Art Basel faces volatile economic backdrop and ‘generational shift’ as fair opens

As Art Basel opens its 54th in-person edition next week, visitors can expect some breaks from tradition, even at the grande dame of art fairs. “The art world is changing and Art Basel is adapting to that,” says Maike Cruse, the Swiss fair’s new director.

She is about to oversee her first edition, having taken on the directorship last summer, and acknowledges that wider economic and sociopolitical uncertainty has taken its toll on the trade. The latest auction season in New York was down 22 per cent on 2023 while sales at art fairs from New York to Hong Kong have been more muted. “It’s not a disaster, but there is a volatile background with high interest rates and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. So there is a little less urgency [in the art market], but still a lot of vibrancy,” Cruse says.

The market is “definitely slower”, says the London and Piraeus gallerist Sylvia Kouvali, but adds that “serious collectors are still looking at serious works”. She brings a survey of Liliane Lijn to her Art Basel booth and a water fountain project by Iris Touliatou to the Parcours section for public-facing art.

Cruse also identifies “a generational shift” within the art market and “a bigger need from a younger crowd to connect, network and have fun”. With this in mind, the biggest differences to Art Basel this year are not within the walls of the Messeplatz convention centre, where 288 galleries will be showing and selling their works in much the same way as ever, but rather outside, spilling into the city of Basel beyond the main trade’s business hours with an expanded Parcours section.

Art Basel has also joined forces with the nearby Merian hotel to provide a public programme of events around the clock, including a screening of the opening match of the Euro 2024 men’s football tournament in Germany on June 14. “Basel can accommodate everyone,” Cruse says. “Everyone” is relative, but she describes the involvement of the Merian, whose front will have a light-based work by the Kosovo-born artist Petrit Halilaj, as “egalitarian”.

Cruse is conscious that the art-fair industry needs to be agile and innovative, despite a post-pandemic bounce of enthusiasm. The latest events on the scene are more informal, social affairs that pull in a younger, partying crowd after they have done their traditional business at the main fair (assuming they have been at all). On Art Basel’s doorstep since 2022 has been Basel Social Club, a gallery-run commercial event which will this year be held outdoors, into the early hours, as more of a festival than a fair.

Cruse naturally sees the alternative event as part of the wider ecosystem that has Art Basel at its core. “It’s not either/or,” she says, “it’s a response to what we all feel is necessary at the moment, as is the Merian project.”

There is some ennui in the market. Lisson Gallery’s chief executive, Alex Logsdail, agrees that people are put off by the sheer number of fairs (359 a year at the latest count). “They can’t all be successful and the quality can’t always be exceptional.” But one distinct advantage of Art Basel, he says, is that it is a small city with relatively few distractions. “There are some amazing museums, but you can visit them in a day or two, everything else is focused on the fair,” he says. His gallery brings a mixed booth, including work by recent signings Josh Kline and Oliver Lee Jackson, with projects by Ryan Gander and Hiroshi Sugimoto in Unlimited.

Cruse, who lives between Basel and Berlin, is familiar with the Swiss fair, having been its communications manager between 2008 and 2011, after which she went on to run the fairs Art Berlin Contemporary and Art Berlin. She is also au fait with the varied ways of selling art, having run the acclaimed Gallery Weekend Berlin for 10 years before rejoining Art Basel.

Within this year’s fair, Cruse emphasises the geographical “diversity” of its exhibitors, though these are still dominated by North American and European galleries. This year there are 41 galleries with roots from outside these regions, up from 33 last year, while first-timers include six from Asia, such as ROH Projects from Jakarta, which brings a sound installation by the Indonesian artist Julian Abraham “Togar”. Taipei’s Tina Keng Gallery joins as the first Taiwanese gallery to show in the fair’s main section, Art Basel says.

In the main hall, heavy-hitting highlights include John Baldessari’s “Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Patrick X Nidorf OSA” (1969, $3.5mn, Sprüth Magers) and Georg Baselitz’s painted yellow bronze “Dresdner Frauen — Die Elbe” (conceived in 1990, cast in 2003, €2mn, Thaddaeus Ropac). In the Unlimited section for ambitious projects, Hauser & Wirth brings Henry Taylor’s “Untitled” (2022, $2.5mn), an installation of mannequins as a tribute to his brother, a former member of the Black Panther party, while Gagosian has a wrapped Volkswagen Beetle by Christo (1963-2014, around $4mn).

Cruse is just as enthused by the smaller-scale booths, highlighting the work of the Senegalese artist Viyé Diba at Oh Gallery and fibre works by the late Song Huai-Kuei (known as Madame Song) and Maryn Varbanov at Shanghai’s Bank, both in the Feature section for 20th-century art-historical projects. This also includes a mini-retrospective of Jean Tinguely (Galerie Mueller) and work by the American artist Peter Halley (Maruani Mercier). The Statements section for emerging artists has work by Ahmed Umar (OSL Contemporary), whose Sudanese bridal dance performance is part of this year’s Venice Biennale.

Within a more muted market, Art Basel seems to be pulling out the stops. Confirmed VIP visitors in Basel this year come from 85 countries, including Vietnam, Guatemala and Angola, partly a reflection of the coinciding Venice Biennale, which has historically encouraged more trips to Europe.

Her exhibitors need the effort. “It’s no secret that the market as a whole has been under strain for the past year or so,” Lisson’s Logsdail says, though adds that his gallery has had a good start to 2024. In general, he says, “the costs of everything are going up and galleries make a huge investment in fairs, so we need to be taken seriously.”

June 13-16, artbasel.com