Left: Artist Jeff Koons. Right: Venice Biennale curator Daniel Birnbaum with writer Charlotte Birnbaum and the Serpentine's Hans Ulrich Obrist. (All photos: Gareth Harris)
JEFF KOONS KNOWS HOW TO MAKE AN ENTRANCE. Filmmaker Mike Figgis, former Royal Academy supremo Norman Rosenthal, and designer Stella McCartney were among the hordes that descended upon the dapper artist as he arrived at the Serpentine Gallery on Wednesday for the opening of his first major survey in an English public space. With four children, two nannies, his wife, and mother in tow (What is this? The von Trapps?), the ever amiable Koons stepped aside for a fleeting chat. The artist may be known for his über-kitsch oeuvre, but Koons has emerged as a major spender on old masters and nineteenth-century European painting—not that he hasn’t invested in some twentieth-century works as well. “Dalí is very important to me,” he noted. But basking in such adulation, what did he consider his biggest mistake to be? “I don’t believe in mistakes,” came the diplomatic reply in between gentle interruptions from his bowler-hatted son.
Children were especially prominent at the private view, sending the young army of black-shirted wardens into spasms whenever a tiny hand ventured to prod the cast inflatable toy sculptures. Koons’s wife pointed out that their children “are used to not touching the pieces by now.” London dealer Pilar Corrias said that her sons just couldn’t resist patting the turtles and walruses, while adults all around were keen to rediscover their inner child. “It brings you out in a smile,” said an enthusiastic Vidal Sassoon, nodding at the various “Popeye” canvases. The celebrity stylist was joined by his soigné rock-chick wife Ronnie, who revealed her taste for Arte Povera. “We collect Manzoni and Fontana,” she divulged, prompting a surly passer-by to exclaim: “Stuff this flash art. What we need is a good dose of Minimalism.” Over Sassoon’s shoulder I spotted Sarah Thornton, author of Seven Days in the Art World, who gave a decidedly saucy take on the crayfish on view. “There’s a lot of sexy seafood. A giant red lobster doing a handstand is a great metaphor for the artist’s erect… interest in Dalí.”
Left: Musician Paul Simonon. Right: Designer Stella McCartney with Alasdhair Willis.
Before we could really get into Koons’s phallic crustacea, I was waylaid by the glamorous McCartney. She wasn’t the first visitor to draw comparisons between the Serpentine display and Koons’s last major European outing at Versailles earlier this year. “That space was amazing,” she said, describing how she tore off her stilettos and walked through the Hall of Mirrors, barefoot and alone. “It was great. I felt like I owned the place.” Artist Dexter Dalwood, who has a show at Gagosian Beverly Hills in September, agreed. “Versailles was a triumph,” he said, before cheekily adding that, “this selection would look good at Windsor Castle.” Other art-world heavyweights seen admiring the raucous images included major Koons collectors Bill and Maria Bell of Los Angeles; dealers Irving Blum, Nicholas Logsdail, and Gregor Muir; and artist Tracey Emin. Venice Biennale curator Daniel Birnbaum was on hand, too. “I’m back to reality now, marking exam papers,” he said, noting his return to his more mundane duties as rector of the Städelschule Art Academy.
By 8 PM, the relative calm inside the gallery was disrupted by the sight of the Serpentine’s “bouncers” (kindly door staff) attempting to hold back a sea of Koons devotees at the entrance. A strict and sensible policy restricting visitor numbers had resulted in a “queue almost down to the Albert Memorial,” according to the Art Newspaper’s Louisa Buck. (The Serpentine is, once again, a victim of its own success.) Jeffrey Deitch said he’d slipped in, however, by displaying “self-confidence.” (Being a big-name dealer probably didn’t hurt, either.)
The Koons clamor is all a far cry from the art star’s first showing at the Serpentine in 1991, said director Julia Peyton-Jones. “We organized a press conference for the exhibition ‘Objects for the Ideal Home: The Legacy of Pop Art,’ and let’s just say the editors of Frieze were considered a major presence,” she confessed. The Serpentine’s Hans Ulrich Obrist then joined the lively debate over the rise of Koons’s stock. “As a litmus test, the artist Tino Sehgal often asks young curators: ‘Do you like Jeff Koons?’” said Obrist. “The Serpentine has adopted this approach wholeheartedly,” quipped Peyton-Jones with a laugh.
— Gareth Harris
Left: Artist Tris Vonna-Michell with Creative Time curator Mark Beasley. Right: Anthony McCall's Between You and I. (Photos: Sam Horine)
THE FREE FERRY TRIP from Manhattan to Governors Island, a former strategic coastal fortification in New York Harbor that also played host to a 1988 summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, may only take a few minutes, but on Saturday it was easy to feel more thoroughly transported, such was the contrast between the grimy city and its verdant neighbor to the immediate south. Indeed, a uniformed tour guide loitering by an official map at the boat’s arrival point seemed to have been lulled into a near stupor: “Plot oh-nine?” he shrugged dreamily in response to a query about Creative Time’s inaugural public-art quadrennial, opening that afternoon. “What’s that?” The project I was asking after—fully titled “Plot 09: This World & Nearer Ones” and curated by Mark Beasley—comprises nineteen commissioned and site-responsive works scattered around the territory’s open spaces and in its historic buildings. And while hunting public art often seems—like playing golf—to be a good way to ruin a nice walk, Beasley’s selection sounded promising.
While a few of the works make good use of an outdoor setting—the sight of children playing around a giant black wind chime designed by Klaus Weber to emit the discordant and supposedly demonic diabolus in musica tritone was particularly affecting—the majority are installed in otherwise disused houses and other buildings, five of which are not usually accessible to the public. The diminutive Saint Cornelius Chapel, for example, makes a perfectly ethereal setting for Anthony McCall’s light installation Between You and I, while Isle of the Dead, an art-world horror flick by Brooklyn-based collective the Bruce High Quality Foundation, thrills audiences in a tumbledown movie theater signposted with dire warnings about the possible presence of harmful substances. Adam Chodzko’s more contemplative video Echo, meanwhile, plays in an old ballroom, though the interior’s inky darkness often had visitors blundering, zombielike, into one another.
Left: P.S. 1 board chair Agnes Gund with Kim Cattrall. (Photo courtesy P.S. 1) Right: Artist Susan Philipsz. (Photo: Sam Horine)
Having trekked out to the far-flung Lima Pier to hear Susan Philipsz’s sound work By My Side and spotted the artist cycling past on the walk back, my companion and I ended our island sojourn at Nolan Park, where Teresa Margolles’s Muro Baleado (Shot-Up Wall), an embattled cinder-block facade relocated from the artist’s Mexican hometown, was still being dutifully reassembled, and old-timey trio Tuba Skinny were serenading picnickers in the late afternoon light.
The following day saw the opening of several projects at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center: an exhibition by science-obsessed San Francisco–based artist Michael Joaquin Grey, a mural and publication by Colombian Carlos Motta, a retrospective celebrating ten years of the MoMA/P.S. 1 Young Architect’s Program, and this year’s winning entry in the competition, architectural firm MOS’s outdoor installation Afterparty. Conceived as an “urban shelter,” the self-cooling structure has the look of a Bedouin tent, its dark thatched spires protruding above the courtyard’s concrete perimeter wall. On Sunday afternoon, visitors lounged on benches, enjoying the shade as the temperature climbed. P.S. 1 exhibitions director Tony Guerrero, sporting a fetching seersucker suit and straw boater, worked the crowd, and the customary pop-up bar did a brisk trade.
In the first-floor gallery that houses the YAP review, an atypically hirsute Klaus Biesenbach played the tour guide for actress Kim Cattrall. “Join us!” he piped at me after an over-the-top introduction, before whisking his celebrated charge away. Taking the mercurial pair’s place, the show’s curators, Christopher Barley and Troy Conrad Therrien, accompanied me in admiring a photo of an unmistakable—and beaming—Philip Johnson taken at an early celebration. “Apparently, there’s also a shot somewhere of him manning the DJ booth,” they laughed, tickled at the idea of the late bespectacled modernist icon rinsing it out for New York’s club kids. The venue’s annual Warm-Up series of dance parties kicks off on July 4—star spotters of all specializations should stake their claims now.
— Michael Wilson
Left: A view of Afterparty. (Photo: Michael Wilson) Right: P.S. 1 director of exhibitions and operations Antoine Guerrero with artist Katharina Sieverding. (Photo courtesy P.S. 1)
Left: Curator Francesco Bonami. Right: Elizabeth Dee director Jayne Drost, artist Mika Tajima, and dealer Elizabeth Dee. (Photos: Joanne Kim/X Initiative)
AN APOCALYPTIC MONSOON SEASON in Manhattan abated briefly on Tuesday, just in time for the apocalyptic opening of “No Soul For Sale,” a five-day “festival” in Chelsea for thirty-eight nonprofit and independent art spaces and publications from all over the world. The participation-by-invitation event was conceived as an ecstatically rudderless convocation—with taped borders on the floor as its only curatorial affect—by X-Initiative, a yearlong not-for-profit exhibition experiment in the old Dia space on Twenty-second Street. It took the hungry crowd thirty minutes to conjure a Bosch-like hell scene out of this engineered informality. By the time I had pawed to the fourth floor, an amused text came through with the news that Francesco Bonami was squashed between a crowd and a guard at the now-barricaded entrance, and though an envoy was sent to his rescue, one can only wonder when the super-curator last had to wait in a hot throng of haircuts and free-beer enthusiasts. I had just passed Maurizio Cattelan, safely wedged, but just about as stuck, in a stairwell corner.
An international art fair stripped of musty and intractable affiliations, godhead collectors, and daily sales goals, “No Soul” would grow to figure out what it was, live, as the evening unfolded, and for this the X team should be applauded. The fact that most people wanted to go to the roof and hang out there drinking their promotional coconut water for the whole evening, as they did in the hundreds, spoke mostly to the fact that New York hadn’t soaked in a real sunset in what felt like weeks. Yet while watching an absent solo display of grinning and faint staggering from Brian Kerstetter, the unhinged star of Olaf Breuning’s glorious Whitney Biennial contribution last spring, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this idle rooftop scene was quite what the top-class PR firms heavily promoting this event were hired in hopes of providing.
Left: On the roof of X. Right: Critic Jerry Saltz. (Photos: Joanne Kim/X Initiative)
A chopped-up compilation of historical video art care of a group named B’L’ing (pronounced “bootlegging” on the night) was projected behind the Rhizome desk. “They got permission to use this footage from all the artists’ estates,” said the organization’s righteous ambassador, twice, before the inquirer on the other side noted, “That’s not exactly bootlegging, then.” I feared it wouldn’t take many more wags before they struck that line from their pitch, but this was a sweet exchange indicative of the affair: Without the cues, rules, and stakes of explicit commerce—space was supplied to exhibitors free of charge—amateur blunders were there for the making. “This was not supposed to be a performance,” Stefano Cernuschi from Mousse happily confided as we watched Ian Tweedy finish a photorealistic self-portrait on the wall. No one from the Milanese magazine saw the point in being too fussed over it.
With the absence of an ante, unheard-of in New York, the majority of locals in attendance took a deliciously “whatever” stance. X-Initiative advisory-board member Gabrielle Giattino was mentally miles away, markedly more concerned with Kai Althoff and Brandon Stosuy’s elaborate show opening at her minuscule DISPATCH space in Chinatown on Sunday than with her “No Soul” display. “The rest of these haven’t come back from Basel yet,” she said, waving vaguely at the incomplete print portfolio leaning against the wall. She scrunched her brow for further explanation but could only manage a going-nowhere “you know” to express exactly how interested she is in the rigmarole of international capitalism. This is not how you hustle a client.
Left: Artists Jordan Wolfson and Lizzie Fitch. Right: Artist Maurizio Cattelan and New Museum curator Massimiliano Gioni. (Photos: Joanne Kim/X Initiative)
Artists Matt Keegan and Fia Backström buddied up and hugged the walls, sidestepping shrews who were somehow able to see their many friends while at no point doing anything more than “leaving.” Jordan Wolfson, hovering by Barcelona’s Latitudes, took several prods before he could even remember that he was participating in a group show with healthy buzz opening at I-20 Gallery round the corner later in the week. Eventually waking up to the idea that he was a professional artist talking to a writer, Wolfson pointed at a nearby projector. “I lent that to them,” he volunteered with a goofy puff of pride. “That’s my claim to fame.” With competition for the “Who cares?” prize as fierce as this, it took a languidly heroic trifecta from White Columns to take the cake. Director Matthew Higgs was diagonal on a folding chair, an industrial floor fan pointed at him alone, lost in his display of works from Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center. “This work makes me happy, so I’m happy,” was all the plain Zen the man needed to offer from his seat that night.
— William Pym
Left: Collector Dakis Joannou. Right: A view of the performance for Blood of Two. (Except where noted, all photos: Linda Yablonsky)
SOME PEOPLE HAVE MONEY AND NO TASTE. Greek collector Dakis Joannou has both and knows how to share the wealth. Last week he and his wife, Lietta, played host to scores of art pilgrims arriving in Athens for four days of events that culminated in a happening staged by Matthew Barney on the island of Hydra, involving a collaboration with Elizabeth Peyton, a herd of goats, a sacrificial shark, and all the natural beauty anyone could ever want.
Joannou’s program got its start in Athens, with the opening of “A Guest + A Host = A Ghost,” an exhibition that New Museum curator Massimiliano Gioni culled from the inventory of the Deste Foundation, where the bulk of the construction tycoon’s provocative collection resides in white-box splendor. Stationing themselves just inside Deste’s door, built to resemble a cargo hold, the Joannous shook the hands and bussed the cheeks of nearly two hundred guests arriving from Venice, Basel, and a disco-feverish gay-pride march that had taken place downtown the previous afternoon, following a preview of the second Athens Biennale.
The Deste reception––technically for artists in the show like Andro Wekua and Maurizio Cattelan––was surprisingly low-key for a gathering that brought together Tate director Nicholas Serota, the New Museum’s Lisa Phillips, and MoMA’s Kathy Halbreich with dealers Barbara Gladstone, Jeffrey Deitch, Anton Kern, and Eva Presenhuber, not to mention auction-house rivals Amy Cappellazzo and Tobias Meyer. Curators and consultants Christian Rattemeyer, Aphrodite Gonou, Mark Fletcher, and Kim Heirston were on hand, too, as were Peyton’s exes Rirkrit Tiravanija and Tony Just, who showed up to support her participation, as did Gavin Brown gallerymates Rob Pruitt and Jonathan Horowitz. Ashley Bickerton and the team of Tim Noble and Sue Webster came for the hell of it. And why not? Onetime-only experiences like these are theater, not life, and therefore both elevating and desirable.
Left: Artist Matthew Barney. Right: Artist Andro Wekua with dealer Barbara Gladstone.
“I don’t know which is more fascinating, Wekua or his work,” said Bickerton, making his first acquaintance with both. “I could wake up to this piece every day of my life and still love it,” enthused dealer Javier Peres about Wekua’s motorized wax sculpture of a half-dressed schoolboy missing its genitals. Peres, along with a number of other galleries, was participating in ReMap 2, a smart, eclectic, independently organized flowering of exhibitions and events taking place in the decrepit Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio district of Athens, better known for its brothels and drug trade. Naturally, artists now live there, too.
The brainchild of developer Iasson Tsakonas, ReMap 2 was among the most engaging projects of the week. Though the cab driver who took me there with architect Miggi Hood told us to be sure we got out of there before dark—the “immigrants,” as he put it, were dangerous—our walk down its villagelike alleys and into exhibitions in abandoned buildings with director Effie Komninou reminded me of the first Gramercy Art Fair, the forerunner to the Armory Show in the then-shabby Gramercy Hotel, and the East Village in the ’80s—and so felt more like home than anything else we did. Artist-altered bicycles were available for tooling around the exhibitions, which included an outdoor screening room. Photojournalist Ramzi Haidar’s work with Palestinian refugee children had a terrific, roll-up-the-gates installation at Zakira Gallery’s space in a vacant apartment building. Johann König introduced Polish conceptualist Alicja Kwade, London's Ibid Projects had two floors of edgy sculpture and painting, and the Breeder, one of two well-established galleries in the area (Rebecca Camhi is the other), was showing work by New Yorker Lizzi Bougatsos.
Left: Dealer Jeffrey Deitch with collector David Teiger. Right: Dealer Javier Peres.
In fact, it’s hard to say what the biggest draw was: Joannou, the confluence of art events in Athens, or the Barney-Peyton combo. Collector Jean-Pierre Lehmann had high praise for Joannou, who tends to favor work in any medium that probes the darker reaches of the human psyche. “Dakis is the best private collector I know,” Lehmann said. “He leaves people like Pinault in the dust.” Judging from the presence of connoisseurs like Marion Lambert, Panos and Sandra Marinopoulos, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Andy Stillpass, Laura Skoler, David Teiger, Julia Stoschek, and the entire Rubell family of Miami, I don’t think anyone there would have argued. Certainly not the three fashionable sisters from Bahrain who traveled with ten large suitcases, the better to change their fantastic flounces and five-inch heels three times a day.
Piling into waiting taxis, the caravan moved from the opening at Deste to dinner at the Joannou residence in the Athenian hills. No one was discreet about prowling through the house to check out the art. Dealer Carol Greene, dressed in nearly the same blue suit as Charles Ray’s Woman, posed for pictures with the giant figure. It was startling to enter under Cattelan’s stuffed horse, and fascinating to see that artist’s barefoot JFK lying in state in a home where it was impossible not to sit on a fabulous example of ’60s Italian furniture, which the Joannous also collect. “Never leave me alone in this house,” MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach warned. “I would just want to steal everything.”
He would need a container ship. Instead, shuttle buses came next morning to take the group, still recovering from a night of flowing ouzo and dancing before Jeff Koons’s red Balloon Dog, to the Museum of Cycladic Art, to see an exhibition by six finalists for the Deste Prize, awarded every two years to an emerging Greek artist. This was less tedious than it sounds. With half the institution located in a nineteenth-century mansion––one of the few buildings left in Athens that is not made of indecorous concrete––the show had pleasant surprises for everyone. Afterward, those who didn’t need an injection of caffeine from the museum café were in for an even bigger surprise: the finest collection of Cycladic figures in the world and, weirdly, a Thomas Struth show selected by the artist.
Left: MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach with MoMA associate director Kathy Halbreich. Right: Athens Biennial cocurator Cay Sophie Rabinowitz with artist Kalup Linzy.
From there it was off to the biennial, titled “Heaven,” actually six discrete exhibitions of international art by as many curators installed in a Kafkaesque maze of a building that had been built for the 2004 Olympics. It was hot and airless in this wasteland, and many in the company wandered out of Cay Sophie Rabinowitz’s section to a café serving iced-coffee frappes. “This is a lot more interesting than the Deste Foundation show,” said one curator, who gave the thumbs-up to “Hotel Paradies,” a section of the biennial organized by Athens-based Nadja Argylopoulou.
Joannou’s largesse grew supreme on Hydra, where the group grew to over three hundred (not counting the island’s population of stray cats) for a dinner honoring Barney and Peyton in an open-air taverna. The two artists sat with Joannou, Tiravanija at another table with consultant Doris Robbs, and Tobias Meyer at a table way in the back with his London associate Oliver Barker. David Teiger offered the evening’s only toast—to Joannou—with a quote from Carly Simon: “Dakis, nobody does it better.” Big applause. There was no discussion of what would transpire the next day, which required the assembled party to rise before dawn for the 6 AM start of the Barney-Peyton show, Blood of Two. “Only Matthew could get the art world up at 5 AM,” said Deitch, shaking his head.
Left: Artist Juergen Teller and dealer Sadie Coles. (Photo: David Velasco) Right: Artist Elizabeth Peyton.
Unable to contain their excitement, dealer Max Wigram, Noble, and Bickerton spent the rest of the night in the Pirate Bar on the harbor and were still swigging beers or gin and tonics when the rest of us reached a rocky point above a cove, about a twenty-minute walk from the main port of Hydra, where the performance was to begin. And there we sat, watching the sun rise over the lapis-blue Aegean and waiting. For a time, the only action came from those jostling for position on a stone wall above a ravine sloping down to the sea. Finally, a boat pulled into the cove, and a couple of divers went into the water. “They’re going to bring it up now,” said Gavin Brown director Corinna Durland, declining to say what “it” might be. “It’s been down there for two months.” After an indeterminate pause, we could see one diver pulling on a rope attached to a winch on the boat.
This went on for quite a while. Eventually, what looked like a table emerged from the water and was placed on the boat, which then put into shore. Ten Greek laborers in T-shirts and jeans roped the table––actually a bronze display case weighing 750 pounds––as if it were a calf and lifted it onto land, hauling it up a zigzagging stone staircase to the road. Watching them struggle to lift this piece of Barneymania up the slope was almost painful, though the sight kept Juergen Teller glued to his camera. Whenever the ropes slipped out of the men’s hands or one lost his footing, it was clear that the process could crush them. Suddenly, a herd of goats and a few lambs appeared on the road, their bells tinkling, and the whole scene began to feel like an outtake from a Bresson movie.
Left: A view of the performance for Blood of Two. Right: Dealer Carol Greene and artist Rob Pruitt.
Then the pallbearers––it was difficult to think of the laborers as anything else––reached the road and placed Barney’s bier on a donkey cart. By this time, we could see five framed drawings under the glass top of the vitrine, which had taken on water. Two of the men appeared carrying a smallish dead shark (a dogfish) and placed it on top. Everyone with a camera closed in on the cart, now hitched to a donkey, and accompanied it in a funereal procession along the coastline toward what was once the island’s slaughterhouse, but is now a Deste Foundation project space, dodging animal droppings all the way. “This road is a perfect metaphor for life,” Gioni commented. “It’s steep and full of shit.”
Inside the slaughterhouse, on a promontory over the sea, a framed still life by Barney and a drawing by Peyton were hanging in former stalls. In the main room, where there was space for only about fifty witnesses, three of the men worked to get the glass top off the bier. At one point, Peyton craned her neck to check out the drawings in their watery case. “They’re still there,” she whispered to Barney. “The cat looks good.” At last, we could hear water rushing out of the vitrine and down the blood drain to the sea, and the men lifted the glass. Barney looked at his watch. “Just about two hours,” he said to Peyton. “Not bad. After all, there’s a limit to how long you can ask people to wait.” Coming from the king of slow, this seemed even more astonishing than the event.
Left: Lefteris Arapoyiannis. Right: The opening of the vitrine. (Photo: Miggi Hood)
With the glass removed, the drawings became more legible as they dried. By evening, when Joannou’s organization set a single long table for three hundred in the road above the slaughterhouse, they took on a beautiful glow. Dinner went on for a few hours as the shark roasted on a spit till the flesh fell from its bones. “OK, when I count three, everyone clap,” said Gioni. And when we did, the applause moved up and down the table in waves, though no one knew exactly what they were appreciating. It was everything, really. The art, the spectacular sunset, the food, Joannou, and, at least for some of us, our transformation from jaded personalities into humble acolytes. Next year, the slaughterhouse commission will go to another artist, most likely Cattelan. Whoever it is will have a hard act to follow.
A couple days later, walking along the road I passed a large woman with an extraordinary face, a dark mustache, and unruly gray hair. “Are you going to the exhibition?” she asked. I nodded. “That’s good,” she said. “I think it is very good.”
— Linda Yablonsky
Left: Developer and ReMap founder Iasson Tsakonas. Right: Artist Maurizio Cattelan. (Photo: Miggi Hood)
Left: João Fernandes, director of the Serralves Museum. Right: António Gomes Pinho, head of the Serralves Foundation, and Aníbal Cavaco Silva, the president of Portugal. (All photos: Miguel Amado)
THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY PARTY of the Serralves Museum in Porto was so highly anticipated that on the eve of the event even the art crowds in Lisbon were abuzz. In the Portuguese art world, there are few major occasions for celebration, and after the memorable openings of the Ellipse Foundation in 2006 and the Museum Berardo Collection in 2007, last year’s gap left the protagonists of this increasingly vibrant scene anxious. I arrived at the Serralves with the stylish artist Joana Vasconcelos and Spanish curator Agustin Pérez Rubio on the Friday before the Venice Biennale, just in time to catch the official announcements by the head of the Serralves Foundation, António Gomes de Pinho, and Aníbal Cavaco Silva, the president of Portugal.
Gathered around Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s large sculpture of a red shovel, the crowd listened attentively, remarking on Pinho’s demand for more state and private support. The speeches and the events were directed more toward the future than the past. Fittingly, Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí (former director of the Serralves) and artist Miroslaw Balka strolled the galleries alone, instead of with the official group, itself composed of João Fernandes (who replaced Todolí in 2003), Cavaco Silva, and the minister of culture, José António Pinto Ribeiro. Others trailed behind, including the centenarian filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira and Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, the well-known president of Porto’s soccer team.
Walking around the galleries, I couldn’t help but notice artist José Pedro Croft discussing his work with a friend, while the prime minister’s cultural adviser, Alexandre Melo, observed some works that he had once selected for the collection of a now-collapsing bank and that were bought by the Serralves over the past few years. Given its small acquisitions budget, the Serralves has always relied on corporate and individual donors to build a collection, a fact made manifest by the current display, which focuses largely on small-scale, individual works mostly dated from the 1960s to the ’80s.
Left: Dealers Manuel Santos and Filomena Soares. Right: Curator Filipa Oliveira and dealer Cristina Guerra.
The presentation of the collection, the first survey since the opening of the Serralves, prompted comments of both enthusiasm and disappointment. Someone remarked nastily on the Tony Cragg sculpture in the main room, while dealer José Mário Brandão, who represents the estate of Lygia Pape, was more than happy with the display of her Ttéia. Nevertheless, visitors stressed the museum’s increasingly old-fashioned character, frequently mentioning the lack of emerging artists.
At the open-air reception, I didn’t spot any of the young hedge-fund collector types who populated Lisbon’s gallery openings before the recent market crash. More surprising, though, was the conspicuous absence of several established Lisbon-based and international artists, curators, and dealers, perhaps evidence of the museum’s tenuous bonds beyond the city. London-based dealer Anthony Reynolds was one of the few foreign guests that I recognized, and he spent the evening accompanied by his daughter.
By 10 PM, I began to wonder when the feast would be served. To my dismay, I found that the finger food we’d been snacking on all evening was the dinner. “It’s not that the starters are not good,” said a Porto dealer, “but in Portugal a meal is never made only of snacks.” Someone noted that artist Pedro Cabrita Reis had even skipped the reception once he’d heard of the menu; it simply wasn’t good enough for his gourmet tastes. For those—such as Jorge Barreto Xavier, the jovial head of the Portuguese Arts Council—who stayed to dance to the inspiring yet traditional sounds of Real Combo Lisbonense, the night continued until 4 AM, while some artists (including Manuel Santos Maia) who prefer to hang out in Porto’s clubs managed to entertain themselves well beyond dawn. There are ways, one found, to salvage even the most unglamorous festivities.
— Miguel Amado
Left: Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí. Right: Dealer Anthony Reynolds (right) and daughter.
Collector François Pinault. (Photo: Nicolas Trembley) Right: Rat and Bear. (Photo: Peter Schnetz)
THE MOST ENTERTAINING ACTIVITY of the past two weeks, as one raced from Venice to Basel, was comparing the vastly differing points of view over the same subjects. Thanks to globalization, which has multiplied the number of countries and artists represented at the fairs and exhibitions, the most diligent marathon runners (artists, dealers, critics, collectors) ended up a bit confused. They seemed most flustered when it came time for one of their favorite activities: judging. There were no clear standards, and what was “brilliant” to one person proved “disappointing” to another. “Splendid” or “vulgar,” “in” or “out”—comments varied as unpredictably as the weather, which itself oscillated between blinding sunshine and severe downpours.
Last Wednesday evening, when I went to the Basel premiere of “Il Tempo del Postino,” an event held to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the city’s eponymous art fair, someone asked me if I had an extra ticket for “Il Tempo del Cappuccino.” We all could have used some coffee, perhaps, but anyway there was only Moët champagne. “Il Tempo del Postino,” a “group exhibition” that “occupies time rather than space” (a bit like a spectacular variety show) was curated and directed by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno with the help of artists Anri Sala and Rirkrit Tiravanija, and just about everyone and their dealer was in attendance. Those (myself included) who had seen the show’s original premiere at the Manchester International Festival in 2007 were ahead of the others, and I had fun making my neighbors, curator Raimundas Malašauskas and artist Mario García Torres, guess which artist made which work. Some were delighted that Matthew Barney didn’t reproduce the fist-fucking scene that caused such a controversy for the British, while others thought the work had been better with it. (This time, at the end of Barney’s contribution there was only a concert in the lobby performed with a score by Jonathan Bepler.) To keep things exciting, two new works were added to this version of “Il Tempo”: one by Thomas Demand—a projection of a film imitating rain that was “not at all interesting” for some, “absolutely fantastic” for others—and another by Fischli & Weiss featuring their well-known characters, Rat and Bear. For the latter, the pair were represented in child form, and Bear Cub and Baby Rat fiddled with a remote control and closed the stage curtain by accident.
Participants in Carsten Höller’s piece for "Il Tempo del Postino." (Photo: David Velasco) Right: Artist Danh Vo and Niklas Svennung. (Photo: Nicolas Trembley)
Since the audience consisted exclusively of art enthusiasts, success was guaranteed. The public, moved to ecstasy, shouted for an encore—perhaps the first harmonious opinion this whole trip. All the contemporary art lovers were deliriously happy with Sala’s four geishas, who sang an aria from Madame Butterfly (“Now that’s an opera”), as well as with Doug Aitken’s piece, in which cattle auctioneers dispersed throughout the audience wildly rattled off numbers, their voices coming together in a crescendo of faster and faster bids, while a large onstage screen went from pitch black to bright. Most everyone agreed, too, that the show was very appropriate for a fair and much more inspiring than tiresome talk of a market “return” or “collapse.” After the performance, the artists left for the Schiesser’s, where a dinner had been organized by Fondation Beyeler director (and former Art Basel director) Samuel Keller and press rep Isabela Mora. For those who didn’t attend, the only thing open was a restaurant around the corner serving kebabs, because the three-hour show didn’t end until just before midnight.
It wouldn’t be Basel without a proliferation of parallel fairs, and like musical chairs, Design Miami/Basel found itself plopped in Hall 5 of the city’s Messeplatz convention center. Voltashow, which had once been in Voltaplatz, was moved to the Markthalle, where the Design show used to be; Bâlelatina became the Hot Art fair; Scope moved to the Sportplatz, etc. Along with artist Christian Holstad, I opted to visit the former Wartek beer factory hosting Liste, which has served as the gateway drug to the official fair for the past twelve years. If, at Art Basel, you could find miniature versions of the now-famous installations at the Venice Biennale or the Pinault Foundation (Tomas Saraceno at Tanya Bonakdar, Mike Kelley at Jablonka, Guyton\Walker at Air de Paris, among many others), that’s not quite the case at Liste. This year, as always, some found Liste to be very good, while others complained that the complexity and punk had disappeared. Those who opted to hold solo shows seemed the most satisfied. David Kordansky sold all of Elad Lassry’s photographs as soon as the fair opened, and Overduin and Kite were more than pleased with reactions to Scott Olson’s paintings.
The imaginary friend from Pierre Huyghe’s piece for "Il Tempo del Postino." (Photo: Nicolas Trembley) Right: Dealers Micky Schubert and Kristina Kite with Kunsthalle Basel director Adam Szymczyk. (Photo: Ryan McNamara)
But the art public wasn’t just there for the fairs. The Schaulager, which always organizes a brunch to lure in the famished tourists, this year presented part of the collection of the Kunstmuseum. Most of the works came from the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation (to which the Schaulager belongs), and the show got plenty of attention. Public opinion was much less mitigated about these chefs d’oeuvre, and everyone was amazed to discover that all the works, from Hans Holbein to Wolfgang Tillmans, had been purchased as soon as they had been produced. (Holbein was a longtime Basel resident, and the Kunstmuseum has the largest collection of his works in the world.) Danh Vo’s show at the Kunsthalle was a hit, and alternative spaces, such as the one hosted by New Jerseyy, a collective of artists and curators (Daniel Baumann, Tobias Madison, Emanuel Rossetti, and Dan Solbach), also proved very popular. The evening that Ida Ekblad painted a storefront window and Nils Bech sang a cappella on a ladder was a must-attend, as was the launch of Provence, a new magazine about art hobbies produced by a group of young dandies from Frankfurt’s Städelschule.
On Saturday, after all the madness, I made my way to Dinard, in Brittany, where François Pinault was showing yet another part of his collection. (How much remains?) The show, curated by Caroline Bourgeois, couldn’t be more different from the one at the Dogana and Palazzo Grassi. First of all, the Palais des Arts, where it was held, is a much smaller space (eighty-six hundred square feet), and it is designed for a local public that is less accustomed to contemporary art, which can sometimes be rather provocative. One local newspaper ran the headline “A Shocking Exhibition.” Much more intimate, this show, cheekily titled “Who’s Afraid of Artists?,” features seven sections, ranging from “Around Minimalism,” with classics by Flavin, Manzoni, and Agnes Martin, to “Afraid of Death,” with Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture of Pope John Paul II being hit by a meteorite and a series of works by Damien Hirst offering evidence of one of the collector’s obsessions: skulls. Pinault, who has always spoken with pride about his simple Breton origins, was welcomed like a prodigal son by a large crowd of badauds that also came to greet ex-president Jacques Chirac and the actress Salma Hayek, who was beaming and holding the arm of Pinault’s son. Very few gallery owners or artists attended this very personal exhibition, and there was little idle chatter at the opening. It seemed as though the great collector had decided to return to his roots modestly, a (relatively) simple, uncomplicated end to June’s festivities.
— Nicolas Trembley
Artist Matthew Barney. Right: François-Henry Pinault with Salma Hayek. (Photo: Nicolas Trembley)
