Art Basel Concepts

Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

by Edward Chancellor · 31 May 2000 · 860pp · 227,491 words

post-industrial spaces of Zürich West, this financial city is also a very attractive cosmopolitan destination. Basel The city that hosts major contemporary art fair Art Basel has year-round reasons for culture buffs to visit, with the superb galleries of Museum Tinguely and Fondation Beyeler the highlights. Bern Surrounded on three

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dozens of first-rate museums and public art installations. Three annual events above all define the city for different markets. Every June the art fair Art Basel is one of contemporary art’s highest-profile gatherings, with world-famous artists, dealers and wannabes packing the city amid glitzy shows and events. BaselWorld

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from all over Switzerland, as does January’s Vogel Gryff festival, centred specifically on Kleinbasel. The most prestigious of the city’s many events is Art Basel (artbasel.com), the largest contemporary art fair in the world, held at the Messe in mid-June. Although more trade- than public-oriented, it’s

Switzerland

by Damien Simonis, Sarah Johnstone and Nicola Williams · 31 May 2006

German) Swiss industries fair every spring, the Herbstmesse (Autumn Fair) in October, the Baselworld: The Watch and Jewellery Show (www.baselworld.ch) in March and ART Basel (www.artbasel.ch), the contemporary art fair in June. The Swiss Indoors (www.davidoffswissindoors.ch) tennis championship, held every October, is Switzerland’s biggest annual

Lonely Planet Switzerland

by Lonely Planet · 3,002pp · 177,561 words

headquartered here. But that's of little interest to the many thousands of art and architecture lovers who visit each year for the world-famous ART Basel festival and the city's wealth of galleries, museums and iconic buildings. Basel's position at the juncture of the French, German and Swiss borders

The Rough Guide to Switzerland (Travel Guide eBook)

by Rough Guides · 24 May 2022

post-industrial spaces of Zürich West, this financial city is also a very attractive cosmopolitan destination. Basel The city that hosts major contemporary art fair Art Basel has year-round reasons for culture buffs to visit, with the superb galleries of Museum Tinguely and Fondation Beyeler the highlights. Bern Surrounded on three

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dozens of first-rate museums and public art installations. Three annual events above all define the city for different markets. Every June the art fair Art Basel is one of contemporary art’s highest-profile gatherings, with world-famous artists, dealers and wannabes packing the city amid glitzy shows and events. BaselWorld

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from all over Switzerland, as does January’s Vogel Gryff festival, centred specifically on Kleinbasel. The most prestigious of the city’s many events is Art Basel (artbasel.com), the largest contemporary art fair in the world, held at the Messe in mid-June. Although more trade- than public-oriented, it’s

Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art

by Michael Shnayerson · 20 May 2019 · 552pp · 163,292 words

Hotel Les Trois Rois, overlooking the Rhine River, seemed as quiet and pristine as the city itself: a study in Swissness.1 In two days, Art Basel, the annual bellwether fair for the business of modern and contemporary art, would begin, drawing the world’s best-known dealers and collectors into a

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hair and commanding presence. Larry Gagosian, the world’s most powerful art dealer, had arrived. There was a time when Gagosian did not come to Art Basel. He shunned crowds when he could. Notoriously aggressive in business, he preferred not to mingle if he could help it. But he had “warmed” to

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and his brother David, both second-generation collector/dealers. Their father, Yosef “Jose” Mugrabi, a Colombian textile importer of Syrian Jewish descent, had come to Art Basel in 1987 on a lark and had an epiphany. Despite knowing nothing about the painter, the elder Mugrabi paid $144,000 for four Andy Warhol

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-free to other collectors—tax-free as long as the art stayed in the free port’s protective cocoon. The art to be sold at Art Basel in 48 hours’ time was mostly, though not all, contemporary, which was to say it had been made by artists who had started their careers

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ultra of slip-ons—padded off with a panther-like gait into a waiting Mercedes. Ironically, he was now one of the few dealers at Art Basel who didn’t try to presell most of his art before the fair by sending out images. “I don’t like that approach,” he would

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say later. “I like to see the action.” Competition was always keen among the nearly 300 exhibitors coming to Art Basel. It was, perhaps, sharpest among the four mega dealers whose sales far outdid the others: David Zwirner of the Zwirner Gallery, Iwan Wirth of Hauser

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, paying visits to private collectors. The trick with masterworks was to keep the best of them for decades, letting the market rise and rise. At Art Basel, Pace was showing artists who were mostly contemporary and less expensive—Adam Pendleton, for one, Kiki Smith, for another—for an audience that seemed as

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,” Anthony d’Offay declared. “The Mugrabis had a lot of money and bought like crazy.” They had barely just bought their first Warhols at the Art Basel in 1987 when they scooped up 20 Marilyns.4 “Larry [Gagosian] bought all the Warhols he could get at auction too,” d’Offay recalled. “When

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an autumn friendship that gave them both great pleasure. Seizing the day, they flew as often as they could in Acquavella’s plane—once to Art Basel, where Freud sat in Acquavella’s booth and took private glee in startling the passersby, and once to the Prado, where Freud pointed out all

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Cork Street gallery in 1994. Gavin Brown staged his own in New York later that year. Miro took one of Doig’s large canvases to Art Basel. “I had it in the most prominent position, on the back wall, so that everyone going by could see it,” recounted Miro. “People didn’t

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, McCaffrey admitted, Gagosian knew how to press his buttons. “He’s a master of psychology. Whatever your buttons are, he will figure them out.” At Art Basel one year, McCaffrey had a client ready to purchase a large Lichtenstein painting and a medium-sized Mao by Warhol. Gagosian didn’t want to

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including him in a group show in 1998, then giving him a solo show the next year. In 1999, Blum & Poe first showed Murakami at Art Basel: ten paintings, surrounding a sculpture of mushrooms with a typical Murakami character beside them.6 “We were looked at as complete idiots by the rest

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of my clients have a Christopher Wool,” Schiff acknowledged. “But I am very happy about that overlap.”35 For this new breed of art advisor, Art Basel Miami Beach was the market’s new epicenter, starting in December 2002. “That was the real bonfire of the vanities,” Schiff noted. “Suddenly there was

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happening at auctions.” But in Miami, Schiff didn’t need to be. The game was in hearing who bought what in the opening minutes of Art Basel Miami Beach, and then snapping up those same artists before everyone else did. Don and Mera Rubell, who had lobbied hard for

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Art Basel Miami Beach, had come a long way since their $25 art buying trips to the East Village. They had kept collecting—almost always the work

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800 artists. Though they prized all their art and held on to most of it, they did occasionally sell or barter.36 At that first Art Basel Miami Beach, the Rubells established a new tradition with an opening night party for hundreds at their warehouse, showcasing the work of new artists they

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wave the question away. The Rubells cared about art, they declared, not the art market. But in art, as in tennis, they liked to win. ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH DID MORE than bring dealers and collectors together for three days of art talk and fun. It pushed prices of hot artists ever

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higher, as did its precursor, Art Basel. “One day Mark Grotjahn was an artist making a living,” Schiff noted. “The next, all his work is being sold at auction.” Grotjahn’s butterfly

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become an art advisor. After all, she knew a lot of artists. Her friend, who worked at Pace, insisted she come as his guest to Art Basel. Maybe something would happen. Something did. At one of the large, festive dinners given every night at the fair, Darrow reconnected with Miami collectors Carlos

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West Coast dealer David Kordansky, who had started in LA’s Chinatown and had just lost his prized artist Thomas Houseago, met Rashid Johnson at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2008, “or maybe it was 2009, that time is a blur,” admitted Kordansky. Johnson was being represented by New York dealer

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to put Murillo in a group installation with two other artists that December 2011 at the New Art Dealers Alliance, a Miami fair concurrent with Art Basel Miami Beach. “I put the three artists together, but Oscar wanted to show a massive painting,” Ghebaly recalled. “I thought it was taking too much

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Berlin, who had also dealt in Murillo’s work? Or one of the megas? Murillo took almost a year to make his choice, after his Art Basel Miami Beach debut at the Rubell Family Collection in December 2012. He moved with care, showing works in numerous solo shows at small galleries. But

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was Studio Drift, a two-person collaboration, which under Pace’s aegis and BMW’s sponsorship sent 300 Intel drones into the night sky over Art Basel Miami Beach in 2017. Like starlings, they appeared to fly in planned formation; like starlings, they actually moved to their own rhythms of movement and

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, sitting with Bruno in their two favorite chairs.” The inaugural Saint Moritz show opened in December 2015. Those were the statues that would travel to Art Basel in June 2017. Schnabel was just as clear about the show after that. It would be a presentation of new work by his father, evoking

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, sensing growing interest in figurative art, two of the art market’s deepest insiders—Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian—staged a collaborative group show at Art Basel Miami Beach. Competitors for decades but confederates, too, Deitch and Gagosian had looked for some time for a project that might engage them. Deitch was

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underscored a rise in figurative art sales. Among the highest earners: Alex Katz, Peter Doig, John Currin, Kerry James Marshall, and Marlene Dumas. As always, Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2015 was judged more by its celebrity sightings and over-the-top parties than by its seriousness about art. Actor Leonardo

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was actor James Franco. Musician Lenny Kravitz did photography now, and actor Sly Stallone was painting… paintings that Rocky would love. As in Switzerland’s Art Basel, news of the top sales, both figurative and abstract, crackled across the fair. A little secret of the booths, however, was that relatively few fairgoers

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, dealers large and small had traveled to a handful of fairs: FIAC in Paris, New York’s Armory Show, and the most established fair, Art Basel Switzerland. When Art Basel Miami Beach joined the pack in 2002, and Frieze London in 2003, the pace remained, for a while, manageable. Yet each year, more new

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fairs sprouted, in one country after another. From Frieze Masters and Frieze New York in 2012 to Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013, the list of major shows had steadily expanded. Clare McAndrew, the consulting art-market economist who now worked for

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Art Basel, counted 260 major fairs, with almost 50 added in the last decade, including the newest: Frieze Los Angeles, opening in February 2019. With more and

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of Philip Guston, whose late conversion from Abstract Expressionism to figurative, almost cartoonish, paintings was conjuring up a new market. It was at the 2017 Art Basel that Hauser & Wirth would sell a late Guston for what it claimed was $15 million. Eva Presenhuber, a Swiss dealer who had partnered for years

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. “And I would lose my artwork. I couldn’t sell it for a long time after that—it had been burned.” After a particularly depressing Art Basel Miami Beach in 2017—$35,000 in sales after paying $200,000 for a booth and expenses—Freire declared, quite publicly, that he was completely

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the idea. The problem was how to carve up the pie. Would every profit-making gallery help subsidize every losing one? And to what degree? Art Basel director Marc Spiegler was on the panel too. “In principle, it’s great,” he said of Zwirner’s proposal. “But the question is how many

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galleries at the top of the market are willing to subsidize the rest of the fair?” ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH HAD BARELY begun that December 2017 when word went around the convention center: the secret buyer of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi

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at the same time that Pace opened a new gallery there too. Their arrival coincided with the sixth edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, youngest of the three Art Basels. Brett Gorvy came to Art Basel Hong Kong bearing a vintage De Kooning from 1975, called Untitled XII, put up for sale for $35 million by

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Hauser & Wirth’s solo Mark Bradford show. All of the dozen paintings sold out almost immediately. Plenty of Chinese art was shown that week at Art Basel Hong Kong, but a corner had been turned: Western art was now part of the mix too. ONCE AGAIN, ON AN EARLY SUNDAY evening in

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on to declare the fair his best Basel ever. A host of other prominent dealers soon had lots to boast about too. The sales at Art Basel seemed signs of good seasons to come. One, though, seemed to suggest a more troubled future. A large painting by Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell, titled

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. McAndrew, Clare. The Art Economy: An Investor’s Guide to the Art Market. Dublin: Liffey Press, 2007. McAndrew, Clare. The Art Market 2018. Basel, Switzerland: Art Basel and UBS, 2018. McAndrew, Clare. Fine Art and High Finance: Expert Advice on the Economics of Ownership. New York: Bloomberg Press, 2010. McAndrew, Clare. The

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as “hotel of the three kings.” 2. It was originally named Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. 3. Julia Halperin, “Here Are All the Basquiats at Art Basel, Worth a Combined $89 Million,” Artnet News, June 14, 2017, https://news.artnet.com/market/here-are-all-the-many-basquiats-at

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-art-basel-991865. 4. Dodie Kazanjian, “House of Wirth: The Gallery World’s Power Couple,” Vogue, January 10, 2013, www.vogue.com/article/house-of-wirth-the-

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gallery-worlds-art-couple. 5. Alexander Forbes, “Art Market Rebounds at Art Basel in Basel,” Artsy, June 13, 2017, www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-art-market-rebounds-art-basel-basel. 6. Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi, “As Art Flies Off the Walls at Basel, Buyers Beware, Experts Warn

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,” Reuters, June 15, 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-art-basel-idUSKBN19623G. 7. The original German was “Kunst ist eine Linie um deine Gedanken.” Chapter 1: Before Downtown Interviews: Ben Heller, Carroll Janis, Irving Sandler, Jack

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,” September 20, 2018, in In Other Words, podcast, www.artagencypartners.com/podcast/podcast-20-september-2018/. 3. Clare McAndrew, The Art Market 2018 (Basel, Switzerland: Art Basel and UBS, 2018), 20. 4. Sarah Douglas, “A Recent History of Small and Mid-Size Galleries Closing [Updated],” ARTnews, June 27, 2017, www.artnews.com

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Times, September 23, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/starry-night-van-gogh-selfies.html. 16. Kenny Schacter, “Kim Jong-Who? At Art Basel, $165 Million Sales and Other Dizzying Disclosures Made the Rest of the World Disappear,” Artnet News, June 19, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/opinion/kenny

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-schachter-on-art-basel-2018-1305194. 17. Eileen Kinsella, “Cheim and Read, Storied New York Gallery, Will Close Its Chelsea Space after 21 Years and Transition to ‘Private Practice

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art advisory programs, 108, 202, 379 Art Agency, Partners (AAP), 339, 340, 379 “Art and Money” article (Hughes), 146 Art Basel 2017 and 2018, 1, 2–7, 394–395 Art Basel Hong Kong, 394 Art Basel Miami Beach, 239–241, 331–332, 336–337 art fairs, 238–239, 362–363, 384–385, 386–387 art market

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(née Tookoyan), 85 Gagosian, Ara, 85, 86 Gagosian, Judy Ann, 86 Gagosian, Larry (Lawrence Gilbert): aggressiveness and impatience, 96, 181, 208–210, 214, 266–267; Art Basel fair of 2017, 1, 2–4, 5, 7, 8; in art market, 9; on art market in late 1980s, 142–143; artists representation, 143–146

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, 73 Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (by Hockney), 185 Pottorf, Darryl, 254 Presenhuber, Eva, 277, 375 Press, Clayton, 178 prices for works: Art Basel Miami Beach, 240–241; and artists’ rise, 270; auction prices as metric, 77; black artists, 169; and collectors, 212–213; commissions to galleries, 43; early

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, Diana, 348–349 Widmaier-Picasso, Maya, 348–349 Widmaier-Picasso, Olivier, 348 Williams, Sue, 159 Winer, Helene, 111 Wingate, Ealan, 277, 278–279 Wirth, Iwan: Art Basel fair of 2017, 6, 7; in art market, 10; black artists, 296; as dealer, 6, 172, 173–175, 178–180; gallery, 174, 289; and U

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, 190 Youngerman, Jack, 31–33, 67 Yuskavage, Lisa, 192–193, 225, 286 Zhukova, Dasha, 1 Zinsser, John, 171 Zuckerman, Allison, 307 Zurich, 175 Zwirner, David: Art Basel fair of 2017, 5–6; art fairs, 386–387, 389; in art market, 10; character, 205, 211; as dealer, 5–6, 172–173, 175–177

Back to Blood

by Tom Wolfe · 1 Jan 2012 · 687pp · 204,164 words

people didn’t know and musn’t know that billionaires and countless nine-digit millionaires were in there squirming like maggots… fifteen minutes before Miami Art Basel’s moment of money and male combat. They all had an urge. The maggots!… Once, when she was six or seven, Magdalena had come upon

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people, like Fleischmann, about what very expensive art to buy was her business, and she knew all about this “fair.” If somebody called it “Miami Art Basel,” thinking that was the full name, she would inform him in some mostly polite way that it was officially

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Art Basel Miami Beach… and that those in the know didn’t call it “Miami Art Basel” for short. No, they called it “Miami Basel.” She could fire off sixty in the know cracks a minute

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made billions manufacturing… something about industrial robots?… was that what they said? Whatever else he did, he had spent so many millions buying art at Art Basel in Switzerland six months ago, people were talking about him at practically every party she and Norman and Maurice had been to. “—about to see

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it! A measles outbreak, baby!” “—and no time to kick the tires!” “See it—like it—buy it! That’s all you—” “Art Basel in Basel?” That was A.A. piping up again. “Have you ever been to Basel? The only place worse is Helsinki. There’s no place

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table, obviously a part of her crowd, whoever they were, perfectly comfortable in the mental atmosphere of VIP lounges… and the inner circles of the Art Basels of the world—in short, a beautiful creature who belongs, who is at home where things happen. “Oh, I work for him,” she told A

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Norman… I don’t know how much more of Dr. Wonderful I can take,” whereupon she began a detailed recounting of Norman’s behavior at Art Basel, “practically shoving Maurice Fleischmann’s nose into porn to make sure he can keep him on his string and use him for his own pathetic

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’s gradually eating up his life. Here he is, a billionaire—and does that make him feel secure? He’s a wreck! Last week at Art Basel I must have seen him trying to scratch his crotch without anybody noticing a hundred times. He’s pathetic… and he’s totally dependent on

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at Fisher Island?… Maurice… How had he managed to be among the very first in line for the mad rush on the opening day of Art Basel? Maurice. How had he managed to be invited to dinner at Chez Toi by one of the leading figures in the Miami art world, Sergei

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Korolyov?… Because Sergei had seen him in Maurice’s entourage at Art Basel… Anyone who didn’t realize that Norman was a shameless climber would have to be blind. She thought of a way to get Norman on

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type of businessman you can think of—very much including our new friend, Korolyov. You remember the way Korolyov came hustling over to Maurice at Art Basel? He practically kissed his shoes, like a little Russian serf. I mean, Maurice has the most influential network in South Florida.” He smiled broadly, then

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him even beyond our sessions. I felt it was important for me to be with him at Art Basel, even though most psychiatrists would never do that. So many exciting things in this town are like Art Basel. At their core they’re utterly amoral. The people there are comfortable with pornography, so long

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, the irrational rapture of mortals who know they have arrived where things are happening. Anyone who had heard it before, the way Magdalena had at Art Basel, would recognize that sound forever after. Over to one side, at a console, a maître d’ was conferring with six customers, four men and two

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people are saying from more than three or four seats away or across the table. Magdalena gets into an amusing conversation with Mr. Strauss about Art Basel. Mr. Strauss is a passionate collector of antique furniture and small-scale seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century representational sculpture, he says. He asks Magdalena how

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who this sexy little girl wearing a corset is—i.e., what is her status? She says only that she met Sergei last week at Art Basel. So you’re interested in contemporary art. Not really, she was just there with “some people.” What did you think of it? Not much, to

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least sober enough not to mention Fleischmann or his adviser by name. Strauss says he knows Sergei feels exactly the same way and goes to Art Basel just to enjoy the circus. The new director of the Korolyov Museum of Art has quite conservative taste and a scholarly approach. The Chagalls that

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join in, she has no idea what they’re talking about. So she knocks back some more wine. Then they get on the subject of Art Basel. Mr. Strauss tells of rumors of dealers and art advisers colluding to milk hedge fund bigs and others out of tens of millions. Mr. Strauss

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, which seems to have been concocted out of thin air. What on earth is all that so-called art they ask a fortune for at Art Basel? Imagination without skill gives us modern art. Then she turns modestly, demurely, toward her seatmate and says, “Who did you say said that?” She has

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can think of doing is dropping the subject of art advisers—and switching to the insane scramble of the rich on the opening day at Art Basel to get to the booths of the artists they’ve been advised to like. Throughout this little gossipy disquisition she keeps interjecting temporizing comments, such

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sure that Maurice would never be free of his addiction to pornography… just think of the way he rubbed Maurice’s nose in it at Art Basel… Norman needed Maurice to remain in his wretched condition… Maurice opened all the doors that would be closed to any run-of-the-mill pornography

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’t mean the joy of sex, either. I mean perverted sex. I can’t believe you took poor Maurice to those pornographic art shows at Art Basel and then stood by and let him buy all these pieces of plain, out-and-out pornography by this Jed Whatever-his-name-is and

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stay sick, don’t you? You want him to have pus blisters—right?! Otherwise, nobody’s gonna be getting you through the VIP door into Art Basel or getting you a slip for your cigarette boat on Fisher Island or getting you into Chez Toi or what’s that special upper floor

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’s a disaster for him.” Magdalena said to Sergei, “Oh, I think I remember him! He was in our line at the opening day of Art Basel. A big man. He kept cutting into the line ahead of people.” “Oh, also I saw him there.” He chuckled. “And so now he’s

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… all over the world, in fact… from an anguished art dealer in Vancouver, where it was 3:45 a.m., some art fair impresario from Art Basel in Switzerland, where it was 12:45 p.m., an auction house in Tokyo, where it was a quarter of eight at night, and an

Big Bucks: The Explosion of the Art Market in the 21st Century

by Georgina Adam · 14 Jun 2014 · 231pp · 60,546 words

making a new series of very large paintings: perhaps the artist’s practice, but also chiming neatly with Gagosian’s clientele, which likes the big. Art Basel, the top art fair in the world, even devotes a mega-hall, Art Unlimited, to these sometimes ridiculously outsized works. As an example, the largest

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of contemporary art is inevitably quite arbitrary. Unless it comprises expensive materials, such as Terence Koh’s gold-plated faeces, sold in glass cases at Art Basel in 2007 for $500,000, or indeed Damien Hirst’s $100 million diamond-studded skull, For the Love of God, 2007,67 the cost of

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and so getting first dibs on the best works. This is, of course, against official policy, but it happens: Emmanuel Perrotin was famously banned from Art Basel for a year, after he allegedly gave his exhibitor pass to François Pinault, the luxury-goods mogul and collector, who skipped around the fair with

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the vast Messeplatz in Basel, Switzerland, and the sweating ‘super VIPs’ – those who had received the coveted ‘first choice’ cards for early entry to the Art Basel fair – were crowded into the lobby awaiting the 11 am opening. In the increasingly dense crush were major collectors such as Berlin’s Christian Boros

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-or-never’ atmosphere as an auction and the same sense of being one of the select. The first day – or two, in the case of Art Basel – is reserved for VIPs, who, armed with their special card, get access to the fair and much more, including a fleet of shiny black BMWs

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or Audis to ferry them around. And some VIPs are more important than others: Frieze and Art Basel operate a three-level system granting access at different times of the day. As all the big collectors tend to come on the first day

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, along with big-spending visitors. The economic benefits of holding a fair are difficult to quantify, but according to one report,128 between 2002, when Art Basel Miami Beach was held for the first time, and 2010, revenue from the average Miami-Dade hotel room grew 51 per cent, and in December

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alone, it grew by 79 per cent. Even the local airport benefits, with private jets paying landing fees during the fair. Art Basel Miami Beach – and the multitude of satellite events that are held at the same time – has enabled Miami to rebrand itself as a cultural centre

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.’130 This ‘destination’ aspect is bolstered by the activities around them: the VIP programmes featuring visits to local collections, talks and, of course, the parties. Art Basel Miami Beach in particular is renowned for its sometimes highly decadent parties, with the combination of tropical climate, Latin-American lustiness, availability of drugs and

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luxury hotels that seem to invite excess, with draped beds – some equipped with television screens – dotted around the swimming pools. ‘Art Basel Miami Beach is an excuse for people to take five days off and basically go nuts,’ says one dealer who knows the scene well.131

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VIP visitors are still queuing up outside. The tie-up between art fairs and banks went horribly wrong, however, in 2008 when one month before Art Basel Miami Beach opened, a Florida jury indicted the head of UBS’s worldwide wealth management business, Raoul Weil, for allegedly helping thousands of Americans hide

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BACKLASH In 2011 the collector, dealer and billionaire investor Adam Lindemann published a broadside in the New York Observer starting: ‘I’m not going to Art Basel Miami Beach this year.’ It went on: Here are all the things I’m absolutely not going to: Tuesday it’s a lunch with Ferrari

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hotels, tents or former skating rinks – anywhere the organisers can rent space at the same time as the main fair, be it the Armory Show, Art Basel or Frieze. Their growth seems recession-defying – even in 2009, as the art market suffered along with the rest of the world’s economy

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, Art Basel Miami Beach still had 17 such events – only a slight drop from the 21 it had seen at the top of the art-market boom

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thousand dollars ($9,000 for New York’s Outsider Art fair) to some $50,000 for Art Basel. And rental fees are just the beginning: the study cited above reckons that all in, costs of doing Art Basel are over $122,000.137 For the ‘big box’ galleries such as White Cube, Gagosian and

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relationships between dealers. There is always the feeling, “who spoke out against me?” It becomes very personal,’ David Juda, formerly on the selection committee for Art Basel, once told me. Because the system works by dealers on the committee choosing others, the competitive element is high. ‘If two dealers represent the same

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although in 2011 there was a very public row after the Berlin gallerist Gerd Harry Lybke of Eigen+Art was not given a booth at Art Basel. He vocally accused the selection committee of bias, as three of its six-member committee came from Berlin.140 In a further move, he made

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part of that event. The question was resolved in a different way, as Nourbakhsch closed her gallery the following year, although she denied that the Art Basel rejection was the deciding element. While committee members – off the record – maintain that the quality of the Eigen+Art stand was the reason for the

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investment. Auction houses are constantly trying to find a way to encroach on fairs, as part of their continuing expansionist thrust. ‘The opening of Art Basel or Art Basel Miami Beach is one of the prime moments in our activity, that’s when our major sales are made,’ says the Berlin and Stockholm dealer

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consultants who hold their 60-something collectors by the . . .’ he hesitates a moment, chuckling, then concludes: ‘by the tie!’143 Indeed, just before the 2013 Art Basel Miami Beach fair, director Marc Spiegler sent a letter to the three main auction houses, asking them not to indulge in activities such as: Promoting

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Emin’s editioned neons with easy-to-like slogans (The last great adventure is you or The passion of your smile) which sold strongly at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2013. POLARISATION The art fair landscape is constantly evolving, and is highly competitive: with such a busy calendar, there are virtually no

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New York – which would also go head-to-head with more traditional fairs in Manhattan. This concentration into big brand events is best illustrated by Art Basel, which now runs three massive fairs, one in Hong Kong (it bought into the existing HK event in 2011 and completely rebranded it in 2013

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) and Art Basel Miami Beach, started in 2002 (the initial 2001 edition was cancelled in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack). Will this concentration into big

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ultimate accolade, the Lion d’Or for best artwork at the Venice Biennale. Hosted by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, the party was held during Art Basel, and inevitably attended by leading figures in the art world and beyond – from hedge-funder Steve Cohen and uber-dealer Larry Gagosian to comedian and

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basis of these projects, for two years art dealers agreed to exhibit at Abu Dhabi Art, on inconvenient dates in November between Frieze, Fiac and Art Basel Miami Beach, on the implied basis that they would be rewarded one day. They sat for hours among the artificial palm trees in the gloomy

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auction supplied by Artnet, 2004–13 inclusive. In the same period Impressionist and modern art increased by 182 per cent. 7 Conversation with the author, Art Basel, June 2012. 8 http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mgg45egdg/1-larry-gagosian-67. 9 ‘Wealth-X and UBS Global Billionaire Census 2013’, available at http

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was the ‘fall guy’ for other dealers who had done the same thing. 116 Anonymous, conversation with the author, 2011. 117 Conversation with the author, Art Basel, 2011. 118 Kenny Schachter, ‘Further adventures in the Wade Guyton Market’, Gallerist, 22 October 2013, http://galleristny.com/2013/10/further-adventures-in-the-wade

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, p.11. 125 Interview with the author, 2013. 126 Anonymous, interview with the author, February 2013. 127 Conversation with the author, March 2013. 128 ‘The Art Basel effect: How the fair has impacted Miami’s economy’, AFA News, 30 November 2011, http://www.afanews.com/home/item/1095-the

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-art-basel-effect-how-the-fair-has-impacted-miami per centE2 per cent80 per cent99s-economy#.UcLO8PmTjKA. 129 Interview with the author, February 2013. 130 Conversation with

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the author, December 2013. 131 Anonymous, conversation with the author, May 2013. 132 Adam Lindemann, ‘Occupy Art Basel Miami Beach now!’, New York Observer, 29 October 2011, http://www.adamlindemann.com/occupy-art-basel-miami-beach-now. 133 Lindemann, ‘Occupy’. 134 ‘Critics’ roundtable: What was the cultural event of 2012?’ NY Magazine

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Show, 110, 116 Arnault, Bernard, 16, 36, 37, 95 Arnault, Delphine, 108 Art Actuel, Brussels, 102 Art Agency Partners, 44 Art and Auction magazine, 60 Art Basel, 57, 62, 94, 101, 102, 103, 108, 111, 112 Hong Kong, 116 Miami Beach, 104–5, 106, 107, 110, 113–14, 115, 116, 153 Art

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Meyer, Tobias, 44, 56, 87, 133–4 MIA (Museum of Islamic Arts), Doha, 144–7, 151 Miami Beach, 78, 104–5, 106, 107 see also Art Basel Michelangelo, 72 Middle East, 44, 70, 154 see also named countries Mikaeloff, Hervé, 132 Milhazes, Beatriz, 108 Minsheng museum, Shanghai, 89 Minter, Marilyn, 89 Miro

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

by Nate Silver · 12 Aug 2024 · 848pp · 227,015 words

of Miami, Francis Suarez, was onstage as part of an event called NFT BZL, a festival that was piggybacking off Miami’s famous art fair Art Basel. Like almost everything else in Miami that week, the VIP area was a shitshow, serving at once as an anteroom for speakers as they entered

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crypto had been part of the landscape all along. The lavish parties and the exuberant advertising, and the attempts to associate with established brands like Art Basel, were a play to create institutional legitimacy and a feeling of ubiquity—and to inspire fear of missing out in those who hadn’t joined

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chat with a bank account” that invests in crypto projects together. Nothing about the bacchanalian mood suggested long-term sustainability—and by the end of Art Basel weekend, Bitcoin prices had crashed by 25 percent.[*5] 10 Years of Bitcoin Closing Prices I had come to FTX Arena to meet Alex Mashinsky

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transaction fees. But how in the world did we go from the first blockchain—a digital ledger for recording Bitcoin transactions—to raucous parties at Art Basel? The through line runs through Vitalik Buterin, a waifish, Russian Canadian computer programmer who created the Ethereum blockchain.[*11] The Ethereum blockchain has a native

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. Technology, nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/18/technology/what-are-daos.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Art Basel weekend: “NFTs Took Over Art Basel,” Coinbase, December 8, 2021, coinbase.com/bytes/archive/nfts-took-over-art-basel-miami. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT meet Alex Mashinsky: John Mccrank and Hannah Lang, “Who Is

1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die, Updated Ed.

by Patricia Schultz · 13 May 2007 · 2,323pp · 550,739 words

305-446-6767; www.normans.com. COST: dinner $60. BEST TIME: New Year’s Eve for a special celebration. The International Art Market Does Miami ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH Miami Beach, Florida It began in the Swiss town of Basel, where since 1969 art collectors and connoisseurs have gathered each June for

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the prestigious Art Basel fair. In 2002 the fair’s management held its first U.S. sister fair in Miami Beach’s art deco district, and within three years

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and Art Chicago. Blame Miami itself, maybe. Already feeling confident as one of the new stars of international favor, the city took to the fair. Art Basel Miami Beach represents the apotheosis of the art scene arguably created by Andy Warhol in the 1970s and ’80s: a mixture of fine art, fashion

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and its attendant circus. You’ll probably have a better time if you’re just trying to enjoy the Next Big Thing—not buy it. Art Basel Miami Beach features 20th- and 21st-century artworks by over 1,500 artists. WHERE: Miami Beach Convention Center and other venues. Tel 305-674-1292

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-3100; www.shoreclub.com. Cost: from $225 (off-peak), from $525 (peak). BEST TIMES: Jan–Apr for the weather; 1st week in Dec for the Art Basel Miami Beach festival (www.artbasel.com). Art Deco on the American Riviera SOUTH BEACH Miami Beach, Florida Some places and times just go together, and

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political propaganda. WHERE: 1001 Washington Ave. Tel 305-531-1001; www.wolfsonian.fiu.edu. WHEN: closed Wed. BEST TIMES: early Dec to coincide with the Art Basel Miami festival (see p. 315); 1 weekend a year for the Very Wolfsonian Weekend, with events and new exhibition openings (see website for schedule). The

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ARMY-NAVY GAME, Pa., 217–18 Arneson River Theater, Tex., 783 Around Oahu Bike Race, Hawaii, 931 Arrowhon Pines, Ont., 994 Arrows Restaurant, Maine, 33 ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH, Fla., 315–16 Artesian Restaurant, N.Mex., 751 ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO, Ont., 1004–5 Artillery Park, Pa., 233 ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Brazillionaires: The Godfathers of Modern Brazil

by Alex Cuadros · 1 Jun 2016 · 433pp · 125,031 words

proof as a penthouse on Central Park West. THE ART INDUSTRY NOTICED the rise of the Latin rich early on. In 2002 the people behind Art Basel in Switzerland started an offshoot of the fair in Miami. For a week each December, Miami Basel fills the half-million-square-foot Miami Beach