Basel news

Basel was incredible! Every major gallery from Europe as well as New York was in attendance and even a select few from the west coast. A gallery from Germany which had the premiere booth in the fair showed one solitary painting by Andy Warhol called, the Retrospective Painting. It was roughly 7 by 35 feet and was priced at $75 million. When I first saw the painting, Joel Sachs who is the Warhol Foundation's president, was also viewing it for his first time, looked at the painting in amazement and said "WOW". Galleries brought out their best works and some were very rarely seen such as the Lucien Freud paintings. Works by Yves Klein, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell (one gallery did a whole show of large "open" canvases) Morris Louis, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, Warhol, Cy Twombly, Picasso, Giacometti, Robert Longo...I could go on and on...it was there. John Baldessari's work was well represented and he was in attendance everywhere it seemed. Collectors such as Steve Cohen, Eli Broad, and Brad Pitt from the US were in attendance and buying.  Arnold Glimcher, who runs Pace Gallery, was there with Martin Scorsese presenting a new film they had recently worked on together. The Kunsthalle beer garden, the watering hole of the art world while in Basel, was at capacity every evening.

In addition to attending the fairs I visited several museums and foundations in Basel. The Foundation Beyelor, a fantastic museum designed by Renzo Piano for Ernst Beyelor, was showing a Giacometti retrospective. It was an amazing show of sculpture, painting, furniture made by Alberto's brother Diego, as well as other paintings made by the artistic family. Downstairs at the foundation, London based artist Marc Quinn who does sculptural self portraits made from his own blood were on display.  They were a bit repulsive in a fantastic sort of way as they are made from blood he draws from himself over a five year period and freezes it and makes a cast sculpture from it. I suggest googling the artist.

The Kunstmuseum had a Van Gogh exhibition of 70 landscape paintings presented in chronological order.  Pretty unbelievable, and the best ones were from American collections!

Then there was the Schaulager which is an art storage facility rarely open to the public. It is on the outside of Basel and was open for the first time presenting an exhibition titled "From Holbein to Tillmans", paintings made over the last 500 years or so. The Shaulager is an awesome building housing incredible artwork. I will post more on this institution as I have time to research it.  Basel is a fantastic destination for any art lover and June is the month to be there.