巴塞尔是那种愉快的小城市，当你从一个派对很晚回来时，很可能遇到的（像我一样）一个警车停下来让我们这对受伤又任性鸭子先横过马路。这还有一个可爱的马戏团，the Knie, on the Messeplatz,，那个挑剔的艺术管理人员作出特别的保留房间的华美，看上去成它，以使他们能够唤醒和凝视斑马。这里有些地方名字叫‘不要担心’，‘高兴酒吧’和‘朋友酒吧’，后者由同名电视节目的海报装饰。而这里这些玩世不恭，讽刺的态度又是来源于哪里呢？（注意：这是尼采病倒的地方。 ）也许这就是为什么这种态度必须定期进口，以大剂量的，一个巨大的现代和当代艺术博览会的形式表现的吧。
在周一晚上，第四十届巴塞尔艺术博览会开幕前夕，收藏家群体及其人员所作的年度朝圣城市的庞大的会展中心的公平的“策划”项目的两个部分，艺术陈述和艺术无限。目前还没有特别突出的节日定于巴塞尔艺术的40周年，但心情似乎相当乐观。 （香槟会为您做到这一点。 ）Marc Spiegler, ，一尘不染的白色运动鞋发誓（每届巴塞尔他买都买一双新） ，和d Annette Schönholzer ，博览会的董事们，在门口迎接客人。Marc Spiegler,是警惕的乐观呀。 因为“这份工作，需要占有我太多的睡眠。
在这两部分中，大多数人都等着赞扬艺术无限，这个大规模的个展项目组。它确实有一些特殊的时刻 
“I usually sneak into the fair early, but this year I thought, why bother?” said an art adviser that night at a dinner for Yoshitomo Nara hosted by galleries Blum & Poe, Marianne Boesky, and Tomio Koyama. The next morning, though, at just a little after the fair’s 11 AM start, the same adviser complained that they’d just missed nabbing a new Robert Ryman at PaceWildenstein. It seemed an auspicious sign; the spirit of competition was in full force, and word of more sales spread throughout the day. Brad Pitt (being led around on an “educational” tour by collector Alan Hergott) bought a large Neo Rauch at David Zwirner for nearly a million dollars. Christoph Büchel sold a spare set of keys to his home in Basel for $140,000 at Hauser & Wirth. (The buyer can use the house whenever they like, for life.) The first collaboration between Takashi Murakami and pop star Pharrell Williams, a sculpture of a manga-ish monster gnawing on jewel-encrusted detritus (a bag of Doritos, a Magnum condom, and the like), was picked up for $2 million at Emmanuel Perrotin.
Signs of the market in recovery, perhaps, but who can say? The fair affords a view of the plumbing, but not the specific circulations of its contents. “Not spectacular, but not bad,” was dealer William Acquavella’s take. Tim Blum noted that his gallery had nearly cinched the deal on the giant $600,000 Nara house in Art Unlimited, and that otherwise they were selling roughly a piece every hour. It sounded as though the wheels were turning, and faster than they had at the last Frieze or Art Basel Miami Beach. “It’s important to stay positive!” jested Swiss curator Giovanni Carmine. An apotropaic bowl of cherries at Anthony Reynolds gallery echoed the sentiment. (Then there was the young freelance adviser who spurted that it all seemed “just like 2007!” At the time, of course, she was seated across from Pharrell Williams at an HSBC dinner at the Restaurant Schlüsselzunft—not exactly the view from the ground.)
BYE BYE TO BLING read the kick-off headline for the daily Art Newspaper report. The statement was positioned directly above a detail of Andy Warhol’s awe-inspiring, $74 million Big Retrospective Painting, to which Bruno Bischofberger had dedicated his entire booth. (The roughly thirty-six-foot-long canvas, made in 1979, is surely too large to meaningfully reproduce in print.) “This is the sort of work that people would travel to see in a museum,” Bischoffberger stated. “It’s another Guernica.”
Even if “glitter is out,” snobbery still prevails. “I never remember artists’ names until they show at Barbara Gladstone,” one artist was told. Some of the best works at this fair, though, were those that were skeptical of commerce. Damien Hirsts were less conspicuous, but the venerable collective General Idea seemed to be everywhere, with “Achromes” at Esther Schipper and an Art Premiere project (the group’s first film, God Is My Gigolo, made in 1969, before they were even officially a group) hosted by Galerie Frédéric Giroux. Their 1989 AIDS Sculpture was also being “honored” with a Public Art Project on the Messeplatz. “It’s strange to see the work here, within the circumference of the market,” one of the group’s cofounders, A. A. Bronson, admitted. “But then General Idea was always about being critical and complicit simultaneously.”
Two low-key personal favorites harked back to a particularly salient art/fashion moment: Karen Kilimnik’s 1996 fangirl video collage Kate Moss at 303 Gallery offered a nice parallel to Bernadette Corporation’s 1995 video Fall Winter ’95 down the hall at Greene Naftali. The latter comprises actual footage from the art collective’s fashion show that same year at CBGBs; coincidentally, for those who keep score, trendsetter Carol Greene wore Bernadette Corporation to the opening of her space in Chelsea in 1995.
Art Basel isn’t for schlubs; it’s typically a good-looking crowd. But by 8 PM, after nine uninterrupted hours at the fair, most everyone was feeling ragged. One all-male clique trotting down the aisles looked too pretty and pulled together, then, to be just another gaggle of collectors—and anyway, these ones had guards. Without warning, the sea of men parted to reveal a familiar visage, replete with iconic black sunglasses and white ponytail. Otherwise soigné gallery directors gasped and pulled out their camera phones. (Brad Pitt was a “sighting”; Karl Lagerfeld constituted an event.) The venerable designer paused at Gavin Brown’s booth long enough to consider Rob Pruitt’s wall of deadpan paintings featuring “celebrity” signatures (Mike Bloomberg, Rachel Harrison). “Look,” Brown said, leading Lagerfeld toward a canvas. “We put yours above Claudia Schiffer’s.”
Spent from our brief brush with legend-hood, we split the fair with all intentions of heading home. But a forty-dollar taxi ride later and we were at Das Schiff, a large boat-cum-restaurant/club on the river. We’d just missed the dinner for Murakami and Pharrell Williams, but the Le Baron afterparty was hitting its stride. There were a few recognizable collectors (Jason and Michelle Rubell, Maria Baibakova) and dealers, but the crowd appeared to be mostly random rich Baselistas. Le Baron put on Pharrell’s pop classic “Frontin’,” which seemed cheeky until Pharrell himself grabbed a microphone and began to sing along. The crowd cheered and an impromptu concert began. Larry Gagosian and Jay Jopling exchanged high-fives. Pharrell played the audience with shout-outs to Murakami and his dealers. “When Art Basel’s in the house, drop it like it’s hot, drop it like it’s hot, drop it like it’s hot . . .” Party like it’s 2007.
