Art Journal #42: Art Basel Galleries

This really define world-class! The best galleries, museum-level works (and price tags to go with it). Ground floor is mostly modern art - with Pace, Gagosian, Acquavella, Lisson, Blum, Marlborough, Landau, etc.

The number of Picasso, Miro, Leger, Fontana, Botero, Warhol, Giacometti, Judd added up will be more than any single Christies or Sothebys auctions. There is a "Miro late painting exhibition" by one of the galleries which can be a museum show on its own. There's a 10-metre Warhol (at US$74m!) taking up an entire room (that gallery show only that one piece). There are so many Gaicometti that makes your head spins (probably because everyone knows that Beyeler is doing a Giacometti retropsective?).

Asia art wise, Pace showed a big (and unflattering) Zhang Xiaogang red baby, two Zhang Huan's (one ash painting, one carved wooden door), and a terrible Li SongSong (I liked him, but not this work). Gagosian showed a new circular pink Murakami flower work. There's no Zeng Fanzhi at Acquavella which I find strange (esp since Zeng is supposedly coming to the fair?) There were Yayogi's in several galleries - almost all "infinity nets", but dated from 1960s to as recent as 2006 (painted by assistants, no doubt). Nara is also well represented - and seems to get a lot of inquiries, at starting price of US$1m. Lee UFan was in a few galleries too, but there were so many "one stroke" (instead of several strokes?!) zen paintings and they all look so similar that it felt like they are prints of the same series.

Upstairs is more contemporary works. ShangART put up a terrible show, with strange works from Sun Xun, Zhang Ding - the only saving grace was one Yang Fudong photo from "Seven Intellectuals". Urs Meile gave thier space to Ai Weiwei, Li Dafang, etc. Boers Li showed a very old Zhang Peili work, and a Liu Wei installation (I think his painting would have sold a lot better).

Eslite in "Art Permiere" (ie, a first time participant) clearly not trying to sell any works (?!) with their Michael Lin stools and a boring Kuang-Yu Tsui video. Vitamin showed a solid lineup of Pak Sheung Cheun, Cao Fei, Zeng Guogu. Tomio Koyama brought a few Nara's plus a random set of (poorly selected) young artist works. But overall for this floor, the impact is less than downstairs - I have seen contemporary art fairs before, and this one is of course good; but I really havent seen so many modern artist works in one place in a non auction setting!