AfricanColours - Letter from Basel

International Wed 02-11-2011

Letter from Basel – Part Two
By Osei G. Kofi | AfricanColours.com

Here’s the thing. Art, or precisely, contemporary art, is the “it” of our time, a key feature of the cultural aggiornamento and a delightful part of the creative economy. Making, collecting, selling, buying, auctioning, investing and publishing art is now a multibillion dollar business – from an annual worth of some few hundred million dollars a decade ago.

Keith Haring Art at Art Basel 2011

The era when high art was the preserve of rich potentates and their protégées (think the time of Botticelli, Michelangelo, Donatello and patrons the Medicis, Sforzas and the Pope) has been history for centuries. Also long gone are the days when only the aristocracy had the means to journey to the temples of Grecian and Roman gods or to the abodes of the Pharaohs or to erudite Djenne and Timbuktu.

Art, today, is totally democratized. Its gods and titans have been hauled into the maelstrom of ordinary human affairs. And by Jupiter - isn’t it all so exciting! So much so that the other day I came across in Basel six chic Cariocas: Fernanda, Paula, Maria, Marcia, Renata and Nherda - hairdressers from Rio de Janeiro who said they had “saved and saved” just to come and see the 42nd edition of Art Basel. As you well know, Switzerland is a very expensive job.

Oh yeah, Art Basel. The world's foremost contemporary art fair located in the eponymous city on the Rhine, nestled between France and Germany. This annual happening is touchstone among a dozen stops on the contemporary art calendar that are located mostly in the northern hemisphere; in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Maastricht, Madrid, New York, Paris, Toronto and Venice, to cite the leaders. Newly minted art trading centres in Hong Kong and mainland China, India and the Middle East have emerged in recent years to challenge the dominance of these longtime leaders. But, that’s another story.

Art Basel, with its Floridan offshoot Art Basel-Miami, is the deus ex machina of what art has become in our globalised economy. It epitomizes the shift in the art business from the padded walls of genteel galleries to hip international fairs, of intense 3-5 days hard marketing and dealing.

Guitars as Art at Art Basel

International art fairs are the latest feature of mankind’s need for embellishment and acquisitiveness. They offer instant spirit lifting gratification. Like in auction houses, the collector or investor has an instant to decide if he or she wants that seven figure Jeff Koons or Basquiat before someone else snatches it away. The currency here is surprise, love at first sight, passion, addiction. It’s the serious mixed with the mundane. And it’s business, big cash business. Yours truly has covered Art Basel, as art correspondent, for 11 years and counting. Each year I tell myself, it can’t get any better than this. But it does.

The 42nd edition last June brought the works of some 2,500 modernists and post-modernists and involved 300 highly vetted galleries who showcased the best in fine art, sculpture, photography, video, installation and print the world has on offer. The artistic smorgasbord shone, bristled and tantalized from every metre of space in the three aircraft hanger-size exhibition halls that dominate the sprawl of the Messeplatz. This year the U.S. led with 73 galleries, followed by Germany with 50, Switzerland with 32, UK with 31, France with 23, and so on. For the first time, galleries from Hungary, Thailand and Lebanon and other Asian countries were admitted.

Photography grows in importance at Art Basel

Every time I am leaving Basel at the end of the high mass to Apollo and the Nine Muses, my giddiness is dampened by a nagging thought: Where is Africa? Where is the motherlode of vibrant colours and exuberance? Africa where are you? Can you imagine the World Trade Organization, or the World Economic Forum, or even the UN General Assembly, totally devoid of African presence? Ha!

Well, a premier African establishment, Goodman Gallery of Johannesburg-Cape Town, has been bringing Africa to Art Basel for quite some years. The previous owner and my good friend, Linda Givon, who introduced me to the work of South Africans William Kentridge, Marlene Dumas, Irma Stern, Gerard Sekoto et al, held a lonely front for Africa in Basel. However, Linda sold the Goodman and retired. Since then, I am afraid, I rarely find Mother Africa’s true imprint in what the new owners bring to Basel. Perhaps it’s me, my mind’s eye being too linear for uber-conceptual renditions.

The packed press conference which opens Art Basel each year is hosted by directors Marc Spiegler and Annette Schonholzer, a super-efficient duo with huge dollops of star aura. They have grown into, and bested, the big shoes left by Sam Keller, ex-director and the man who really put Basel on the world map. Keller has moved next door to run another touchstone establishment, the exquisite, family-owned Fondation Beyeler at Riehen bei Basel.

Art Basel Directors Annette Schonholzer and Marc Spiegler

I am on your case too, Mr Keller – you need to bring in Africa, to buff up all the certainly magnificent cache of yours, of Brancusi, Bacon, Basquiat, Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Giacometti, Jasper Johns, Klee, Leger, Picasso... What about a huge El Anatsui tapestry and a Yinka Shonibare banquet for a start? Or, one of Wangechi Mutu’s anatomy lessons? Africa is very in now, you know.

Art Basel 2011

Annette and Marc are routinely mobbed by journalists - just like the scrum around the world’s high and mighty at Davos in January. Over years the questions I’ve asked at the press conference have had one message: “Sir, Ma’am, when are you going to admit Africa into this wonder-filled big tent of yours?” Annette and Marc have been a sport about my nagging. But, last June Marc warned he won’t field any more questions from me if I fail to bring “credible” candidates from the Mother Continent for the selection committee to look at. So there, galleries in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria or Senegal. Get cracking - and may the force be with you!

Another qualification is in order. Africa has been represented in Basel for three years now. But, at the fringes of the real action. The thing is, just like at the Venice Biennale, Frieze London, Amory New York, FIAC Paris and Forum Berlin, unofficial satellite fairs have sprung up to catch some of the sun rays bouncing off the principal events. In fact, some savvy collectors on arrival head straight for the satellites to discover emerging artists and to bag bargains.

The most successful satellite in Basel is Liste, founded 16 years ago by art lovers and entrepreneurs worried that galleries with little means had little chance of getting into the big tent at the Messeplatz, with its over 1000 applications each year and a waiting list that runs into years. The second popular satellite is Scope which hosted 75 galleries this year in an old military barracks. The third is Volta, shunted to a railway siding in the industrial area. Volta prides itself in its role of discovering emerging artists who are later snapped up by the rich galleries. “We are the sorbet that refreshes (Art Basel’s) incredibly rich banquet,” Volta director Amanda Coulson was quoted saying recently.

A Performance Artist Sews her Leg at FOCUSII in Basel

The African satellite is called Focus. It debuted in 2008, with a small show featuring Ousmane Dia , Cécile N'Duhirahe, Boubacar Diabang, all being Diasporans in Europe. There was also Donna Kukama from South Africa. Located in Rheingasse in the old section of the city, Focus’s main draw this year was Galerie Peter Herrmann, Germany-based old warrior friend of mine. The fine art and performance art sections were curated by Afro-Londoner Christine Eyene, while the experimental films and videos were curated by a trio led by Dominique Malaquais.

If I may, here are a couple of observations for Focus’s organizers. Firstly, your programme is too heavy on performance art, forums and discourses. Tell me, what creatures are "Unknowing Grammar of Inhabiting A Text" and "IN/FLUX Number 1", and “Transformation of Narratives-Fear Nano-Politics"? Good grief!

I’d have thought you would want to go heavier on Africa’s vibrant plastic creations, to infuse and suffuse the drab European weather with explosions of tropical colour? Instead of all the jaw-jaw why not let our proverbial incomparable visuals speak out abundantly? Why take so much intellectualism to a western gig?

During my visit to Focus this year I caught a performance art. A luscious bottomed Sistah was holding fort on a makeshift stage screaming her lungs out, while another voluptuous Sistah sat on a soapbox poking a needle into her bare leg, actually trying to sew into the skin. Ouch! If this is performance art, then gimme doodling by a six year-old any day.

Secondly, stricter vetting of artworks is needed. I was dismayed by a mural in the main hall downstairs, I won’t cite the artist, but I found the piece too much of a rip off on the distinctive work of Kenya’s Wangechi Mutu.

Hero No1 by Zhang Huan

Thirdly, surgical eyed and super snapper Ayana V. Jackson was in town. Did no one think it worthwhile to ask her to come and emblazon some of her super photographs on the walls?

Fourthly, dear organizers, move a mountain if you have to, but find the means to relocate to more convivial surroundings. Why not team up with Volta or Scope for instance? Your present venue, a semi-disused house, is too run-down, too cramped, too hippy-like to carry great art. Beautiful things must be showcased in beautiful surroundings. Art is beauty. It flourishes amidst beauty.

Fifthly, please go buttonhole Annette and Marc. Show them what vibrancy Africa can offer the denizens of Basel. Ask them to deploy some of Art Basel’s megabucks to subsidize Focus in a win-win deal. Who knows, they might decide to offer you a section of Art Unlimited’s vast hanger. A few years back the organizers of the Venice Biennale did a similar thing for African artists. While some jittery brotha-critics felt that giving space to Africa away from the main hub, the Arsenale, was tantamount to ghettoizing the continent, the initiative did ensure that Africans got a foot in the door - and now look at us in Venice!

It was in Venice that Ghana’s El Anatsui was anointed to take on the world. His “arrival” marked the turning point when the contemporary art market’s powers-be woke up to the relevance of African contemporary, its potent creative juice, and therefore, the need to accord it respect - and big bucks.

Posted By: Diana Achieng

skip to top

Names:
Email:
Commment: