A New Art Basel in a New Art Market, by Karen Wright

16 June 2009

A strong showing at this year's Art 40 Basel reveals the resilience of galleries amidst today's capricious art market.

Sculpture Garden, Art 40 Basel, 2009.
Image courtesy of Conrad Shawcross, Miro, Klüser, Perrotin.

Art Basel is doing good business - or at least moderate business - and the galleries are relieved. The change in the market has meant carefully chosen works and higher quality than usual, giving the collector, who is still prepared to spend, lots of choices when walking around the fair.

Andrea Rosen has a glorious wall of Richard Tuttle works that made my mouth water along with the adjacent heap of multi-coloured sweeties, the work of Félix González-Torres.

Close by, Hauser and Wirth show a sculpture by Isa Genzken that reminded me when this artist is good, she is very good. Hauser and Wirth also highlighted Roni Horn who is still looking hot in the marketplace and in the museum world, as evidence of her work on view in the Schaulager Show across town.

Isa Genzken, Couple, 2008.
Image courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

Downstairs, Joan Washburn has brought some mouth-watering works including an early drawing by Jackson Pollock that reminds one of how important the Europeans, especially Miró, were to the American Expressionists. A carefully chosen group of works by Diane Arbus captures the viewer walking by as well. If my handbag had been larger, I would have gone for David Smith’s early sculpture that, looking like a prehistoric dinosaur crossed with a children’s toy, all drawn with consummate ease in bronze, is definitely worthy of a museum.

David Smith, Head as a Still Life, 1940.
Image courtesy of Art 40 Basel.

At Bernard Jacobson, large Robert Motherwell canvases remind the viewer that museum quality works are still available to the private collector and that this artist requires more attention once again.

Jeffrey Deitch has set out to prove that there is life left in veteran Francesco Clemente with a stunning watercolour mural. One mustn’t write this guy off yet. Nearby, a guard protects a bling-surfaced Murakami, whose contents list included rubies, sapphires and diamonds.

Takashi Murakami and Pharrell Williams, The Simple Things, 2008.
Image courtesy of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin.

There was a lot of conceptual work, particularly from German galleries that included a strong booth by Berlin-based Johann König, which featured “Different Condition (State of Aggregation),” an interesting work by Polish artist, Alicja Kwade, as well as an eye-catching sculpture by Paris-based Nathalie Trouve. Kwade was an early recipient of a prestigious sculpture prize, the prize being a highly regarded show at the Berlin Hamburger Bahnhof, and I have been a fan of her work in the past. I was put off, however, by one of her comments printed in the daily Art Newspaper about “taking every show seriously, even if it’s a grubby little event,” and wonder how her previous dealer and young curators will feel when they read that remark. Trouve’s work, composed of sculptures made of electrical cables, had both wit and a formalized power. One point Trouve, nil Kwade.

Alicja Kwade, Andere Bedingung (aggregatzustand 1), 2009.
Image courtesy of Art 40 Basel.

Years ago at the Biennale, I sat transfixed by a film by Canadian artist, Stan Gordon. The beauty of the film carried a metaphorical content that mesmerized the audience. Donald Young from Chicago has Gordon photographs on the stand that feature trees, simply transformed by being upside down, that remind the viewer of how good this artist is. His work, a large photographic piece, is at the center of the radical installation at the Schaulager where “Holbein to Tilmans” is a departure from the usual one-man show. Here, instead, is an installation of the collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel integrated with the contemporary collection of the Schaulager. The curator, Theodora Vicher, is also the director of the Schaulager and explains that her intention was to look at the work “with contemporary eyes, be the works old or more recent, and to find out which ones were open and accessible to me, and which ones stayed mute.”

The Schaulager is a fantastic show with much to enjoy. It also echoes the Biennale with its large collection of Nauman placed at the centre of the collection, which includes the iconic work, “Henry Moore Bound to Fail, back view,” that I had often seen reproduced but never in the flesh. Nearby, the curator has chosen Nauman’s sculptural pieces from the 1960s, which out-conceptualise anything at Art Basel both in their choice of materials and in their conscious decision making.

Bruce Nauman, Henry Moore Bound to Fail (back view),1967.
Image courtesy of Artnet.

Back at the fair, I do a disconsolate tour of Art Unlimited. After waiting in a long queue, I finally enter the snowy world of Belgium artist, Hans Op de Beek, whose piece in this site a few years ago was truly magical. The work is a tour de force, a snowy scene that seems to disappear into the distance, but it does not stay in the mind in the same way as his earlier work. It is more about production and cost and less about the central message of the works, which seems to be the theme of this year’s presentation. Apart from a few installations by veteran artists like Sigmar Polke, whose early paintings had not been seen before, and a touching room of photographs by Hans Peter Feldmann, there is little that stays in the mind. Both Polke and Feldmann were featured strongly in this year’s Venice, Polke with a magisterial installation at the Dogana, the new Pinault site, and Feldmann with a brilliant work in the Biennale pavilion.

Sigmar Polke, Untitled, 1982.
Image courtesy of Art 40 Basel.

I am not disconsolate, how can I be? There is much good quality here to enjoy and hours of pleasure to be taken in the Schaulager, not to mention in the Van Gogh exhibition across town. What worries me, though, is my last vision as I leave the fair. A large Ken Price sculpture, a blow up of one of his miniature pottery works, lords it up in front of Art Unlimited. Its surface is a caricature of his carefully crafted unique patinas of his earlier works. But instead of the precious object, we have something resembling Mr. Blobby. Is this an outdoor work produced especially for the collector or is it a real choice by the artist?