🎎 Read Day 2 of the Basel Diary here 🎎
🐮 Read Day 1 of the Basel Diary here 🐮
🛶 Read SKC on Gaddafi and Berlusconi in Venice here 🛶
The Basel Diary Series is daily reportage from the Basel art fairs from June 9th to June 18th for the Season 4 Episode 6 vertical. The gallery will be exhibiting at Basel Social Club from June 9 - 16.
The farmer couldn’t believe how nice the weather was. “I woke up at four a.m. to blue skies, thought I was dreaming, and went back to sleep – but it was true!” he told me. “I’m just glad everyone can have a nice time,” he said with pride, but “nice time” wasn’t what I was thinking as the sun beat down on me in my typical art-world black sweater. My thoughts were closer to “fuck.”
After a brisk few days the sun had come out in full force. This was not helped by my wearing another jacket over my sweater, trying to be prepared for the swift changes in weather that had defined the last few days. Showers had been predicted in the evening. I quickly became, both literally and figuratively, a hot mess. I spent much of the early afternoon seeking out shade, moving as infrequently as my need for food, drinks, or feigned interest in a visitor allowed for.
Now that the larger fairs were in full swing, a constant stream of art people could be found ambling around the fields – an institutional curator here, a lost gallerist or collector there. I overheard a collector describe that he had “just caught a ride to Basel,” by which he had meant he had landed that morning on a private plane, so I knew Art Basel had well and truly arrived. And while this kind of inauguration can be followed by swift disappointment, initial news from Liste was positive, so the atmosphere stayed buoyant, if only by proximity. When offered a table at the private dinner service that evening in the Hof, I said yes – the beer, if not cheap, was readily available, and sitting with a bunch of other art people seemed like a good way to get a crowd together for the parties later that night.
To his credit, Robbie Fitzpatrick, Basel Social Club’s director, is nothing if not a good host. Despite a minor snafu regarding dinner’s seating arrangements (my friend and I assumed seats meant for people far more glamorous than us) the dinner delivered what I understand Swiss food ought to: a full stomach and slight nausea caused by the sheer volume of dairy consumed.
Surreptitiously peering over at the table of advisors next to us, we tried to suss out the best time to leave for the Liste exhibitors party. Actually, that gives me too much credit; I’m not very subtle, so I probably gawked at them before we ended up getting bored and decided to leave. We weren’t exactly sure where it was, but deciding to follow the group averaging at least three facial piercings per person proved an inspired choice.
Inside the bar, an uncomfortable mix between a college dive and something resembling a respectable venue, house remixes of “Let It Be” thumped on the speakers. If that alone did not signal that my time there would be limited, the large puddle of urine on the floor of the men’s bathroom, what I assumed to be just poor aim instead of some kind of R. Mutt-urinal interventional riff, prodded me along. Outside, scattered among the (generally) satisfied galleries, a few aired their grievances, usually citing everything wrong with the fair before conceding they’d likely be back next year.
I would have felt worse had my wallet borne the brunt of this hanging around; fortunately we had the good sense to pack cheap beer bottles from the local kebab shop in our pockets. When the conversation about the fairs stalled, we veered into usual drunken nonsense, although in this context, with a nice art twist. I’m pretty sure I agreed to start a “Venice Biennale“ in Venice, Florida, and have been assured that the local retirement community will put their full weight behind it (if this artist who proposed that is reading this, I’m still down).
Eventually I just ran out of gas; it was two a.m. and another beer would have downed me. I found my host and called a cab home. I knew I should have cancelled that nine a.m. meeting the next day.