art basel

art basel

The Impact of Art Basel on the Contemporary Art World

1. Introduction to Art Basel

In that vein, Art Basel is what you make of it. It’s the largest, most high-profile art fair in the world, and while fairs like Frieze Art New York and Armory New York are similarly marquee-related venues of the contemporary art world, Art Basel packs the most art-world power into a single tax-free location. Its main conference room is the largest, most prestigious venue for events like the Art Basel Conversations, the series of panels and talks that give the fair a pretense of ambition beyond being the venue for extraordinary sales. If net worth volume is your thing, Art Basel Miami Beach is where to be. It is where Madonna was observed lamenting one too many celebrity encounters, perhaps relieved that Miami Beach’s Animal Services was prepared to euthanize Madonna’s adopted chinchilla. It is where the 1% go to feel like they’ve escaped the 1%.

Today, these changes manifest themselves through the growing flux of money in the world of contemporary art. There is no space to truly represent how that money works, but Art Basel and the satellite fairs in Miami Beach and Hong Kong that, at least nominally, operate under the same rubric, are the highest visible markers of those changes. The instantaneous worldview of the Internet allows aspiring collectors to follow the entrance of their favorite emerging artists into the major fairs; some will spend a winter or summer weekend scouting in Miami Beach or Hong Kong, and then they’ll be seen in Basel. Some other satellite fairs will flourish in the same manner as the Basel fairs and themselves sprout subsidiaries. The Internet of the early 2000s created this new world of art commerce, but Art Basel was the transplanter that first shared that new information with the aspiring collector on their home continent.

2. Evolution and Expansion of Art Basel

In the United States, the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere, art historically has functioned as both a tax-advantaged conduit for transitioning assets from one generation of a family to the next and a welcome mat for luring the newly wealthy to live in a particular municipality, region, or nation. Art fairs have emerged as the most significant element in this transformation. While Art Basel predates the Brooklyn Bridge, the pattern followed by Art Basel over the past 15 years provides a neat microcosm of this global trend. Created in Basel, Switzerland – a center of international finance and fashion – Art Basel in 1970 fast became the most important regular gathering of the world’s art galleries. In 2002, the Art Basel owners and a local Munich trade fair company founded the Miami Beach Art Basel, the first such event in the U.S. Today, it is the largest art fair in the country, with 258 of the world’s leading international galleries spread across a convention hall. Other conglomerates followed.

This week, Art Basel opens in Miami, taking its place as the final major contemporary art fair of both 2013 and the first three quarters of 2014. The modern and ultramodern art displayed at Art Basel highlights how the role of art in both society and the economy has evolved in recent decades. Once patronized primarily by governmental agencies or great religious entities and little more than a gentry-class leisure pursuit, art has become both an object of investment and an engine of job-creating economic activity. This transformation has been driven by, and has in turn fed, the broader shift of global economic activity from the manufacturing sector to the creative professions: code writers in information technology, R&D personnel in health care and other life sciences, and much more.

3. Influence and Significance of Art Basel in the Art Market

Before the inception of the early art fairs, the collectors and gallerists knew each other, mostly through personal acquaintances. As the number of collectors and galleries increased, it became evident that relying on personal acquaintances alone could no longer suffice. The quality of transactions had to be made more predictable and less expensive. That, in short, is the undertaking of the fairs. The primary function of the new art fair and, by extension, of Art Basel is to increase a buyer’s confidence in the accreditation of the seller and the quality of the service by bringing the potential seller and the potential buyer into direct contact. Even today, galleries unequivocally state that one of the main advantages of participating in art fairs is the ability to attract a far wider audience and to take advantage of a high density of potential buyers all in one location. The other reason for participation, as is often stated, stems from overproduction or stock as well as debt problems. Fair participation is, for many galleries, a risk-driven decision. This often unspoken notion surfaces in the literature as well as in the joint actions of the gallerists.

Contemporary art is a big industry in a relatively short period of time. No other art event has such a significant impact on the contemporary art world as Art Basel does. Established by local gallerists in 1970, this is the oldest of the art fairs and the first one of its kind. In times when viewing art entailed traveling to authentic places, art fairs provided the right environment for mutually beneficial interaction between sellers and buyers. Admittedly, the evolution of the art fair was impelled not by philanthropy but by market conditions. The precipitating circumstances were the fall of tariffs and the increased competition among the auction houses. In addition, the 80s were characterized by a shift in the art market from a relatively small speculative group to a large and diverse money-making enterprise.

4. Art Basel’s Role in Shaping Contemporary Art Trends

Art Basel’s format has changed little over the years. The vast spaces of the Messe Basel are lent nearly 300 galleries from twenty different countries for five days in June. Works ranging from classical to contemporary are exhibited in different sectors. Galleries who participate in the fair, the standard being extremely high, are obliged to tender their best works. Showing business strengths, the galleries pay approximately $1,500 per linear foot around Baselworld. Each year the museum curators make their pilgrimage to Art Basel. It is said that the event has become the main exhibition trend indicator. In fact, 49 museums and foundations sponsor the event. Out of some 60,000 visitors in total, 15% are professionals.

Art fairs are now a permanent fixture on the contemporary art world’s calendar. According to the 2000 TEFAF Art Market Report, the international fine art fair market has grown by nearly 60% in the last ten years. The undisputed flagship art fair is the Swiss Art Basel, a private company founded in the 1970s by a group of Basel gallerists. Art Basel’s formidable influence is recognized worldwide as the fair favors quality over quantity, providing collectors, curators, and art lovers with a condensed selection of the finest works on the market.

5. Conclusion and Future Prospects of Art Basel

Origins of the lust for owning everything; by whatever it is called: autarchy, quince, kleptomania, the possession drive characterizes our society. Art Basel might be an unfortunate example of that, but more legitimate and acceptable than luxury yachts, glistening jewelry, empty and seldom used apartments, valuation empty yachts or floating vulgar status symbols in the sky. What else could survive from the last burst of mindless consumerism than a work of Alberto Burri (Il Grande Sacco 1953-1954, private collection)? As if all had the renunciation of luxury and the love of spiritual representation, in the art to overcome the inferno of modern consumerism, to face the monster of gigantic national and private debt with scarest austerity and conservative representation. Is that walking forward or rather stepping back in history? Should Bern not look behind a miracle of enlightenment and less distorted life to make people less obsessive in owning and collecting objects chosen based on their price? Would that be better than visiting not only art fairs but official stately art galleries controlled by autocratic rulers who choose art as a propaganda instrument?

The vivid present of contemporary art has a particular designation, namely Art Basel. For a few days at the beginning of June, the Swiss town is at the center of the attention of the world art society as hardly any place in the world. To visit the fair means to register the newest in the global art production, provided that you survive from the brand concentrated and market specialized virtues from the artistic activities. It might be speculated that Basel may turn into an oxymoron: collecting art by paying the entrance ticket. No wonder that Venice might have done it some 500 years ago. The generation of Vittore Carpaccio, Giovanni Bellini, and other Italian early Renaissance greats was a generation of thriving, wealthy, and of course cultural wastrel class. They made the “founding fathers” of Renaissance art rich on the disadvantage of the aspiration and inquisitiveness of the people or their spiritual leaders.