50 51 T he only gloomy thing about the 41st edition of Art Basel was the weather. The rain did nothing to dampen the impressive turnout – a record 62,500 – and per- haps even more impressive were the sales. The vernissage buzz was largely due to a vibrant mix of new and regular collectors, with galleries reporting on the return of the Americans (in comparison to last year), new Middle Easterners (Qatari royalty spotted) and a steady stream of Europeans, most notably the Rus- sians. A noticeable amount of Asian collectors were also present, much to the delight of a number of gal- leries who had picked up on the growing momentum of the Hong Kong International Art Fair (ART-HK). With a 65 per cent increase in visitors (46,100) at that fair’s third edition this year, as well as the participation of bluechip galleries – White Cube, Gagosian, Lehmann Maupin and Pace Beijing – some have wondered if ART-HK could be a viable contender for Art Basel. The 303 galleries at Art Basel didn’t stop short of displaying some of their best works – Basquiat could be seen at New York’s Tony Shafrazi, among Haring and Schnabel, which echoed The Beyeler Foundation’s astounding retrospective of the late artist’s work. Elsewhere in the fair, Picasso and Warhol were dominant, with over 20 galleries showing each, followed by a prevalence of pieces by Judd, Miró, Stella and Dubuffet, among others. New York gallery Jan Krugier, which showed 26 works by Picasso, got off to an incredible start through the sale of a sculpture, Person- nage 1960 , Cannes , by the Modern master for $15 million, just minutes into the vernissage. TALKING THE TALK The 36 talks at Art Salon included two book launches on Turkish art and two panel discussions on Mid- dle Eastern art – Frankly Speaking , with the Serpentine Gallery’s Hans Ulrich Obrist and Canvas ’s Myrna Ayad, a culmination of the Canvas -organised Gender, Wars and Chadors series (the transcript of which will be published in October); and The Global Art World: Focus on Beirut with Makram El-Kadi and Marwan Assaf, moderated by Abaseh Mirvali. One Middle Eastern collector who attended Frankly Speaking , noted that it was “interesting to hear Obrist’s views on the direction of the Middle Eastern art scene.” Regional art enthusiasts, he added, often tend to “pat each other on the back” and it “wasn’t surprising to hear of the need to focus more on curators.” As for the tongue-in-cheek questions to Obrist, “it afforded the op- portunity to get inside his head!” Eyebrows were raised when a black chador-clad woman sat among the packed audience, then approached Obrist at the talk’s end, asking questions before revealing herself as an “installation artist”. In using the chador amongst a predominantly Western audience, one wonders whether she was attempting to perpetu- ate or dispel stereotypes. Despite sparse attendance, The Global Art World: Focus on Beirut was a refreshing insight into how Lebanon is nurturing its domestic art scene via the establishment of numerous initiatives. El-Kadi, an architect at L.E. FT (which designed the Beirut Ex- hibition Centre), discussed Lebanon’s continuous “identity crisis”, echoing art collector and founding Beirut Art Center benefactor Assaf’s description of Beirut as a “heterotopia”; in quoting French phi- losopher Michel Foucault, Assaf went on to explain how the city “is a war zone with cutting-edge ar- chitecture, it is traditionalism and liberalism, it is a juxtaposition of different elements.” El-Kadi noted that “75 per cent of the period since Lebanon’s independence was spent in conflict and turmoil,” explaining how this has become the “norm”. And yet, the need for public art galleries is fundamen- tal, as Assaf underlined, “how can a country’s art be taken seriously [internationally] if it is not taken care of at home?” Both gentlemen addressed the importance of education, with El-Kadi comment- ing on “art still being somewhat elitist in Lebanon”. Mirvali also highlighted that “the millions are not flowing into Beirut as they are to other centres”, which brought a remark from Canvas Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Ali Khadra, who called for the Lebanese Diaspora to support Beirut’s cultural ini- tiatives, “as the infrastructure, know-how and tech- nique are there, just as they are in Cairo and Tehran, two of the region’s most vibrant cultural cities.” A TASTE OF THE EAST In its 17 June Art Basel edition, The Art Newspaper ran an article on the dominance of male artists at the booths, citing “the top 40 most represented artists on show at the fair are all men”. The article credited New York’s Cheim & Read for its majority showing of female artists – Pat Steir, Lynda Beng- lis, the late Louise Bourgeois and Joan Mitchell (the first selling 28 watercolours for $1.5 million and the latter an Abstract work for $2 million) and Egyptian Ghada Amer ( Canvas 6.1), whose Green Paradise (2008) sold for $100,000. “When we heard of the sale, we put our Ghada piece up front,” laughed South Africa’s Goodman Gallery’s Liza Ess- ers. Cheim & Read sold an erotic piece for $225,000 to a European buyer and a smaller work for $30,000 to a collector in the UK. “Ghada is our youngest art- ist,” said the gallery’s Adam Sheffer, “she’s still evolv- ing.” With the Bourgeois, Amer and Mitchell sales, Sheffer was upbeat – “People feel that art has REvIEW At 41 Facing page, from top to bottom: Hans Ulrich Obrist and Myrna Ayad during the Canvas -organised panel Frankly Speaking and a crowd shot of the audience; Abaseh Mirvali, Makram El-Kadi and Marwan Assaf during the panel Focus on Beirut This page: Latifa Echakhch. (Detail) For Each Stencil a Revolution . 2007–2010. Installation, A4 carbon paper, glue, methyl alcohol. Dimensions variable. Edition of three plus two artist’s proofs. A record 62,500 attended, and perhaps even more impressive were the sales. As the rain poured onto Messeplatz, Art Basel nonetheless roared through another successful fair. With healthy sales and a cosmopolitan clientele, artists and gallerists alike had much to celebrate. Myrna Ayad picks out the highlights. 52 53 maintained its value and we’re now dealing with a more sophisticated buyer.” Seoul’s Kukje Gallery also sold two works by Amer to American and Eu- ropean collectors. A sleek relief by British/Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid ( Canvas 3.2) was displayed at Swiss gallery Gmurzynska, whose Zurich branch has been trans- formed to show Hadid’s designs alongside works by the Russian Avant-garde (on until 25 Septem- ber). Art Basel regular Mona Hatoum ( Canvas 6.1) showed through Alexander & Bonin, Continua and Galerie Chantal Crousel ( Canvas 6.3), among oth- ers, with the latter exhibiting Hatoum’s 3-D Cities , an installation composed of wooden tables and printed maps of Beirut, Kabul and Baghdad – cit- ies bombed in the last 20 years. Priced at $124,000 (and unsold at the time of press), areas were perfo- rated in convex and concave forms to symbolise craters, “they are also symbolic of the rebuilding of a city,” explained the gallery’s Philippe Manzome. “It’s about humanity, how conflict exists and will continue to exist, but it also offers hope.” Another Art Basel regular, Shirin Neshat ( Canvas 3.5) showed through Gladstone Gallery, which had sold four editions of her work; Stadtkino Basel also screened her Women Without Men debut feature film, which recently garnered Neshat the Silver Lion award at the venice Film Festival. New York’s Edwynn Houk exhibited new works by Moroccan Lalla Essaydi (page 90) – a re- freshing change from Essaydi’s earlier Converging Territories and Les Femmes du Maroc series, regu- larly shown at previous Art Basel fairs. “The new works really bring Morocco to the fore,” noted the gallery’s Edwynn Houk, “people are amazed with the intricacy in Lalla’s work.” With a recent Louvre acquisition, Houk’s pieces were priced at between $18-24,000, “still reasonable, given her growing fame” and remained unsold at the time of press. One particularly striking work was Israeli art- ist Sigalit Landau’s Compressed Household (sold for $56,000), at first-time Art Basel participant, Galerie Kamel Mennour ( Canvas 4.3). The installation and video artist, selected to represent Israel at the 2011 venice Biennale, received an Artis grant for her solo show at the MoMA in 2008. Using origi- nal material from her parents’ home, Compressed Household literally compresses all objects – and memories – into one installation. “Through the scaffolding used to hang the work in the air, there is a balance, something very strong and very weak all at once,” explained the gallery’s Marie- Sophie Eiché. The gallery will participate in the Abu Dhabi Art fair in November, but will they bring work by Laundau? “I would love to show her work in the UAE,” smiles Eiché, “so I hope it will be possible!” The gallery’s Latifa Echakhch ( Canvas 6.3) sold works on average for $19,000 and also showed For Each Stencil a Revolution at Art Unlimited. The installa- tion, which uses a quote by Yasser Arafat on the rise of political demonstrations in the late 1960s, utilises carbon paper and in so doing, harks at its employment decades ago in the creation of numerous copies of revolutionary images and statements. SIZE MATTERS Apparently, artwork size was a challenging factor for collectors, or so the galleries said. A large 270 x 190 cm work by Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshi- ary ( Canvas 6.2), priced at $433,400 at Lisson Gallery was unsold at the time of press, alleg- edly due to its size – even gallery reps found this strange, especially as Houshiary’s pieces are nor- mally snapped up at the vernissage. The same could be said about Turkish artists Haluk Akakçe’s ( Canvas 5.6) 280 x 210 cm Blue and Taner Ceylan’s 170 x 180 cm 1923 ( From the Lost Painting Series ) at Istanbul-based Galerist ( Canvas 5.3); the gal- lery reported meanwhile that [smaller] works by Egyptian Youssef Nabil ( Canvas 1.1) were selling well, particularly his homoerotic works which, as one collector noted, “could not be shown in the Gulf”. Size wasn’t a particular challenge for Iranian Pop artist Farhad Moshiri’s ( Canvas 1.5) works at Emmanuel Perrotin and Thaddeus Ropac. The former had sold two works – courtesy the gallery’s iPad – for $200,000 and $250,000 to collectors of German and Asian nationality, re- spectively. Tiger , a $300,000, 290 x 460 cm piece at Perrotin, was initially reserved by art collec- tor extraordinaire, François Pinault, who then bought Life is Beautiful , “because Tiger was too big,” noted the gallery’s Nathalie Brambilla. “Iran is not known for its tigers,” she said of the piece, “Farhad is breaking away from Iranian culture and clichés with this work.” More embroidery work by Moshiri was found (and sold) at Ropac, who also showed a piece by Iranian Ramin Haer- izadeh ( Canvas 5.6), which sold to an American collector for $20,000. “We want to show these artists for who they are and integrate them all curatorially,” said the gallery’s Thaddeus Ropac, “I don’t want an ‘Iranian’ wall and prefer to hang them altogether with Baselitz and Cragg.” THE USUAL SUSPECTS Haerizadeh’s photographic collage, He Came, He Left , features the deposed Pahlavi monarchy. To a non-Iranian audience, would such a piece be con- sidered ‘difficult’ to comprehend? “The main pro- tagonists are in there,” said Ropac. Another ‘difficult’ piece was Walid Raad’s ( Canvas 5.2) Appendix XVIII at the Paula Cooper Gallery – the entire set (23 prints) and one print were sold to Middle Eastern collec- tors. “They pull you in,” said the gallery’s Anthony Al- len, “Walid doesn’t answer any questions; you can’t come to an easy conclusion, it’s very poetic.” Raad, like the aforementioned Middle Eastern artists (including Kader Attia, Canvas 3.4, who also showed at Art Unlimited and Adel Abdessemed at Christine König) belong to the group of ‘usual suspects’ at Art Basel. It is largely due to them that Western gallerists are keen on discovering other regional artists. Rabih Mroué is on Allen’s radar; the Goodman Gallery is eager to find North African art- ists and Cheim & Read are excited about the region as a whole. “I always start with the galleries upstairs,” said one Middle Eastern collector, “it’s where one can find the new stuff.” Granted, ‘new stuff’ could be found upstairs, but none of the Middle Eastern artists were new to Art Basel. The fair’s last edition introduced works by Iranian artists Sara Rahbar and Rokni Haerizadeh ( Canvas 5.6) to a wider audience; the same could not be said for this year. The Middle East has a wealth of emerging and established art- ists and with a lot of international focus on the re- gion’s art, it would be great to some of these ‘new’ names hang alongside Basel’s ‘usual suspects’. Facing page: Sigalit Landau. Compressed Household. 1996–2010. Household content and scaffolding post. 300 x 500 x 100 cm. This page: Farhad Moshiri. (Detail) Tiger . 2009. Embroidery, acrylic and fake snow on canvas. 290 x 460 cm. Detail of Walid Raad’s four prints from the Appendix XVIII series. 2009. Archival inkjet print. 162.6 x 129.5 cm. All edition of three of five plus one artist’s proof. All photography by Sara Yassine. REvIEW