically charged symbol onto the
artist’s glow-in-the-dark screen
prints. These were then distributed
to the public as limited edition
“spells”. Uri Geller watch out.
Penalty box
Is it an installation? Or is it a
container fair? Turns out it’s
another example of life imitating
art and, despite appearances, these
elegantly minimal vessels have a
more ominously functional
purpose—they have been installed
in Zurich as the chicest of
temporary cells in which to
incarcerate any disruptive
elements during the Euro 2008
football championships.
chunks of potato are flying across
the floor of Niels Borch Jensen
Gallery’s stand (2.1/L5), as
visitors play an “anti-piracy”
game. In the installation by the
Danish artists’ group Superflex,
one player sends a potato,
representing “bootleg material”,
down a plastic tube—“the
market”. An opponent then tries to
splat the emerging spud with a
mallet. “You get one point for
hitting it,” said Isabelle Gräfin Du
Moulin of the gallery. “If you
miss, the pirate wins five points.”
As a sale strategy it was a smash
hit, with collectors snapping up
There literally was dancing in the aisle by the
end of what even the most hard-boiled
Patti Smith fans agreed was a truly extraordinary concert by this iconic figure in
the soaring Gothic interior of
Basel’s historic Elisabethenkirche. As well as performing
classic songs from her own
repertoire including “Gloria”
and “Power to the People”, she
also performed tributes to the
recently deceased Robert
Rauschenberg and Bo Diddley
as well as a special song for her
late husband, Fred (Sonic)
Smith. Other notable moments
were an acoustic version of
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” and
several good natured barbs
against the commercial context
of the fair. She even managed to
get the somewhat conservative
audience to punch their fists in
support of Barack Obama,
though some remained pokerfaced and static.
Photo: Katherine Hardy
From Lhasa with love
Take your back-row seat
Sometimes the only way to escape
from prying eyes is to take refuge
in the world of art. Reports have
reached The Art Newspaper of
considerable canoodlings among
the recumbent viewers of Pipilotti
Rist’s dreamy, trippy film A Liberty
Statue for Löndön in Art Unlimited
(D5). And there have also been
sightings of an amorous nature with
couples noisily pleasuring each
other in the cacophonous gloom of
Johan Grimonprez’s video boudoir
nearby (G2). Over in the
Schaulager, security staff were less
than impressed by the trio of
collectors who decided to have a
most congenial meeting in the
seating area in the nooks and
crannies of Andrea Zittel’s AZ
Cellular Compartment Units No 1.
The fresh-faced Louise MacBain,
publishing magnate and global
commentator, has drawn admiring
looks as she strolls down the aisles
of Art Basel. Perhaps her
rejuvenated appearance has
something to do with a recent trip
to Tibet and its mountain air.
According to one of her regular
blogs in The Huffington Post, Ms
MacBain has been on a factfinding trip: “to discover for
myself what is meant by the term
‘Tibetan Culture’ and its current
welfare.” As “the first foreigner
allowed into the Tibet Autonomous
Region since the March 14th
riots,” Ms MacBain is now eager
to put the record straight about
Tibet today. Lhasa is a city that is,
“fully developed, no one is
starving, the new generation of
Tibetans is educated, and there is
abundant economic opportunity,”
she wrote. “More importantly, and
which contradicts the criticism of
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is
that there is a growing effort and
awareness to preserve, enhance
and promote Tibetan culture.”
As a leading campaigner for world
peace and understanding, Ms
MacBain therefore urges:
“Both the criticism of His Holiness
and the criticism of Western leaders
of China over Tibet must end”.
the three editions of Superflex’s
gravure set Free Beer. Bona fide
originals, not rip offs, of course.
A star is reborn
These days he’s best known as the
famously charming editor of Artnet
Magazine. But aficionados may
recall that Walter Robinson was
also one of the hottest young
painters of the early 1980s—he
was spinning his canvases well
before Damien Hirst. And now it
seems that Walter’s artistic star is
again in the ascendant with all of
his 80s paintings of clinching
couples and pouting starlets
marching off the walls of Metro
Pictures (2.1/G1) stand for
between $10,000-$20,000. At the
time of going to press there is only
one work left. We’ve heard on the
grapevine that Mr Robinson is
making a new body of work, but
apparently has no plans to jettison
his journalistic career. But he did
“Strange beauty
reveal to The Art Newspaper that
is always the most
everyone is being infinitely more
pleasant to him now that he is such
interesting kind
a creative hack.
of beauty”
Caught short at the fair
—Jeffrey Deitch,
overheard in his
booth (2.1/M5) using
his considerable
powers of persuasion
on a slightly sceptical
pair of collectors
Martin Creed is an artist whose
titles always tell it exactly like
it is, so there has been some
consternation among sharp-eyed
visitors to Gavin Brown’s stand
(2.1/2T) where, Work No 916:
9 Cardboard Boxes, seems to be
two short of a full set. When
questioned about the discrepancy,
the unflappable Gavin Brown
airily declared: “Maybe a couple
got lost on the way.”
For smash make mash
For artists seething at the
appropriation of their work,
therapy is on hand. Shredded
ART BASEL DAILY EDITION
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The Art Newspaper, Art Basel Daily Edition
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31 August
2008
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Mat Collishaw
Shooting Stars
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 6-8 JUNE 2008
4
McLaren’s world of “porn”
Size can deter buyers, but the publicity makes up for it
Malcolm McLaren, the former
manager of the Sex Pistols who
sold New York-style punk to the
world, has worked in many media
including music, fashion, design
and film production. In Basel this
week, McLaren is showing his latest piece, Shallow 1-21, 2007/08, a
feature-length video art work (86
min.) created for Art Basel Projects,
a new Art Basel initiative. Why that
title? “The artist Stefan Brüggemann was curating a show at I-20
in New York and had one word for
me—shallow,” says McLaren, a
past master at turning an insult to
his advantage. “A few short pieces
for that show seemed to work
miraculously well, which I’ve developed for Basel.”
The video piece, commissioned
by the then artistic director of Art
Basel, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz,
remixes clips from blue movies of
the 1960s and early 1970s set to
pop music. Subverting their
original point, McLaren has
sampled only the scenes immediately preceding any sex, creating a
collage of lust not penetration.
“Since I was an art student in the
1960s, I’ve been interested in the
foreplay in sex films, I’m not sure
why. I’m intrigued by the blandness, the stupidity and a kind of
innocence of these people who
couldn’t act yet would be paid to
have sex.” As sex films became
more hardcore in the 1970s, they
lost a lot of their charm, says
McLaren. “Somehow this was
allied to my feelings about a disappearing world of pop culture—the
images were how I imagined pop
music to look. The feeling was the
same as when I was 13—imagining
a world of sex you might imagine
or never possibly have, and
listening to pop music.”
McLaren has drawn on his
musical knowledge to create the
soundtrack of Shallow 1-21. “I had
produced some music in Paris which
were essentially cut-ups of pop
A 1960s railway carriage shipped
from China, its windows screening
1940s newsreel footage of war and
revolution, has been the star turn of
Art Unlimited for many visitors.
Staring into Amnesia, 2007, by Qiu
Anxiong (H6) may well have also
set a record for transport costs to
Art Basel. According to the
Beijing-based gallery, Boers-Li
(2.1/Q6), getting the 45-ton steel
carriage to the art fair cost almost
$400,000, just about its sales price.
The carriage was shipped to
Switzerland in a 44-day voyage
from Chenyang in northeast China
to Hamburg. It was loaded on a
truck for the final leg of the journey
accompanied all the way by a 17strong team from the Chenyang
Train Company, which included
welders, electricians and painters.
The team remain in Basel ready to
move the installation if it sells.
“The piece is reserved by a European institution,” said Robin
Peckham, communications director
for Boers-Li.
Art Unlimited features other
works presenting a logistical
challenge. Takashi Murakami’s
eight-ton Oval Buddha, 2007, (B3)
which towers over the conversations lounge, had to be flown to
Basel by a chartered plane from
Tokyo. The Los Angeles gallery
Photo: Katherine Hardy
Report
Art Unlimited
Going nowhere? Qiu Anxiong, Staring into Amnesia, 2007
Blum & Poe (2.1/H3) picked up the
six-figure bill. The aluminium and
platinum manga-inspired Buddha
was bought by the firm of art advisors Giraud, Pissarro and Ségalot
on the opening day.
While the Murakami found an
immediate buyer, many other
pieces in Art Unlimited remain unsold as we went to press. “By definition it is very difficult to sell there
because of the large scale of the
Exchange scheme for Emirati women artists
Sheikha Manal Al Maktoum, wife of Dubai’s minister for foreign affairs,
launched an exchange programme for female artists from the Emirates at Art
Basel yesterday. According to the programme’s director Nazneen Shafi, the
scheme is open to undergraduate students of fine art, visual communication
and design, and has been created to introduce them to contemporary and
historic art, via partnerships with international institutions. The first partner
in this pilot phase is Art Basel. “We have art schools, and we will soon have
major museums, so we want to build a bridge between the two,” says Ms
Shafi. Fourteen students aged 19 to 23 are currently in Basel, with a new intake expected every one to two years. “This is a long-term commitment,”
says general manager Muna Bin Kalli. “The programme will last several
years, as long as necessary. It is not just about supporting artists, but
developing the arts managers and curators of the future.” J.M.
Fairs multiply in Miami and the Middle East
Scope art fair is set to expand in Miami while also launching a fair in the
United Arab Emirates, The Art Newspaper has learned. “With the art economy more robust, there are more fiefdoms to set up fairs,” said Alexis
Hubshman, the fair director. The new Miami fair, Art Asia, which will be
devoted to Chinese contemporary art, will open December 3-7, 2008, to
coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach as well as Scope Miami. New Yorkbased Chinese contemporary art dealer Ethan Cohen will serve as the fair
director. He hopes to include 80 dealers. At the same time Scope Miami is
expanding in 2009 by 30 %, moving the fair to an artist-designed tent in the
Wynwood arts district. In addition, Mr Hubshman is planning to establish
a fair in Dubai. Scope Dubai is scheduled to be launched in March 2009. “I
may also do Abu Dhabi,” he said. B.S.M.
works,” says Daniel Templon
(2.0/A3). He has exhibited works
by Tunga, Frank Stella and Kader
Attia, in three previous editions of
Art Unlimited, which launched in
2000. But so far he has failed to
find a buyer at Basel.
Dealers this year spoke of “reserves” and “holds”, but as yet sales
of key pieces are unconfirmed.
Examples
include
Tom
Wesselmann’s scaled-up montage
of keys and rings, Still Life #61,
1976 (over $10m), and Richard
Avedon’s Andy Warhol and Members of the Factory, 1969 ($2.5m).
So far, unsold works include
Thomas
Hirschhorn’s
Hotel
Democracy, 2003 (€280,000), Anthony Caro’s Long Passage, 2007
($750,000), and Rodney Graham’s
Torqued Chandelier Release, 2004
(in the region of $500,000).
Galleries emphasise the advantages of being in Art Unlimited,
however. “It’s a big investment but
exposure at Basel means that the top
curators, collectors and writers see
the work,” said Emilio Steinberger
of Yvon Lambert (2.1/R3), who is
exhibiting the Wesselmann montage.
“Showing in Art Unlimited is a
great way of promoting the artist
and gains greater exposure for the
gallery as well,” agreed Nathalie
Obadia (2.1/Q7), whose Mughalesque-shaped installation In an
Unnatural Storm…, 2008, by Rina
Banerjee (H7), priced at $170,000,
was reserved on the first day by a
“major European foundation” and
the sale was concluded the next day.
Georgina Adam and
Brook S. Mason
Photo: Reuters
Unlimited? Not in sales
music, William Burroughs-style,
which seemed to absolutely fit the
images,” he says. So one
sequence features a couple watching
another having sex to an accompaniment of a cut-up of the Zombies’
“She’s Not There” and Bessie Smith
singing “St Louis Blues”. Another
puts Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear
Us Apart” and Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” to a repeated slow motion
shot of a semi-nude woman
descending a staircase.
In another sequence there are
frames of credits only. “I was fascinated by the way the films, which
hadn’t been [well] preserved, were
corrupted. The film itself is
disintegrating, throbbing like a mad
city,” he says. The music for that
piece features William Burroughs
talking about drugs, and the ill-fated
actor Jayne Mansfield talking about
fame. “She says she pinches herself
every day. She can’t believe she’s
famous and talks about her pink
Jaguar car.” The overall effect is
nostalgic, emotive and sometimes
humorous, he says.
“A lot of how it came together
was accident. But I lucked out.
There was a teacher at art school
who said we were all going to be
failures. But at least be a
magnificent, flamboyant failure.
Any fool can be a benign success,”
boasts McLaren.
Interview by Peter Culshaw
A still from Malcolm McLaren’s Shallow 1-21, 2007/08
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 6-8 JUNE 2008
7
Feminist art cracks the market’s glass ceiling
L
ast year’s US International
Association of Art Critics
award for the best monographic show was “My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor,
My Love” of black, feminist artist
Kara Walker at the Whitney
Museum in New York. This year,
“Wack! Art and the Feminist
Revolution” was heralded by the
Washington Post as a “landmark”.
That show opened at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles
in 2007, transferred to PS1 in New
York this spring and is now on its
way to the Vancouver Art Gallery (4
October-11 January 2009). The
Serpentine Gallery in London is
currently devoting a solo show to
veteran Viennese artist Maria
Lassnig, now nearly 90, while the
Centre
d’Art
Contemporain
Genève’s summer show is on Joan
Jonas (until 29 June). Meanwhile,
the Museu d’Art Contemporani de
Barcelona and the Museo Nacional
Reina Sofía in Madrid have teamed
up to organise the largest ever
retrospective of artist Nancy Spero
(until 31 August). Feminist art has
never been so popular among
museum curators.
Here in Basel, the Schaulager’s
annual exhibition, timed to coincide
with Art Basel, features work by two
women artists—Andrea Zittel and
Monika Sosnowska. Of these two,
Zittel in particular is known for
work that engages with women’s
domestic lives and feminist issues.
“It is an issue I feel very conflicted
about,” Zittel says. “We were the
generation on [from the pioneering
activist artists of the 1960s and
1970s], who went to school in the
1980s. The general attitude was that,
because of the progress feminism
made, we didn’t think things were
that difficult for women artists, we
could make the same work as men.”
Yet feminist artists are those she
identifies with: Louise Bourgeois,
Anni Albers, Natalia Goncharova.
“I’m really interested in periods
when it is not possible to change
external situations, so the form of
the work itself has to change; like
Anni Albers, who wasn’t able to
paint so she joined the weaving
workshop at the Bauhaus instead,”
says Zittel.
But although many artists,
Left: Louise Bourgeois, The
Birth, 2007; Above: Andrea
Zittel, sfnwvlei (Something from
Nothing with Very Little Effort
Involved) Note #3, 2002
curators and academics are
convinced of the value of art that
responds to feminist issues, does
the market agree? Hans-Ulrich
Obrist, who has just produced a
book with Nancy Spero, says:
“One thing I find stunning is the
extent to which the art market is
very male…There are very few
female artists at auction.”
In Art Basel, 39 of the 110 artists
in the “Wack!” show (several of
whom, it should be noted, are
uncomfortable with the “feminist”
label) are represented, although
perhaps some artists won’t entirely
welcome the market attention.
Many artists of this era, both male
and female, set out to make works
that question the commodity of art,
or actively resist it.
Anthony Reynolds (2.1/C3) has
brought work by female activist
Sturtevant and Nancy Spero,
including the latter’s large-scale
drawing Bodycount, 1974, and
silkscreen Who Needs It… Hanging
II, 1994. “These are both artists
who have never been neglected.
There have always been die-hard
loyalists and different periods of
greater recognition, but the interest
in both has broadened massively
over the past few years.” He says
that works by Sturtevant used to
feminist tag is irrelevant. “The
whole feminist issue for me is a
complete red-herring,” he says. “I
don’t specialise in women artists, I
specialise in good ones.”
At Sean Kelly gallery (2.1/T5),
director Denis Gardarin says that
the artists he represents—Marina
Abramovic and Rebecca Horn—
have always attracted a dedicated
following. “I haven’t noticed a
particular change,” he says. Kelly is
showing
works
including
Abramovic’s Carrying the Skeleton,
2008 (€75,000) and Rebecca
Horn’s large drawing In Den Wind
Geschrieben, 2005, €150,000.
However, his colleague Maureen
Bray does note that more people
“Female artists as a whole are
shockingly undervalued by the market”
–Iwan Wirth, dealer
sell for around $35,000 a few years
ago, but last month a piece, Warhol
Marilyn, 1966, sold at Christie’s,
New York for $409,000, five times
its upper estimate. “Prices for
Nancy Spero’s work have also
risen dramatically, particularly for
key works. They have gone stratospheric.” However, he feels the
seem to responding to these types of
work. “I think there is a broader
range of interest, among museums
and private collectors,” she says.
John Cheim of Cheim & Read
(2.0/B1), who represents Lynda
Benglis, Jenny Holzer and other
artists creating political and
socially-engaged work, says:
“Awareness of feminist art has
been building since the 1970s but
in the past five to ten years interest
in the market has bloomed.” He has
sold a Louise Bourgeois composite
watercolour, The Birth, 2007, for
$450,000 to Swiss collector Ursula
Hauser. He has also brought classic
works by Lynda Benglis from the
1970s, and sold Jenny Holzer’s
True Ribs, 2008, for $350,000 to a
US collector.
“Things are changing for the
better,” says Iwan Wirth, of Hauser
& Wirth (2.0/D1), and credits
museums for lifting artists’ profiles.
“The Moderna Museet in Stockholm managed to get government
funding to increase the women
artists in their collection and have
been able to buy a major Bourgeois
piece and some Lee Lozano
works.” At Basel the gallery is
showing works by Isa Genzken
($35,000-$250,000 for wall works),
Roni Horn and Maria Lassnig.
But he acknowledges that there is
still some way to go. “Female artists
as a whole are shockingly
undervalued by the market,” says
Mr Wirth. “In May, Lucian Freud
became the priciest living artist at
$33.6m and Louise Bourgeois
became the priciest living female
artist at €2.9m [$4.6m—at
Christie’s, Paris, on 27 May]. It is
not my mission, but it occurred to
me again, on the back of these
records, how far female artists have
to go.”
Louisa Buck, Melanie Gerlis
and Mark Clintberg
RAVINDER REDDY
At The Economist Plaza
July 25 - October 4, 2008
25 St. James’s Street, London SW1H 1HG
In association with the Contemporary Art Society
At Grosvenor Vadehra
July 25 - August 15, 2008
21 Ryder Street, London SW1Y 6PX
Tel +44 (0)20 7484 7979, Fax +44 (0)20 7484 7980
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Wolfsberg: Enhancing the dialogue
between the arts and business
At Wolfsberg, the arts play an important role in different programs. The common focus is the relationship between the
arts and business. An interest in the dynamics between the arts and business informs the following programs/formats:
The Chinese Artist Ai Wei Wei, fighting against existential boredom; Victoria Yung-Chih Lu, Director, Moon River Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing presented herself as trickster figure between East and West; Uli
Sigg continues to build structures for the contemporary art scene in China, most recently with his Chinese Art Criticism Award
UBS Arts Forum
These two-day seminars started at
Wolfsberg in 2002. They deal with
topics from a wide range of art,
culture
and
business.
Presentations from well-known
experts are combined with
workshops and discussions in small
groups. So far we have discussed
topics such as “Collecting Art. The
Art
of
Collecting”(held
at
Wolfsberg, Berne, New York, Sept.
08 in Chicago), “Shooting Stars: A
Career in Art”, “Contemporary
Photography”,
“Quality
in
Architecture” or “Changing China:
New
Perspectives
on
Contemporary Art”. Speakers
included: Ai Wei Wei, Katharina
Grosse, Erwin Wurm, Udo
Kittelmann, Elger Esser, Uli Sigg,
Wolfgang Ullrich, David Adjaye and
Ole Scheeren. The UBS Arts
Forum also travels to other venues
and cities. On May 5 and 6th 2008 it
was held for the second time in
New York. The reception at the
Guggenheim Museum with the Cai
Guo-Quiang survey proved an
excellent start for the discussions
on the next day. David Elliott
(founding director of the Mori Art
Museum, Tokyo) praised impurity
in contemporary art. His intriguing
insights
were
followed
by
fascinating presentations of Uli Sigg
and Victoria Lu. The panel
discussion focused on the question
of a new Panasian aesthetic. 100
invited collectors enjoyed dynamic
and controversial discussion. Asia
will remain the focus of the UBS
Arts Forum also in November 08 to
take place at Wolfsberg when we
will discuss contemporary Indian
Art with experts like Ranjit
Hoskoté, Nitin Bhayana and Elaine
W. Ng.
In 2009 the UBS Arts Forum will
expand its activities to Great Britain,
Russia and Singapore.
Wolfsberg Script
Following the forum on collecting
art ("Horizonte des Sammelns"),
held at Wolfsberg in November
2006, the first Wolfsberg script was
published. Christina Weiss, the
former Minister of Culture and
Professor at the University of
Saarland, explores various issues
related to private collections.
Adrian Koerfer shares his
enthusiasm for contemporary art
and gives an insight into his
fascinating collection.
The second edition of the
Wolfsberg script will be published
in autumn 2008. It accompanies
Stephan Balkenhol's sculpture for
Wolfsberg "Turm". Jean-Christope
Ammann looks back at Balkenhol's
work since the 1970s, while Matthias
Winzen presents an interview with
the artists. Zsuzsanna Gahse, author
of many novels and essays, takes
"Turm" as point of departure for an
imaginative journey through the
woods.
Wolfsberg Exhibitions
Works of the German sculptor
Stephan Balkenhol, described by
Jean-Christoph
Ammann
as
“whood whisperer“, are to be seen
in the current Wolfsberg exhibition.
The exhibitions change every 3-4
months and offer the possibility to
experience art in a direct way. Other
artists shown include Sylvie Fleury,
Olaf Breuning or Daniele Buetti.
UBS Arts Insight
More about the make-up of cultural
institutions or selected private
collections can be learned in our
half-day programs, the UBS Arts
Insight.
UBS Art Education
Another program, the UBS Art
Education, presents an excellent
opportunity to learn about art
history or the latest trends in the
UBS Arts Forum: Fresh Perspectives on Art.
© UBS 2008. All rights reserved.
Wolfsberg is the UBS Leadership Campus. It plays an important role in nurturing the
corporate culture and communication of the UBS Group. Executive-level employees from all
Business Groups meet here for
events lasting several days to
discuss current strategic, leadership and management issues.
In addition, Wolfsberg
organises think tanks, forums
and events on business, politi-
arts and the art market on a more
introductory level.
UBS Study Tours
Last but not least our travel
programs, the UBS Study Tours,
provide insights into the latest
cal, economic and cultural
themes, some of which are
open to the general public.
Such events provide an exclusive forum for exchanging ideas
and experience as well as for
building one’s personal network
across all the usual boundaries.
The conference centre is also
available to external companies
and institutions for seminars
and workshops
cultural, economical and political
developments in the lesser
known regions of Europe.
www.wolfsberg.com
Next topic: “Surprising India”, Nov. 10 – 11th, 2008
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 6-8 JUNE 2008
9
Expert eye
Leading curators select work to look out for at Art Basel
Magda Kardasz
curator, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw
Mark Dion is known for working with museums (above,
Fieldwork 4, a Collaborative Project with the Natural
History Museum, London, 2007, Art Unlimited, Tanya
Bonakdar Gallery, G3). Somehow his approach is one I find very just;
his research process is made very clear through the work. It is neither
superficial nor rejects science, but draws attention to his serious methods
while being playful. In my recent curatorial work, I try to introduce
artists to people involved in other fields, sometimes activists. I am drawn
to the qualities of the amateur enthusiast.
Dion’s work is more complex, though, than a simple act of archaeology. Institutions sometimes get frozen in their own routines and this
work allows them to open up a little more. It can therefore work well on
an individual level for museum staff, collaborators and visitors.
There were a number
of outstanding works
in Art Unlimited. One
of my favourites was Damián
Ortega’s Nine Types of Terrain,
2007 (below, White Cube, C8).
Nine 16mm film loops show stones
toppling in sequence in different
domino-like arrangements across
quasi-industrial entropic landscapes (quarries, muddy roads etc.)
where time seems to stand still.
Inspired by different strategies of
attack outlined in “The Art of War”,
the sixth-century BC treatise by
Chinese military philosopher Sun
Tzu, Ortega’s art also nimbly conjures up the work of both Robert
Smithson and Richard Long, two
artists with very different approaches to referencing landscape.
Musical, playful, and visually elegant, it’s also a light-on-its-feet meditation on time and the different
ways that we perceive its unfolding.
All photos by Katherina Hardy
Ralph Rugoff, director,
Hayward Gallery, London
Chrissie Iles, curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
This is a very early example of Marcel Broodthaers’s dissection
of painting (above, Untitled, 1966-67, €300,000) at the outset of
Pop (Michael Werner, 2.0/G3). He takes a canvas and puts onto
it a Pop image of a woman’s face; then, on a shelf running along
the bottom edge of the canvas, he puts the same image in cloth, folded into a
jar. Broodthaers is at his most painterly here and having a rich conversation
about painting and photography. At around the same time, you’ve got Warhol
making a painting of a soup can. But in this piece, you’ve not only got a commercial image made into a painting, he’s also taking that image and freeing it
from its origins. He’s changing its status again by presenting it in a jar, almost
like a medical specimen. It’s an incredibly complicated and clever work.
Jens Hoffmann, director,
CCA
Wattis Institute
of Contemporary Arts,
San Francisco
I came across two connected pieces
that I enjoyed by the same artist:
Hans Schabus. The first, Der Ietze
Dreck, 2007 (Zero, 2.1/H8, €17,000)
is a pile of dirt, sawdust, bottle-caps,
and nails. This pile is all that is left
over from his old studio in Vienna
after a final sweep. The piece is like
a memorial to the concept of the
traditional artist studio.
The second work is a collection of
around 5,000 stamps that Schabus
has collected since he was a
teenager. Untitled, 2008 (below,
Engholm Engelhorn, 2.1/Q2,
€54,000) is displayed inside over
150 medium-sized frames. The
stamps, organised according to their
colour, are from all periods of the
20th century and several countries.
From afar, it becomes an abstract
piece that starts to talk about shape,
form and colour. Both are very personal works that present something
outdated and defunct.
Hans-Ulrich Obrist, co-director of exhibitions and programmes,
Serpentine Gallery, London
Shadow Play, 2002, by Hans-Peter Feldmann (Art Unlimited,
Galleria Massimo Minini, C7) is basically this amazing
assortment of found toys, fragments, and other elements that
are really ready-mades and very banal objects placed on turntables. They
throw these very large shadows into the room. This is a piece that works for
someone who is very familiar with Feldmann’s work but also for someone
who is seeing him for the first time. At a moment when all art has been
done in so many ways, Feldmann succeeds again in surprising us.
He is now in his early 60s and keeps reinventing himself, mistrusting all
comfort of style and any permanence of objects. He has not visited art fairs
in the past: Feldmann told me this is one of the first times he’s visited an
art fair, and this is the first ever installation he’s done at such an event.
The other piece is Flower Pot, 2008, at 303 Gallery (above, 2.1/G3,
€15,000). It is basically a piece of found flowers. As with his earlier work
where he is playing with photographs and books, there is something very
dry and also playful in this piece. For more than three decades, Feldmann
has been legitimising previously illegitimate art, as Pierre Bourdieu [the
late French philosopher] called it; he keeps removing fences between high
and low. All of this makes him one of the most influential artists in the art
world, an artist’s artist who is admired by Richard Prince, Fischli and Weiss
and many other seminal figures.
Fernand Léger. Paris – New York
1.6. – 7.9. 2008
VENICE – From Canaletto and Turner to Monet
28.9.2008 – 25.1. 2009
FONDATION BEYELER
Baselstrasse 101, CH-4125 Riehen/Basel
Daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., www.beyeler.com
Opening Hours during Art |39|Basel: June 4 – 8, 2008, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 6-8 JUNE 2008
10
Listings Basel
Fairs
Selected weekend events
Art Basel
Halls 1 and 2, Messe Basel
6-8 June, 11am-7pm
FRIDAY, 6 JUNE
Messeplatz 10
Art Basel remains the largest contemporary art fair with 300 dealers selling
work by 2,000 artists.
Bâlelatina Hot Art
Brasilea Kulturhaus
6-8 June, noon-9pm
Over 30 international galleries showing
artists with links to Latin American art.
Westquai 39, Dreilandereck
www.hot-art-fair.com
© Arario Gallery
+41 058 200 20 20
www.artbasel.com
Hyungkoo Lee, Anas Animatus
artists’ work”.
Liste 08
Werkraum Warteck PP
6-8 June, 1pm-9pm
Basel’s “Young Art Fair” promotes
emerging artists and young galleries.
Burgweg 15
+41 061 692 20 21
www.liste.ch
Print Basel
Halls of Volkshaus Restaurant
6-7 June, 10am-8pm; 8 June,
10am-6pm
This fair includes contemporary pieces
by artists such as Jonathan Borofsky
and Banksy.
Rebgasse 12
+41 061 311 44 70
www.printbasel.ch
Scope Basel
Scope Pavilion
6-7 June, 10am-8pm;
8 June, 10am-6pm
A contemporary fair making its second
appearance in Basel in a new pavilion.
Uferstrasse 80
+41 043 336 50 10
www.scope-art.com
The Solo Project
Voltahalle
6-7 June, 11am-8pm; 8 June,
11am-6pm
A new fair that seeks to “enhance the
contemporary art experience by presenting a more in depth view of each
Voltastrasse 27
www.the-solo-project.com
Volta 4
Ultra Brag
6-7 June, noon-8pm
Intended to “bridge the gap between
Basel’s pre-existing fairs”, Volta features work by emerging artists.
Südquaistrasse 55
+41 061 322 12 70
www.voltashow.com
Non-commercial
Fernand Léger: Paris,
New York and Sarah Morris
Fondation Beyeler
6-8 June, 9am-8pm
Baselstrasse 101
+ 41 061 645 97 00
www.beyeler.com
Andrea Zittel and Monika
Sosnowska 1:1
Schaulager
6-8 June, 10am-6pm
Ruchfeldstrasse 19
061 335 32 32
www.schaulager.org
Hyungkoo Lee: Animatus
Natural History Museum
6-8 June, 10am-5pm
Augustinergasse 2
+41 061 266 55 00
www.nmb.bs.ch
Art Lobby
Art Unlimited, Hall 1, Messe Basel
noon-1pm, Dollar Signs of the
Times: the Art Market and Art Writing,
discussion with Art +Auction magazine’s Sarah Douglas and Judd Tully.
1pm-2pm, Developing Local Art Institutions in a Global Context, discussion with Jérôme Sans, director of the
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in
Beijing, and Peter Doroshenko, president of Kiev’s Pinchuk Art Centre.
2pm-3pm, Artist Talk: How Contemporary Art Would Be without Video, a
debate amongst artists including Hans
Op de Beeck and Oleg Kulik.
3pm-4pm, Book Launch for Richard
Meier: Complete Works, 1963-2008
by critic Philip Jodidio (published by
Taschen). Meier will be in attendance.
4pm-5pm, Key Practical Issues to
Consider when Collecting Contemporary Art, panellists include Aris Title
Insurance CEO Lawrence Shindell and
art collections manager Freda Matassa.
5pm-6pm, The Schweizerische Kunstverein (SKV) and New Laws Governing Culture, a conversation with
SKV’s president Peter Studer, Claudia
Jolles, editor of Kunstbulletin, Zurich,
and Sonja Kuhn, president of the Visual Arts Association in Zurich.
Art Basel Conversations
Hall 1, Messe Basel
10am-11:30 am
Whitney curator Chrissie Iles moderRobert Delaunay, Soutine and
Modernism and Robert Therrien
Kunstmuseum Basel
6-8 June, 9am-6pm
St. Alban-Graben 16
+ 41 061 206 62 62
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
P.S. Pavel Schmidt and
Art Machines, Machine Art
Museum Tinguely
6-8 June, 11am-7pm
Paul Sacher-Anlage 2
ates a discussion focused on “Collecting, Protecting and New Media.”
Speakers include collector Pamela
Kramlich, Christoph Blase from the
ZKM Center for Art and Media in
Karlsruhe, and Pip Laurenson, head of
time-based media conservation at Tate
in London, amongst others.
Art Film
Stadtkino Basel,
8pm-10pm, Steinenberg 7
The Swiss premiere of Isaac Julien’s
film, Derek, about the late British artist
and director, Derek Jarman.
10pm, A viewing of Daft Punk’s
Electroma directed by Thomas
Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de HomemChristo of the French band Daft Punk.
Art Club
Campari Bar, Kunsthalle Basel
11pm-3am, Steinenberg 7
Music by DJ Oliver Stumm.
SATURDAY, 7 JUNE
Art Lobby
Art Unlimited, Hall 1, Messe Basel
noon-1pm, Artist Talk, with Cartier
Award winner, Wilfredo Prieto.
1pm-2pm, Chinese Contemporary
Art Scene: Shanghai vs. Beijing, a debate with curator Jo-Anne Birnie
Danzker, artist Shen Fan, curator
Zheng Shengtian and artist Liu Wei.
2pm-3pm, Artist Talk, a conversation between Bangalore-based artist
A. Balasubramaniam and HG Mas +41 061 681 93 20
www.tinguely.ch
Ahmet Ögüt and Aleana Egan
Kunsthalle Basel
6-8 June, 10am-8pm;
ters, editor of ArtAsiaPacific.
3pm-4pm, Artist Talk, a discussion
with film-maker and curator Daniel
Kurjakovic and artist Heinrich Lüber.
4pm-5pm, Book Launch for Pageant
by Australian artist David Noonan.
Noonan will be on hand as well as
Dominic Molon, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
5pm-6pm, Book Launch for The
Moving Images of Tracey Moffatt by
Catherine Summerhayes. Artist Tracey
Moffatt will be in attendance.
Art Basel Conversations
Hall 1, Messe Basel
10am-11:30 am
Gallerists Orly Benzacar, Pi Li, John
McCormack and Gregor Podnar discuss galleries and their place in the
global market.
Art Club
Campari Bar, Kunsthalle Basel
11pm-3am, Steinenberg 7
Music by local DJ Lukee Lava.
SUNDAY, 8 JUNE
Art Film
Stadtkino Basel
10pm, Steinenberg 7
Showing “Traité de Brave et d’Éternité” by the late artist Isidore Isou.
Art Club
Campari Bar, Kunsthalle Basel
11pm-3am, Steinenberg 7
Music by DJ Oliver Stumm.
6-8 June, 9am-6pm
St. Alban-Rheinweg 60
061 206 62 62
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
Steinenberg 7
+41 061 206 99 00
www.kunsthallebasel.ch
Dubai Next: Face of the 21st
Century and Living Under
the Crescent Moon
Vitra Design Museum
6-8 June, 10am-6pm
Focus: Olafur Eliasson
and Above-the-Fold
Museum für Gegenwartskunst
Fire Station, Charles-Eames-Strasse 1
+ 49 (0)7621 702 3200
www.design-museum.de
LYNN CHADWICK ACE OF DIAMONDS III 2.3M × 6.7M × 4.5METRE
NEW COMMISSIONS
BROCHURE AVAILABLE NOW
WWW.SCULPTURE.ORG.UK /2008
registered charity number 1015088
24 June - 28 September 2008
www.museodelprado.es
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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 both through the sponsorship of
important events and through our own UBS Art Collection.
© UBS 2008. All rights reserved.