Stefan Altenburger, Rudolf Stingel/Paula Cooper Gallery, New York“Untitled (Paula)” a photo-realist painting from 2012 by Rudolf Stingel. The 11-by-15-foot work is being shown at Art Basel.
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: June 14, 2012
BASEL, Switzerland — The day before the invitation-only opening of Art Basel, scores of collectors and dealers gathered in the cavernous building that houses Art Unlimited, the annual show of super-size artworks. Word had spread quickly about an extraordinary photo-realist painting by the Italian-born artist Rudolf Stingel. Based on a 1980s photograph of the New York dealer Paula Cooper looking glamorous with sultry eyes and a cigarette in one hand, the large canvas (it measures 11 by 15 feet) was hung dramatically in a space by itself. Its price was around $3 million, and it was bought by François Pinault, the French luxury goods magnate and owner of Christie’s, before the fair even opened.“Stingel created the painting just for Art Unlimited,” said Steven P. Henry, director of the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. “He’s been working on it for months.”
The economic crisis may have left the average American family with a shrinking bank account — and most Europeans in an even more precarious financial position — but in the tiny Never-Never Land that is the international art world, there is a conspicuous display of disposable income.
Art Basel, which opened on Wednesday and runs through Sunday, is as grand as ever, with 300 galleries from 36 countries exhibiting. And it still attracts the stars of contemporary art, including the collectors Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier; Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire; Jerry I. Speyer, the real estate developer and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art; and Laurence Graff, the London jeweler. Museum directors are here too, including Nicholas Serota, from the Tate in London; Richard Armstrong, who runs the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum in New York; and Alain Seban, president of the Pompidou Center in Paris.
There are several noticeable changes at this year’s fair. Rather than one opening day for art world V.I.P.’s, there were two. The reason, the organizers said, was to make the fair less crowded and more pleasant for serious buyers. But many dealers, who declined to be named for fear of being thrown out of the fair next year, said that with more time to buy, the exciting, now-or-never rush of having to make a quick decision had evaporated. Some dealers were also unhappy about having to give their client lists to the fair organizers to issue the V.I.P. invitations, rather than having the galleries themselves do it.
The art on view at Art Unlimited is also different. Rather than a hodgepodge of oversize objects, it is a more carefully conceived exhibition, put together for the first time by Gianni Jetzer, director of the Swiss Institute/Contemporary Art in New York. In addition to Ms. Cooper’s portrait, another crowd pleaser was “Untitled (Scatter Piece),” from 1968-69, by the American artist Robert Morris. The installation consists of 200 pieces of industrial materials seemingly randomly placed in a space, first shown when it was made, at the Castelli Gallery in New York. (This version comes from Barbara Castelli, the widow of the dealer Leo Castelli, who is showing it in collaboration with Sprüth Magers, a gallery with spaces in Berlin and London.) Like most everything here, it is for sale; the price is $1.45 million.
“Untitled (Scatter Piece)” was among many works of older art. Conservative, classic modern paintings and sculptures were everywhere.
“Dealers are aware that collectors want to put their money in things that will endure,” said Tobias Meyer, chairman of contemporary art at Sotheby’s worldwide. “And the prices of these traditional works are now at levels that were once reserved only for masters like Picasso, Matisse and Brancusi.”
At the main fair, in a chapel-like installation, watched over by a security guard, at Marlborough Fine Art, was Rothko’s “Untitled, 1954,” a yellow-and-pink abstract canvas. The painting was auctioned at Christie’s in New York in 2007. A Swiss collector bought it for $26.9 million and is now hoping to get $78 million. The markup — and its presence here — was inspired by the nearly $87 million record that someone (some say it was the businessman Leonard Blavatnik) paid at Christie’s last month for “Orange, Red, Yellow,” a dreamy 1961 Rothko.
“That auction was the incentive,” said Andrew Renton, director of Marlborough Contemporary in London. “Rothko is finally being recognized as one of the great masters of the 20th century, and this is the moment.”
Throughout the fair there are many works by artists who brought top prices at last month’s big New York auctions. Gerhard Richter is one. At the Pace Gallery, Mr. Richter’s “A. B. Courbet,” an abstract canvas from 1986, sold to an unidentified American collector on Wednesday, gallery officials reported. The asking price was $25 million.
The fair is also filled with works by artists who have recently had a big retrospective — John Chamberlain and Cindy Sherman — or are about to, like Wade Guyton, whose show at the Whitney Museum of American Art opens in October.
There have been a few less predictable touches. Almine Rech, a Paris dealer, asked Nicolas Trembley, a curator and art critic, to organize her booth as though it were a small museum or gallery exhibition, around the notion of the artist’s process and appropriation. Called “Telephone Paintings,” the installation was inspired by László Moholy-Nagy’s “Konstruction in Emaille,” in which he challenged the notion of man-made art by asking an enamel plaque factory to commission three pieces composed of abstract lines in primary colors.
“The space feels like a salon for selling art,” Ms. Rech said. White wallpaper decorated with small gold Aladdin’s lamps designed by the Swiss artist John M. Armleder covers her booth, and the selection of art on view is unusual and varied. There is a “Joke” painting by Richard Prince, 1963 race riot prints by Andy Warhol and a collage by Kurt Schwitters, along with examples by younger artists like Mr. Guyton, Erik Lindman, Tom Burr, Alex Israel and Jonathan Binet. By the end of Tuesday, Ms. Rech said, she had sold a number of the smaller works by artists like Mr. Israel and Mr. Lindman.
Some seasoned collectors and art advisers were grumbling that many works had gone before they even walked through the fair doors. “With dealers sending clients JPEGs ahead of time the game has changed,” said Philippe Ségalot, a New York dealer whose antics in years past, like hiring of a Hollywood makeup artist to disguise him so he could sneak into the fair before everyone and snap up the best works, have become Art Basel legend.
So why do so many important collectors still bother to come all the way to Basel? “They’re afraid of missing something,” Mr. Ségalot replied.
