Art Basel 2024: where the world’s wealthiest gather to pretend they care about art while indulging in their favourite pastime: haemorrhaging money. I arrived in Basel expecting the usual: overpriced art, insufferable egos, and the ever-present stench of pretension. Spoiler alert: I wasn’t disappointed.
In a prelude to the extravagant spectacle of Art Basel, Elena Zhukova, mother of art mogul Dasha Zhukova, married Rupert Murdoch, the 93-year-old media titan. This union, sealed just a week before the fair, exemplifies the wealth and status that underpin Art Basel’s allure. As billionaires converge to flaunt their fortunes and acquire pricey art, the fair remains a testament to the enduring marriage of money and culture. Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch, became last year a major shareholder in Art Basel’s parent company MCH Group in 2020, with the family patriarch also rumored to be interested in an equity stake of his own.
VIP opening
As per usual, the fair kicked off with the much-anticipated VIP opening. Picture a horde of collectors elbowing each other to throw millions at anything vaguely resembling a canvas. Case in point: David Zwirner’s booth, where Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers (1990–91) went for a casual $20 million, while Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (2016) fetched what seemed in comparison a modest $6 million. I swear, you could hear the sound of wealth being transferred faster than Hirst can replicate his dot paintings. Perusing the wares of Gagosian’s booth, where a Jordan Wolfson puppet (asking price $950,000), I was astounded to bump into the (formerly?) cancelled James Franco, whom I hilariously mistook for his kindred cancelled spirit, Shia LeBouf (whoops). As the ever-prescient Kenny Schachter has remarked time and again in reference to Art Basel, “Beware! Thieves operate in this area,” a sentiment not lost on the bewildering prices for sloshes of paint on canvas, much of which, in 100 years time, will surely end up in the dumpster.
Outside The Main Fair
Cynicism aside, many galleries and dealers reported strong sales and attendance. According to Prateek Raja, Director, Experimenter (Kolkata, Mumbai), ‘Despite the ‘doom porn’ currently circulating in the art press and along gossip grapevines, we were very confident in the art market’s resilience, and the first day of Art Basel confirmed this perspective. We sold more works on the fair’s opening day than we did on the first day of Art Basel last year.”
Outside the main fair, the Fondation Beyeler offered a much-needed escape. Their summer show, a living, breathing organism, was a chaotic symphony of ever-changing installations. Philippe Parreno, Tino Sehgal, and Precious Okoyomon led a motley crew of artists who collectively threw the rulebook out the window. Okoyomon’s poisonous garden, complete with a screaming animatronic bear and drug-inducing flora, provided a refreshing jolt of madness.
The show’s mission to “stimulate artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and collective responsibility” was dreamed up by a creative ensemble of seven: Sam Keller, Mouna Mekouar, Isabela Mora, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Precious Okoyomon, Philippe Parreno, and Tino Sehgal. Instead of a chaotic free-for-all, they’ve crafted a peculiar new flavour of the exhibition. This quirky museum-as-living-entity concept is a nostalgic nod to the “relational aesthetics” era, when avant-garde art and playfully disorienting audience experiences were all the rage.
Techno-wonderland
Nestled near Messeplatz, the Digital Art Mile aimed to blend the traditional with the digital. Rebgasse was transformed into a techno wonderland, boasting big names like Objkt, fx(hash), and TAEX. Among the digital noise, Grégory Chatonsky’s Terre Second stood out, a chaotic AI-generated installation that offered a glimpse of our digital dystopia. Meanwhile, Justin Aversano’s globetrotting twin photographs felt like a heartfelt gesture in an otherwise synthetic environment.
At the Sigg Art Foundation booth, Ben Elliot’s Metaone VR project invited viewers into a virtual paradise—a stark contrast to the glaringly real hypocrisy surrounding us. As I marvelled at the 500 algorithmic artworks by Bernar Venet, I couldn’t help but think of Jeff Bezos, who was rumoured to have snagged a Modigliani nude for $180 million. A masterpiece that once scandalized 1917 Paris now serves as an expensive footnote in a billionaire’s portfolio. Times change, but the hypocrisy? Eternal.
The fair’s sales, a posthumous factory of wash sales and chandelier bids, read like a billionaire’s grocery list. Yayoi Kusama’s Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart (2023) fetched $5 million, while Josef Albers’s Study for Homage to the Square (1966) went for a neat $1.6 million. Despite murmurs of market caution, the transactional fervour was alive and well. After all, what’s a financial crisis when you can own a piece of the art world’s mythos?
Overpriced, Overhyped, and Overwhelmingly Ridiculous
Basel itself was its usual charming self, which is to say, the charm of a damp sock. The city’s chronic shortage of decent hotels and the near-criminal prices for mediocre rooms remain unchanged. But what it lacks in hospitality, it makes up for in predictability. Just like the art market, Basel’s essence is evergreen: overpriced, overhyped, and overwhelmingly ridiculous.
Every year, following the preview days of Art Basel, the global art crowd flocks to Athens and the island of Hydra to admire Jeff Koons’ Sun Dial and his garishly designed yacht. Hosted by Lietta and Dakis Joannou, founders of the DESTE Foundation, which this year staged an exhibition called “The Mad and the Lonely” by George Condo. As the art world spirals further into its own eccentricities, it seems fitting to reflect on Condo’s title. In a realm where madness and solitude often reign, one can’t help but wonder if the true essence of contemporary art is getting lost amidst the chaos.
