Bad at Sports Podcast: Basel Art fair Opening 2011

This week: Mark Staff Brandl reports from Art Basel 2011!
Link here: http://badatsports.com/2011/episode-308-basel-2011/

Art Basel & UBS Come Under IRS & Senate Investigation

The United States Tax Authority IRS (Steuerbehörde) has asked the Swiss government to aid in the investigation of International Banking & Investment group UBS and their overseas tax havens programs which some have reported amount to intentional tax evasion and fraud.

Art Basel is mentioned as the go to location for foreign employees of UBS to illegally recruit wealthy individuals to help them avoid reporting billions of US dollars in assets. Clients were at times told to use code words when communicating with UBS. Testimony states that roughly 80 UBS bankers traveled to the US 4-6 times a year to pitch the bank’s secretive services to clients at upscale events as Miami’s annual Art Basel fair.

The bankers used encrypted computers, devised codes for their clients’ identities, told Customs agents the trips were for vacations, notbusiness, and advised clients to place jewelry, paintings and other assets in Swiss safe deposit boxes, Birkenfeld testified in June, when he pleaded guilty to helping California billionaire Igor Olenicoff evade $7.2 million in U.S. taxes.

Former LGT computer technician Heinrich Kieber helped tax investigators around the world flesh out those statistics by handing over data on approximately 1,400 of the bank’s clients.

Kieber is in hiding as Liechtenstein authorities seek him on charges of violating secrecy laws.

Brandl and El Farra: Basel Art Fair Radio Podcast

A Bad at Sports Basel Art Fair Overdose!

The intro and outro are extra creepy this week. Highlights(?) include Duncan talking about some fantasy involving wearing tight short shorts and Teena McClelland!!! Tom Burtonwood interrupts the recording by shooting rubber bands. Chaos!

After Richard and Duncan are done making a mess of things, the real pros come in and present a fantastic report from Basel.

Lamis El Farra, emerging artist, and the EuroShark Mark Staff Brandl, seemingly perennially emerging black sheep artist, traverse and discuss the entirety of the King of Art Fairs, Art Basel. Yes: the Fair Itself, Art Statements, Art Unlimited, Scope, and the Solo Project. They only missed Liste and Print Basel. Sorry, but all the rest was already enough. Of course they were at the VIP opening (ahem) and managed to talk to more people than you can shake a stick at: artists, gallerists, museum directors, curators, critics, art magazine editors, fair organizers, all the hangers-on, …er…, important elements of the international artworld.

Link: http://badatsports.com/2008/episode-146-art-basel/

Name Drops:



Gerhard Mack
NZZ
Herzog and de Meuron
Schaulager Basel
Andrea Zittel and Monika Sosnowska
Vitra Design Museum
Rem Koolhaas
Basel Art Statements
Basel Art Unlimited
Marc Spiegler
Thomas Hirschhorn
Roland Waespe
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen
Udo Kittelman
The Rolf Ricke Collection
Dave Muller
Three Day Weekend
Florian Berktold
Hauser and Wirth
Mary Heilmann
Subodha Gupta
Dan Graham
Pippilotti Rist
Christoph Buechel
Tony Wuetrich
Hanspeter Hofmann
Leiko Ikemura
Leonard Bullock
Florian Suessmayr
Leipziger Schule
Neo Rauch
Boers-Li Gallery
Qiu Xiaofei
Alex Meszmer / Reto Mueller (Zeitgarten)
Elizabeth C. Baker
Art in America
Chaim Soutine
Museum fuer Gegenwartskunst Basel
Kunsthaus Zurich
Ferdinand Leger
Museum Tinguely
Gary Justis
Marcia Vetrocq
Glen O’Brien
Raphael Rubinstein
Interview magazine
The Magazine Antiques
Artforum
Museum der bildenden Kuenste Leipzig
Gunther Sachs
Berlin Biennale
Faye Hirsch
Sharkforum
ArtNews
Ellsworth Kelly
David Zwirner Gallery
Greg Kwiatek
Paul Bloodgood
Galerie Karin Sutter
Beyeler Gallery
Next Fair
David Reed
Erik Colan
Wesley Kimler
Scope Art Fair
Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings
Carrie Secrist Gallery
Loreen Hospodar
Kelly Chen
Art Chicago
Petroc Sesti
Robert Standish
Römerapotheke Galerie Zurisch
Philippe Rey
Filiale Galerie Berlin
Vera Ida Mueller
Solo Project
Stephanie Sherga
Hans Gieles
Vous Etes Ici Gallery Amsterdam
Martijn Schuppers
Olivier Houg Galerie Lyon
Mathias Schmied

Joanne Mattera: Art Basel Miami Coverage

The Basel Miami Fair(s) covered from head to toe by Joanne Mattera. Almost all of ‘em. Mattera, a painter, does an excellent job. Check out her comments and images. at the Joanne Mattera Art Blog.

Her blog is a multipart report, one post per venue plus the prologue. The entries are posted sequentially, and as Joanna says, “There is a narrative to my reporting, so I hope you'll follow it through to the end.”

“By all accounts the mood going into Miami was wary. Dealers in general were fearful that the bubble was about to burst, and the smaller dealers were concerned that the greater number of satellite fairs this year would dilute their sales. Apparently the big guns had no problems; Gagosian sold $10 million worth of art, according to Bloomberg News. Among the smaller galleries in the satellite fairs, the mood lifted as sales began to rack up. Many smaller galleries sold out, and most at least broke even. The mood going out was simply weary.”
Continue reading here.

Steve Litsios: ‘Art’ Unlimited, from the Battle to the Consensus

I just had to laugh: a lottery had been organized in a nearby town at the soccer field which had been divided into 4000 lots. Two cows were set free and the winner was the owner of the lot that received the first cowpie.

What would have happen if both cows had discharged their waste matter at the same time? One can only wonder. This little newspaper conveyed tidbit was titled “The dumbest game of the year”, probably because of the only cited comment by a spectator: “Still, it's really dumb to come to the soccer field to watch a cow!”.

And yet with Basel Art the main event of that same weekend my mind couldn't help but to consider what a fine work of art the lottery, cows and soccer field would have made both symbolically and visually.
The field, with it's 4000 square grid, the cows messing up the chalk, the crowd, the hope and desire, the opportunity of the cowpie...

Basel Art: I am forced to admit here that I didn't go even if I could almost think I did the Swiss media having bombarded us with a unheard of quantity of pictures and superlatives for over two weeks proceeding the event, not to mention during. Certainly as an artist I should have gone and fed my soul with what was acclaimed as the world's best art, and yet...

Interestingly, Monday's (June 18th 2007) paper had an article by Laurent Wolf, a culture critic with the Swiss daily Le Temps and an often subtle observer of culture and society, in which he questions the artistic stakes of the fair and states his feeling of art being at the end/beginning of a cycle. An interesting read if you know French, I don't no how long it will remain available:
Art Basel: from the battle to the consensus (my translation).

For those who do not speak French the subtitle pretty much sums it up:

"During one week, the 38th fair of Basel and its satellites brushed the portrait of a pacified contemporary art which no longer believes in its absolute power and has replaced changing the world with contemplation."

Starting with the fair's statistics, he mentions the expenses the art merchants has to participate and asks: “For them, the economic venture is considerable, but what about the artistic consequences?” and then writes:

“Art Basel and its Satellite fairs are the reflection of the world artistic production dealt with by sufficiently rich intermediaries to enter the international market.” commenting that only Africa (honored by the Venice biennale) was under represented “... Otherwise, there is no rupture with what is visible with this Biennial or the Documenta of Kassel, Art Basel now has a position of prescriber”.

Explaining in what ways today's art world differs from the fair's first edition thirty-eight years ago when Venice and Kassel were the only places of world exposure and the market was divided by region, he describes the artistic landscape then as a battlefield between “art such as one still conceived it with leaving the Second World war and that of a new generation which made fire of all wood, shocking performances, broke and crushed objects or machines, and engulfed on new visual technologies with greed”. And how painting paid the price of this battle.

This is no longer the case it would seem since: “It's been a long time since there has been so much painting shown and never has the relationship between the paintings and the other modes of expression appeared so obvious and peaceful One explores the same topics, uses the same motifs ... Apparently, in art like elsewhere, it is no longer question of changing the world but to look it such as it is, to interpret it sometimes with a little revolt, more often with panic or even a peel of melancholy. Art did not become completely consensual, it ceased being aggressive. As if the artists no longer dared to say that they hold the truth (those still fighting are rare, perhaps that makes them all the more valuable and perhaps they belong to the past)”.

The article ends by describing the cycles within art history which the author feels are at their end: that of the conflict between the artists and their silent partners which started in the second half of the XIXth century with the Salon des Refusés - that of the technical innovations which started at the beginning of the 20th century - the bursting of artistic modes of expression these last fifty years, and a long cycle which covers them all: the belief in the power of art and artists.

“What will replace this vision? The 38th edition of Art Basel does not bring an answer, except that of the beginning of a new cycle.”

Litsios Website: http://steve.litsios.org/

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