Art Basel, Miami Beach is, supremely, a market-place. You walk into the exhibition halls at Untitled, Scope and the Miami Convention Center, and walk around the spaces with your list, knowing exactly what you want to buy. Like any instinctive shopper you are always open to a new experience but in the main your meal will be what you anticipated it would be.
If, of course, this was all for people just to look who could complain at this rich and varied experience. From Kitsch to Picasso, from Koon knock-offs to the salesman himself it is all here. But somehow, exactly like your bag of potatoes being the same weight today as it was yesterday, with exactly the same distribution of size and shape, so the objects being sold are overwhelmingly devoid of serious thinking, derivative of process and so desperate to be new, the makers (you cannot call them artists without a smile) devolve to any rehash of any idea with the lacquer of a new material or politically correct pointers to suffering.
What does it say of a nation that Johannesburg chose to show photographs of people, in all shapes and in many manners, while New York showed a series of dirty and repainted fuel cans? The former relishing the image, discussing what their people are, the latter showing what corrupting the status of the individual does to a society. So many things were shiny, so many things were ‘ethnic’ for the sake of being ethnic. Above all, so many things were there so the collectors could find exactly the right object for the space on the wall or the bare patch on the floor.
The most beauty I saw on display was the elegance of so many of the women walking around. More works of art were wearing dresses than were displayed in almost all the gallery booths.
Basel Miami Beach is not about art. You could see all the art on display in one afternoon, you didn’t need a week. It was all about trading goods and providing a financial service. And when you traduce art to goods you rip out the heart of your culture.
We know images play a crucial and deep role in the human brain. We know people have and do worship images. When you dally with images you play with a peoples sense of themselves. You don’t just end up with a bad meal. It is the degeneration of your culture to pretend that what rich people trade with each other still is, in fact, a statement of nationhood and its identity.
It no longer is.
Art and Art Basel are two, distinct creations. They only look similar.
Daniel Nanavati
Art Basel is becoming a household word just like KFC and McDonald’s, soon coming to a city near you. They are trying to take over the planet with prefabricated art in Basel, Miami and Hong Kong while expanding their outreach with Art Basel Cities to Buenos Aires. Where will their tentacles envelop next? They say in their website, their goal is to “bring the international artworld together”. Really? It’s interesting that it all started in Switzerland, home to the famous Swiss banks. “The Tax Justice Network’s study found Switzerland to be the “global capital of bank secrecy” while it placed the United States in second place because its share of global offshore financial services has increased steadily. … Other countries that were ranked among the most significant secretive centers included the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Germany. Hong Kong and Singapore were also among the top 10.” Could there possibly be a connection?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finance-secrecy-index/global-study-names-switzerland-as-capital-of-bank-secrecy-idUSKBN1FJ2I0
As with government, the issue is money – how to distribute it to keep most people happy most contented. The US and the UK seem to be flirting with self-destruct. In that, the current system is in a log jam and anger is rising with the now and recent globalized world centralized wealth. Art history teaches that art follows wealth and power-seeking patronage. Of course, the dream remains of the independent artist, ‘The Van Gogh or Rembrandt syndrome’, who has graduated through modern media into “Significant artists”. Daniel Nanavati writing in the New art Examiner wrote a far-sighted commentary on international art fairs or trade shows. The art world is shaped and dominated by media, and secrecy is essential. It has always protected wealth.
Hi Daniel,
What do you think of the idea of putting on display a £3.6 million painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in a doctor’s surgery in East Yorkshire “as part of a scheme to display art in “unexpected venues”? I would value your opinion on this.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-48119768
I think it would be wonderful if we had such a culturally literate society that masterpieces could be borrowed by anyone to put on their walls no matter how much they had in the bank, so for me if the paintings will be valued then they should be everywhere.