Back with a Bang?
In an increasingly crowded market, art fairs come and go. This year, it was Art Stage Jakarta’s turn to postpone, while the biennial Melbourne Art Fair returned after skipping its 2016 edition. Fairs may tenaciously grind along, but results remain uneven and unpredictable.
Basel
After a blockbuster year in 2017, confidence was high among the more than 290 exhibitors at the 49th edition of Art Basel in Basel (June 14–17), bolstered by strong auction results in New York in May for blue-chip postwar and contemporary works.
The first two days of the fair did not disappoint, with galleries reporting high volumes of artwork reservations and sales. Many exhibitors stuck with what has been (2015) sold for just over USD 1 million. Kamel Mennour (Paris/London) capitalized on the trend for gestural abstraction with a Zao Wou-ki watercolor from 2007, valued at USD 650,800. Sfeir-Semler (Hamburg/Beirut) found takers for four aquarelle portraits by the late Syrian painter Marwan, whose works featured at the 2017 Venice Biennale, for USD 41,000–46,000 each.
