Cathryn Drake went to Arte Fiera Bologna for ArtForum’s Scene and Herd:
Italy was hit relatively late, and less in extremis, by the world financial bust, and in Bologna—its richest as well as most Communist city—the art market is still healthy. Thursday’s preview commenced at noon and was unnervingly quiet until around 5 PM, when collectors were suddenly streaming through the aisles. Italians are prudent buyers who mostly invest in midpriced known quantities or blue-chip classics. And that is the beauty of the behemoth Bologna beast: You find everything from modern to contemporary and what are referred to as “contemporary classics.” (For example, the tony Tornabuoni Arte booth featured a kelly-green Lucio Fontana, Alighiero Boetti’s Mettere al mondo il mondo, and a four-million-dollar 1984 Basquiat.) The downside for foreigners is that Arte Fiera is something of a national club. Greek dealer Arsen Kalfayan noted that Italian collectors don’t talk to you unless they already know you. “It seems like a closed system,” SF MoMA curator Rudolf Frieling observed. “So Italian. Always the same artists.”
Bologna Process (ArtForum)
