ArtBasel opens tomorrow. In the meantime, the crowd is settling into to town, traipsing around Liste and generally musing on the state of the art market. Here are a few quotes from Katya Kazakina on Bloomberg:
- “Interest rates are so low that people have so much money they don’t know what to do with it,” said Robert Landau, owner of Landau Fine Art, which is offering a $30 million Pablo Picasso painting. He said one of his clients is a 37-year-old man who retired after earning a fortune and is “sailing around the world and buying paintings to put on the boat.”
- “When people see auction prices they think everything we have is very cheap,” said Landau, owner of the Montreal and Meggen, Switzerland-based gallery. “The auctions are helping us. They are raising prices on everything.”
- “People who are buying at auction are unlikely to buy through galleries,” said Paul Gray, director of Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago and New York. Asian collectors, who have been big buyers at recent auctions, are particularly finicky, he said. “They are extremely brand conscious,” Gray said. “It’s not just the artists. It’s also the Sotheby’s and Christie’s provenance.”
- “I’ve been through at least 25 packing lists and I have seen very few ‘Oh my God’ pieces,” said Todd Levin, director of Levin Art Group, whose clients have included Leonardo DiCaprio and hedge fund manager Adam Sender. “It seems harder to fill the booths.”
Gilded Age of Art Draws Billionaires to $3.4 Billion Basel Fair (Bloomberg Business)
