Judd Tully heard this comment:
“I’ve never had an art fair like this before,” said Jane Kallir. “It’s as if they’re drunk or eaten something that’s made them mad. I’m up late all night writing invoices.”
Carol Vogel spoke to a few folks at ArtBasel:
“I’ve been coming here since the 1980s, when dealers would bring works they couldn’t sell in their galleries,” said Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “Now these dealers are like museum curators, working for months on their installations.”
Scott Reyburn made another round of the halls:
“With regulators turning their attention to tax havens, we’re seeing more and more money released into art,” the New York-based adviser Todd Levin said. “What we’re witnessing is a melt-up of the market.”
Mary Lane is stalking the stalls for the WSJ and tweeted this sales report:
Scott Reyburn had these dealer observations for Bloomberg:
“The mood is buoyant and collectors are feeling flush again,” the New York-based adviser Mary Hoeveler said. “The success of the recent auctions has given them more confidence in the market. That said, buyers should be cautious about paying inflated prices in the excitement of the moment.”
“It’s only the rarest pieces that are fetching extraordinary sums,” the New York dealer Dominique Levy — formerly the “L” in L & M Arts — said in an interview. “The rest is performing in-market. We’re seeing new buyers at the highest level. Some have come out of Old Masters and Impressionism.”
BASEL REPORT: Massive Sales of Magritte, Marden, and More (Artinfo)
At ArtBasel, an Unslaked Thirst for Buying (NYTimes)
Picasso, Magritte to Tempt VIPs at $2 Billion Art Basel (Bloomberg)
DiCaprio Browses as $12 Million Calder Sells at Art Basel (Bloomberg)
