Ways of Seeing Instagram

Richard Prince is making art by recycling Instagram screenshots. Dealers are hawking art via Instagram. The Met has even retained an Instagram guru “to play catch-up to figure out how best to exploit this online pictorial medium.” A four-year-old app is dominating the art conversation as no purely art-related topic is.   Perhaps it’s not surprising that the average person would be […]

Art Basel Turns Away Nude Performance Artist

Milo Moiré, a Swiss performance artist you may remember for creating a painting from paint-filled eggs she dropped out of her vagina outside Art Cologne, paid a visit to Art Basel in Basel on June 19. Or at least attempted to. After having her skin painted with the names of the articles of clothing she wasn’t wearing […]

The Best Artworks of Art Basel 2014 – Artspace’s view

With an overwhelming array of booths by top international galleries filling two full floors, Art Basel presents so much first-rate art that it’s hard to believe such visual splendor is only on view for a few days every June, to be immediately dispersed onto the walls of collectors around the globe. Artspace toured the fair to tease out […]

Franz West review – his sculptures look like they’ve wandered in, up to no good

Showing the Austrian maverick at the temple to Britain’s greatest female sculptor reveals what a complex and joyous artist he was. If you stand among Barbara Hepworth‘s carved and rounded plaster and wood shapes at the Hepworth in Wakefield for long enough, you feel that time will wear a hole right through you. Hepworth’s art seemed to aim […]

The Best of Art Basel on Instagram

For everyone not gallivanting around to the flurry of fairs, parties, and events that make up Art Basel, we’ve picked the best, most FOMO-inducing Instagram photos to make you feel (if just momentarily) like you’re right in the middle of it all. For those of you who are there? See how Klaus Biesenbach, Marina Abramović, and Simon […]

Strong and Steady Sales Continue at Art Basel

BASEL, Switzerland — The sales register continued to ring for modern and contemporary art at the 45th edition of Art Basel, though at a slower pace than the frenetic action on Tuesday and Wednesday, when attendance was limited to VIP card holding guests. Some seasoned observers say Basel is a one-day fair, meaning a lot of […]

At Art Basel, Works With a Museum Presence

BASEL, Switzerland — In an old market hall adjacent to the cavernous center where Art Basel, the gold standard of contemporary art fairs, is taking place, there is a happening unlike anything ever staged here. Called “14 Rooms,” it consists of 14 mini-performances created by artists including Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst and Yoko Ono, each […]

Art Basel: Visuals With A Bit Of Drunk Texting

Ben Austin follows the pack to the Art epicentre with a satellite or two thrown in for good measure. Isn’t there a rule about drunk texting and doesn’t that apply to writing about an art fair, anyway I really don’t care, as it is nearly 11pm, I’m due to go to the Kunsthalle for arty […]

A century of the readymade

Duchamp’s influence is in evidence at the fair, but can today’s artists reimagine his idea? One hundred years after Marcel Duchamp invented the readymade, his influence reverberates around Art Basel. Overt references include the late Elaine Sturtevant’s Duchamp Porte Bouteilles, 1993, suspended from the ceiling at Galerie Hans Mayer (2.0/E8). The work, which sold to […]

Feudalism returns to the art world

The Art Newspaper: What characterises the art of our time? Harald Falckenberg: In recent years, art has become ever more dominant with large-scale public events and huge prices for important works that only a few wealthy people, leading art institutions and multi-national companies can afford. Having emerged from the 1960s avant-garde’s goal of anchoring popular […]

Artists retain the element of surprise at Art Basel

A set of vividly coloured rollers wrapped in shiny metallic sheeting is stopping visitors in their tracks at Art Basel. The work, available with Daniel Blau (2.0/D3), seems to have come straight from the studio of Jeff Koons. ButUntitled (Mylar Sculpture I-III), 1969-70, is actually by the Pop Art master Andy Warhol, known for his […]

Pierre Soulages, Happy to Stay in the Dark

“What do you think about the future?,” Hans Ulrich Obrist asks French painterPierre Soulages in the catalogue for his current double exhibition at Dominique Lévy and Emmanuel Perrotin galleries. “It doesn’t belong to me,” he answers. That’s an astute assessment of the work, even if it is also part of the stubborn charm of his black paintings.

See the 25 Best Booths at Art Basel 2014

Visiting Art Basel can be a dizzying experience: so much to see, so little time . . .  And with 285 exhibitors from 34 countries, the 2014 edition is a killer. To give you a taste of what’s on offer, the artnet News team on the ground shares its highlights. Lisson, Pace, Ropac, Marian Goodman, […]

A Collector’s Tips for Art Basel Newbies—and Why Not to Despair if You’re Not Going

What advice would you give to younger collectors who are going for the first time or haven’t been to an art fair before?  Well, first of all, enjoy it. Really enjoy the art fair experience. It’s unique and it’s different from the gallery exhibition or the museum experience. Also, really take advantage of everything that […]

‘Chelsea’s Not Going Anywhere’: Alex Logsdail Talks Lisson’s Upcoming New York Gallery

There may not be many Americans at Art Basel compared to the droves of Europeans, but this morning, the buzz here briefly centered around New York City when Lisson Galleryannounced plans to open a brand spanking new 8,500-square-foot space in Chelsea, constructed under and around the High Line. Nearly 50 years after Nicholas Logsdail opened Lisson’s […]

Now East meets West (at Art Basel)

Why there are more and more works by Asian artists at the fair, many of them on Western galleries’ stands. The VIPs who came to the opening of Art Basel yesterday found more works by Asian artists than ever before—and many have been strategically placed to capture the interest of collectors. Unlike previous editions of […]

‘Perfectly unfashionable to be fashionable again’

Artists and curators have embraced ceramics, but collectors need a little more convincing. Are ceramics, long relegated to the realm of craft, finally getting their due? Clay and porcelain works by artists including Josh Smith, Mai-Thu Perret, Rachel Kneebone and Thomas Schütte are in abundance at Art Basel this year, and sales were brisk yesterday […]

Daily Pic: Tino Sehgal Has the Best Thing in Basel

At the giant Art Basel fair that opens tomorrow in Switzerland, the best thing to be seen has nothing to do with the thousands of deluxe art objects being offered on the sales floor. It sits in a building off to one side, where, as part of a performance-art project called “14 Rooms,” the brilliant artist Tino […]

Sharing Cultural Jewels via Instagram

On a recent spring morning, some 90 minutes before the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened, Dave Krugman, a 26-year-old photo retoucher from Bushwick, Brooklyn, ushered six friends into its cavernous halls through a side door near East 81st Street. Unimpeded by crowds, they roamed the world-famous exhibitions. Mr. Krugman photographed his fellow adventurers posing above […]

Art Basel Kicks Off With a Big Bang of Serial Sales

BASEL, Switzerland — The 45th edition of Art Basel, Europe’s premier modern and contemporary art fair, opened to an elite group of art world players with a big bang of serial sales, indicating the continuing strength of the global art market. Sterling Ruby’s large-scale “BC (4805)” fabric, glue, paint, dyed canvas on panel abstraction from 2014 […]