Noah Horowitz, Art Basel's new CEO, called it "the single most important annual event in the global art market" and the "barometer of the industry." Yesterday, the show opened to VIPs, and many of them said it was the busiest they had seen in years. Major collectors and curators, like Frank Cohen and Cecilia Alemani, were seen walking through the halls of the Messe Basel. This made the security staff at one crowded mega-gallery nervous as they led clients past paintings worth millions of dollars. And, even though people in the business world talked about a "cooler" market, people were still buying. Early sales in the seven- and eight-figure range include the $2.5 million sale of Gerhard Richter's large work STRIP-TOWER (2023), which was shown at Unlimited by David Zwirner. During the VIP preview, a 1996 sculpture by Louise Bourgeois sold at Hauser & Wirth for $22.5 million to a US collector. The same company also sold a painting by Philip Guston for $9.5 million. David Kordansky Gallery sold a new painting by Jonas Wood for $2.5 million as a piece of blue-chip art on the main market yesterday. Still, as the viewing day was coming to an end, a number of expensive pieces had not been sold. The most expensive was a Rothko painting with colors of a sunset that was being sold by Acquavella Galleries for $60 million. A Picasso said to have sold for $25 million at Landau and a Joan Mitchell trio said to have sold for $14 million at Pace have also not been confirmed.
"Most of the big works sell on the second and third day, and that's been the case for the past five years," says Samanthe Rubell, head of Pace Gallery. She also says that the gallery didn't do much pre-selling this year. "We leave room for happy accidents to happen, but we make sure that our artists' work gets into the most important collections." In the first few hours of the show, a mobile by Alexander Calder sold for $2.8 million, and his family sold two smaller works for $775,000 and $675,000. Sadie Coles, whose London gallery sold "multiple" new works by Laura Owens from a solo stand priced between $90,000 and $1.8 million, says she kept things "old school" and did not send a preview list of works to her customers. Gagosian, on the other hand, sent its clients a plan that was more than 100 pages long. The gallery's chief operating officer, Andrew Fabricant, says that the day it opened was "the busiest in years."
Talk of pre-sales is especially important after the spring auction season in New York, which was marked by reserved bidding, works being bought in, and reserves being dropped. Nilani Trent, an art adviser, says that inflation, interest rates, politics, and the fact that a war is still going on all hurt buyer confidence and slow down the art market. David Nolan, a dealer who is showing at the fair, says, "My general sense is that the market as a whole is cooler." He adds, "This is a necessary correction that the market needs every now and then." Still, hard times are often great times to buy art because galleries are more willing to give discounts and owners want to get rid of some of their money. "There are so many different kinds of people who come to Basel. Many of them save up to buy something at Art Basel and are less affected by changes in the stock market and interest rates," says Nolan. Horowitz paints a picture of more confidence. "Many people have talked about whether or not there is a fix. The balance of the bids shows that there has been a real reset. But at the same time, there is a huge market for art," he says. Horowitz thinks that there is less pre-selling at the fair this year, which could mean that buyers are taking longer to decide. In the end, he says, "You have to work harder to get things done, but things do get done, and at pretty good prices, too."
Jean Dubreil