Each year, the art world calendar reaches its crescendo in June in the otherwise sleepy Swiss city of Basel with Art Basel. It’s the last chance for dealers to shift perceptions of the market before collectors shuffle off to the sun-flecked beaches or mountain towns where they summer. And no doubt, that’s exactly what dealers will hope to do, after a choppy start to the year that saw auction houses miss even their most modest expectations and fairs put on a brave face as dealers groused behind the scenes about weak buying patterns.
And then there’s that seemingly ever-asked question these days: does the Swiss edition of Art Basel even matter anymore? Many dealers and collectors seem to prefer Art Basel’s newish October offering in Paris these days, and why not? No one ever says no to Paris in the fall. But whether anecdotal opinions about the loveliness of the Grand Palais translate into shifts in how the industry transacts comes down to which fair gets the most grade-A material. And from talking to dealers ahead of next week’s fair, which will feature 291 exhibitors (up four from last year), it seems galleries are still bringing their best to the marquee Swiss fair.
As Galerie 1900-2000 cofounder David Fleiss, who has been going to Basel since the inaugural edition in 1970, put it in an email to ARTnews, “The fair is THE fair for us. We meet the best collectors and the best museum curators we can meet in any fair.” He added, “It is still the fair where you can see the best works galleries have to offer.” (Of course, Fleiss’s gallery is located in Paris.)
ARTnews reached out to art dealers with a reputation for bringing the freshest (and highest-priced) secondary market works to the fair. Here’s what they’ll have hanging on the walls.
