Artnet: Art Basel, Some Of The Best Examples This Year

Interesting article. If they can get away with charging those prices and people are willing to pay them then more power to them lol.

Mark,

Prices of $50k for an original painting are not really investment oriented. It can become an investment later if the artist's work appreciates. Most probably will depreciate.

Prices come and go.

We have an 1880 Upright Steinway in our family. Selling it would be a nightmare trying to get a good price. A new piano from Steinway probably goes for more. The sound board which is the main thing giving the piano value is in perfect shape from 1880. Does not really matter.

The first image on that link is Post Modern. The shape of the substrate is very 1980, the image 1917, the new work of art 2018. I like it a lot.

Dave

I know but $14,000,000 for one of the works I saw seems a little insane lol...but I'm not a collector so maybe it's just me. But like I said if they can get those prices then good for them!

The artist now diseased was second generation AbEx. She is hot right now for whatever reasons.

I agree $14 million for a second generation artist is ridiculous IN MY opinion.

But hey if the auctioneers can get it more power to them.

People can lose plenty of money in any investment.

Dave

Invest in Joy & Inspiration. Buy art you love.

Bill Tomsa

https://billtomsa.blogspot.com/

Bill,

A little marketing? This is about Art Basel artists.

Actually more substantially about the article is the focus on female artists at Art Basel.

Dave

Actually the focus is on the best art, who, in the writer's opinion, just happen to be produced by females that YOU noted. The writer made no mention.

Marlene,

I do not get that last part, "the writer made no mention"? Mention of what?

The title of the article is tongue in cheek. As the writer says his picks are 'just a sampling of the best works on view at the fair".

Snippet:
Andrew Goldstein:

"It remains to be seen whether 2018 will indeed be the Year of the Woman at the polls, but it certainly is at Art Basel, where booth after booth features work by female artists—both established and lesser known—who are unabashedly going for the knockout punch. Not so long ago, you could tour the fair and see artwork after artwork featuring naked women, all served up like canapés; turn a corner now and you’ll find a statement piece that may make you rethink your gender assumptions, and fast.

Here is just a sampling of the best works on view at the fair, with a few men mixed in for parity’s sake."

My eyes started to glaze over with the black and white news headlines and then I really lost interest when I got to the pile of pollen. 'To each his/her own'.

Jim,

I had to look twice at the headlines. I was feeling like you and about to skip them, when one of them caught me. They are actually funny.

The pollen? I really could do without that. Pollen season just ended. I have been sick as a dog with it. I also think you have to be there to enjoy that. Even then I'd be avoiding it after what I just went through.

Dave

2018 is the Year of the Woman at Art Basel, so of course women are being spotlighted.

The Mitchell one for $14M really gives us a picture of the inside workings of art collecting. Another one of hers was sold for $9M just a month earlier... so yeah, let's jack up this one $5M and see if we can get it. I guess "It's worth what someone will pay" is true. All due respect to Ms. Mitchell as a long-standing and selling artist, but I do not like this work. I didn't see anything that was earth-shaking for me, and I wonder what the criteria is for showing at Art Basel. I must go research :)

Don't really care for any of them, except for that owl in the first photo. I really dislike body parts in art, and that includes hair, fur or -- haha, pollen! Wow, that was weird. The signage "art" is just dumb.

Dave,
The headline piece might work as a (mildly) humorous meme, but not as a piece of art and certainly not as a $200,000 piece of art. I am not a believer in the school of 'art is whatever you call art'. If 'art is what you can get away with', next year Art Basel will have potted Basil Plants as art. I'm rooting some cuttings from my garden in preparation. Ha!

I like it all to some degree, except for the typography which I think ran its course with the instagram guy.

The prices are laughable to me. 9 mil for a weird boob lamp? yea, no thanks. Clearly I'm not the target audience.

Joy,

The requirements? A gallery willing to spend to push an artist's nonsense. Nothing more.

Patricia, et al,

Of course the signage or memes or news headlines are old hat. So is any art that gets top dollar. LOL

Jim,

I reject the modernists. Always have since the mid 1980s. Big part of why I did not become an artist right after college.

I will use a modernist concept, but I engage it very differently to go back into a rectangular framed print anyone would hang on their wall without being completely duped by the naked emperor.

Cynthia,

You are in good company not being part of the target audience. Means you wont lose crazy money.

But it would be nice for any of us to have crazy money first. LOL

Dave


PS Jim, I specifically reject modernist after WW II. I love the pre War Modernists.