Basel’s Art Fair Mania!
Last week the art world took Basel, Switzerland by storm, invading the city for its annual art fair week. Art Basel (this year - Art 41 Basel) was the main show (as usual), welcoming a record 62,500 visitors (way up from last year’s numbers and a much higher total than anticipated). The art fair exhibited the work of 2,500 international artists and nearly 300 leading galleries from around the world.
Celeb visitors and art world “VIPs” in attendance included Dasha Zhukova; Peter Brant; actors Val Kilmer and Bianca Jagger; museum head-honchos Nick Serota and Jeffrey Deitch; auctioneer Brett Gorvy; big-name NYC-based dealers Marc Glimcher, David Zwirner and Tony Shafrazi; and artists Christo, Richard Phillips, Agnes Varda, Gavin Turk and Robert Pruitt.
While Art 41 Basel was the major art fair, what would an art fair be without its satellite fairs?
This year’s satellite art fairs saw more success than in the past few years at Basel (although everyone is pretty keen to the fact that the success could very easily be short lived and that hard times still remain). The smaller fairs included Volta6, Liste15 - the young art fair in Basel, SCOPE Basel 2010, and HOT ART fair Basel 2010.
