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• Issue #194
• Article

By Paula Chamlee

I noticed a plethora of Kurt Schwitters collages, along with Joan Mitchell and Alex Katz paintings in many galleries this year. I had noticed a preponderance of a couple of other artists last year, Joan Miró and Richard Pousette-Dart, but who had more limited representation this year. I asked one of the gallery owners, how does this happen? Do you discuss this with other galleries before coming to the show each year? To which she responded, "It is a curious coincidence that this happens each year, and we think it's quite strange, too." I was told that they do not discuss these things with other galleries when deciding what to bring.

Noteworthy works that were exceptional and inspiring (to me) throughout the show:

Matthew Marks (N.Y. & L.A.) showed two Brice Marden works, black ink on richly painted green paper, 2009-2012, and a black, gray and white oil on linen window study, 1985.

Washburn Gallery (New York) showed several works by Jackson Pollock--in particular, a fine set of six screen prints, Ed. 6/30, 1951, for $1,200,000. Prices for works are generally not shown on wall labels at Art Basel, although there are a few exceptions, mostly in the photography section.

Nolan Gallery (New York) showed "Fence," 1977 by Richard Artschwager--a large intricate, complex, and abstract graphite drawing; Galerie Michael Haas (Berlin) showed a haunting red painting, "Tango," 1983, by Mimmo Paladino, and a beautiful Marini sculpture, the stylized "Cavallo," 1952.

Stevenson Gallery (Cape Town & Johannesburg) showed several extraordinary pieces by little-known Ernest Mancoba who became part of the CoBrA group in the late 1940s, having moved to Europe from South Africa and who painted fields of marks that became stunning abstractions at a time when his contemporaries in Africa were devoted to figurative art. I found them to be very lively and evocative.

New Art Centre (Salisbury) showed a wide selection of Edmund de Waal porcelain vessels, all of which are delicately made, elegantly and perfectly proportioned and presented in precise arrangements within their varied boxes, shelved frames and vitrines. Outstanding pieces.

Galerie St. Etienne (New York) featured drawings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, Kokoschka, along with Emil Nolde watercolors. An Egon Schiele watercolor drawing called "Waves" was particularly elegant and inspiring as the minimal gesture of his brush felt solid, yet floating on air. Schiele drawings were also shown at Nagy gallery (London).

Mark Rothko's orange and pink painting "Untitled," 1954, at $78 million was exhibited at Marlborough (N.Y., London, Barcelona, Madrid, et al) with its personal security guard at its side. Happily, I was allowed to stand within inches of this wonderful painting, as I am in awe of the great complexity, yet apparent simplicity, of Rothko's powerful, vibrating color works from this period (1949-1969). I read in the daily (for the fair) The Art Newspaper that there were three buyers from different countries making offers on it. Marlborough also showed three fine Frank Auerbach's from 2010 and 2011 that caught my eye.

In Galleria Tega (Milan) there were several Lucio Fontana pierced earthenware objects, also Pomodoro bronzes that inspired through the exquisite handling of their very different surfaces.

Gagosian (11 galleries in 8 countries) was one of the very few galleries to eschew wall labels of any kind. One feels that if you don't know all their artists and their mediums, you don't need to be there. Although I did recognize most of them, I found the lack of accessible information to be unkind to a general audience. The gallery nearby, Thomas Ammann, Zurich, practiced the same. Contagious?

Galerie Henze-Ketterer, Bern and Basel, presented a solo exhibition of some terrific Ernst Ludwig Kirchner paintings from 1926, 1929 and the 1930s, oils and watercolors I've not seen before. Henze-Ketterer family members are executors of the Kirchner estate and work closely with the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Foundation.

Bernard Jacobson Gallery (London & New York) brought an entire show called "A Century of Collage" that featured small works by Schwitters, Asger Jorn, Louise Nevelson and Robert Motherwell, among others. Collage is a particularly difficult medium and I am always looking to learn from these masters.

At Lelong Gallery (Paris, NY, and Zürich) Jaum Plensa was off the wall this year with "Blind Angel, 2012," a voluminous piece hung high above one's head and positioned parallel to the floor defying gravity as he hovered over us; also at Lelong was a huge and impressive three-part Carrara marble sculpture in black and white, 2007, by Luciano Fabro, and a Petah Coyne installation of her darkly beautiful, suspended cluster of taxidermy birds and black roses, a larger version of which I had recently seen in Kansas City at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

At Mitchell-Innes and Nash (New York) was a perfectly elegant and small wood and metal stabile from 1935 by Alexander Calder, which I overheard the gallery owner offering to a client for a mere $5,750,000; Helly Nahmed (New York) also offered a stabile by Calder, "Trepied" 1972, for $9.5 million, and showed outstanding Giorgio Morandi paintings and Giocometti sculptures; at Greve (St. Moritz, Cologne, & Paris) was a small lovely Morandi watercolor, "Paesaggio," 1957, also three photographs by Mimmo Jodice.

A large color lithograph of geometric forms by Moholy-Nagy was at Jörg Maass (Berlin). Annemarie Verna (Zürich) showed elegant minimal works, featuring Fred Sandback's precise spatial arrangements in thin lines on painted canvas and string sculptures, also Richard Tuttle's thin wire sculptures. It is always a treat to peruse Landau (Montreal) with their exemplary works from their stable of international modern 20th century masters.

It was a surprise at Galerie Caratsch (Zürich & St. Moritz) where the gallery showed an entire room of only de Chirico self-portraits, all of which were quite strange and very unlike most of his other paintings.

Galerie Hans Meyer (Düsseldorf) showed another strangely compelling, but fascinating eight-piece, motorized installation, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," 1985, by Jean Tinguely. The gallery also had on display an excellent Robert Longo monumental charcoal triptych. Robert Longo draws with charcoal in ways that seem impossible. The ever-ambitious Anselm Kiefer's three-dimensional boat, 2006, attached to a wall-sized painting also vied for amazing at GalerieThomas (Münich).

Galerie Anhava (Helsinki) showed a mesmerizing sculptural installation by Finnish artist duo Tommi Grönlund and Petteri Nisunen of tiny steel balls (many thousands) on a long thin aluminum seesaw that moved imperceptibly to activate the movement slowly from end to end, recalling waves in slow motion while making an alluring sound. They work with technology, sound, and light "that address issues of space and physical phenomena."

Galería Joan Prats (Barcelona) showed "Local Library," Aleksandra Mir's room-size installation that "...sits comfortably between sculpture and furniture. She refers to her objects as 'comfort pieces for the digital age,'" and they are all pieces of carefully selected wood from 20 species in the form of books and bookshelves where every piece is different and has its own "story" to tell. She is also reversing the book-making process. Thoughtful and beautiful.

I was impressed and inspired by an artist heretofore unknown to me, the German painter Julius Bissier whose small works on paper were represented at both Carzaniga (Basel) and Alice Pauli (Lausanne). But, if only one painting left me completely smitten, it was Harvey Quaytman's "Handstand Horizons," 1993, acrylic and rust on canvas, at McKee Gallery (New York). It was minimal, abstract, alluring, precise and somehow perfect. It is a great achievement to make the complex look simple, yet be as endlessly engaging as this Quaytman painting.

On the entertainment side, one can see and experience some memorable, if not strange, things at Art Basel. Gallery Sean Kelly (New York) featured a re-creation of Marina Abramovíc's 1977/2010 Imponderabilia, a performance of a completely naked man and woman staring at each other without expression or movement while visitors entered the gallery through the narrow passage between them--without touching please. (There was another entry for the less brave.) Sadly, I got there between performance shifts and missed what might have been the best part of this gallery.

Though there were many works in the main hall (Hall 2) that were shallow in both concept and execution under the heading of "contemporary," it was in Hall 1 and Art Unlimited that novelty and outrageous works overshadowed high quality. Art Unlimited (with a different curator this year) is the space reserved for massive installations along with smaller works, many of which are temporal and created specifically for each year's show--a total of 61 juried projects this year. As stated from the catalog: "Art Unlimited…emphasizes the disparities between strong individual positions, providing an array of freedoms in the process." Sounds okay.

There was, however, an abundance of superficial ideas that were without vision or soul, and so many statements and descriptions of those works that did not illuminate the work, but were primarily "art speak." I still believe that it is not enough for an artist to be merely clever. Last year there were many challenging, yet exciting and substantial works. Though it was decidedly a disappointment this year, there were some things that were memorable in a good way:

--Gladstone Gallery featured Damián Ortega's "Architecture without Architects," 2010, a life-size three-story house without walls and with every item in correct proportion and all suspended--witty and fantastical. Yes, Hall 1 is really big.

--Gallery Mai 36 (Zürich) presented "ma.r.s.13," 2011, a 344x250 cm C-print by Thomas Ruff who transformed a NASA image "…as if one were a traveler looking at the planet Mars from an airplane."

--Laura Owens, Galleries Brown (New York), Capitain (Cologne), & Coles (London) showed an ambitious 92 square paintings/collages, all related to clocks, but most interesting were her 51 sketch books, all hand bound, all very different from each other, and all available to touch and peruse, and good to look at.

--Pace Gallery (New York) represented Robert Irwin's "All That Jazz," 2011, a long sculpture with light, shadow, reflection, and color: "…an experiment with the perceptual qualities of light, playing with rhythm, texture, densities, temperature, and chromatic relationships."

Finally, it was somewhat entertaining to arrive at a doorway ("Please remain quiet at the doorway") into a room with only a Persian rug and an unmoving dog. Was he dead? Was he sleeping? After considerable time, a woman appeared from an unseen corner, walked over, petted the dog (still unmoving), attached a leash, stood silently, gave a very subtle command and the dog leapt to life and walked out the door. This work by Nina Beier, who lives and works in Berlin, comes in an edition of three. With the dog?

Art Basel has been called the summer reunion of the international art world. It showcases every form of artistic expression and hosts a premier selection of the most influential and cutting-edge galleries from around the world. The weather in Switzerland is beautiful in June. Go if you can--it's worth it. Take comfortable shoes.

About the Author

Paula Chamlee is a photographer and painter living in Bucks County, PA. Her photographs are collected in over 35 museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and are in innumerable private collections. Six monographs of her photographs have been published. She has taught workshops in photography in the United States, Austria, Germany, Tuscany, France, England, Iceland, and Australia, and has many exhibitions in the works.

She is co-owner of Lodima Press along with her husband, photographer Michael A. Smith, and they have published the photographs of many notable photographers.

Chamlee is currently working on her newest book, "Iceland: A Personal View", which will be published in spring of 2013.

Paula Chamlee is a photographer and painter living in Bucks County, PA. Her photographs are collected in over 35 museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and are in innumerable private collections. Six monographs of her photographs have been published. She has taught workshops in photography in the United States, Austria, Germany, Tuscany, France, England, Iceland, and Australia, and has many exhibitions in the works.

She is co-owner of Lodima Press along with her husband, photographer Michael A. Smith, and they have published the photographs of many notable photographers.

Chamlee is currently working on her newest book, "Iceland: A Personal View", which will be published in spring of 2013.