Art Basel

Ok, so Switzerland isn't ALL bad. There are nice things about this country. Like Art Basel, where I went yesterday. Basel is somewhere between 2h 45 min and 3h 10 min away from Geneva, depending on if you have to change trains twice, like on my way back, or not at all, like on my way there. Since it's quite a bit to go, and the train ticket isn't exactly free, even if you have a half fare card like I do, I thought I might as well make the most of it and spend a few hours in the actual town of Basel before I headed for the art fair. That way I could aim for the cheaper evening ticket of 18 francs rather than the all day ticket for 38. You get only about two hours that way, but I thought it sufficient, and I was right. Because going to an art fair like Art Basel isn't just fun, it's also extremely exhausting, I knew that from experience. I managed to see some really good stuff during those two hours though, too much good stuff in fact. It was enough to make me have to sit down and rest after just one hour. There is a limit to how much interesting art you can take in before your head gets full, especially if you're pressed for time, and trying to find your way through the aisles and cubicles is in itself a full time job. If you know you have to be efficient, then you want to try and eliminate as much repetition as possible.
The ideal situation would of course have been to buy a weekend pass and spend the whole weekend in Basel, but unfortunately that's more than I can afford. For me it was the budget version or nothing, so I chose the budget version, even though I knew it would be tough work.

To my great joy, I found that my favourite Swedish artist, Mamma Andersson, was represented by at least two different galleries, neither of them Swedish (if I'm not wrong, one of them was from New York). Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take in the names of many new artists, and with the quality being so high, I found it difficult to register any outstanding pieces in my memory. I saw some unusually sensitive and beautiful drawings by Andy Warhol though; I had not previously discovered that side of his artistic career. Generally, there were a lot of valuable art - old works by not only Warhol, but also Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Picabia, Picasso etc. A lot of old masters in other words. I was also told by one of my students that a bank colleague of his had said that this year's Art Basel was "more interesting" than last year's, since there were more valuable pieces by old modernists and less contemporary art... I suppose this reflects rather well the function that this art fair has for some people - an opportunity to make a safe investment. And with the crisis having brought down the prices of artworks, this is of course an ideal situation to buy a valuable work of art. I suppose his idea of what makes art "interesting" differs slightly from mine... It's quite an interesting phenomenon though, that the financial crisis has had this general effect on this year's art fair; it's shifted slightly from interesting contemporary to valuable modern art. It's sad, but a natural reaction when you live in a capitalist society. Also gallery owners want to make money.

I had an art related incident at one point, which quite well illustrates the problems one can run into in an arty context... Running around an art fair makes you thirsty, and since my water bottle was empty, I searched for an opportunity to refill it. To my relief I found a water container in one of the cubicles, one of those with a white and a blue tap that you press on to get the water out. I had opened my bottle and was just about to press the tab when I heard the gallery owner shout behind me "Mademoiselle! No, it's vodka!" She then politely said that I was welcome to help myself to some if I wanted, but she thought I should be aware... Well, that's art for you; you can never really trust that what you think you see is really what it represents...