“We are witnessing a broadening of our collecting globally with new buyers entering the market, and securing a baseline of support for business alongside core audiences that continue to collect,” Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz said during a press conference. “At the same time, we recognize that the art market is undergoing a period of recalibration. … There is clearly a degree of caution in the market these days. However, I will say, given the energy in the halls today, that the art market is very much still here, and very strong.”

The fair’s opening teemed with people, and big sales seemed to follow. An untitled work by Ashile Gorky from 1946–47 sold for $16 million at Hauser & Wirth’s booth. Meanwhile, a Yayoi Kusama sculpture presented by David Zwirner in the Unlimited sector sold for $5 million.  

Museum directors and collectors, such as Charles Carmignac, Emma Lavigne, and Fabrice Hergott, were spotted walking by a new version of Agnes Denes’s Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1984). First shown in New York’s Financial District, the work reappeared at the fair as a long rectangular patch of wheat stems. Fairgoers could walk through a path cut into Denes’s Wheatfield, making it a hit early on.

Below, a look at the best art on offer at the 2024 edition of Art Basel Basel, which runs until June 16.

“We were all waiting. We were watching the auctions very intently, and they did well. We didn’t know how this was going to go,” Samanthe Rubell, the president of Pace, told ARTnews.

Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz similarly noted the art market’s “period of recalibration” and the atmosphere of caution these days. However, he said in a press conference that the energy of the crowd on Art Basel’s first day was evidence that “the market is very much still here, and very strong.”

Horowitz may not be far off. By the end of Tuesday, it was apparent that not only had the worst been averted, but there was enough sales activity to consider the day successful. Dealers told ARTnews with some surprise that, unlike previous years, more purchases were made in-person, rather via presale PDFs, suggesting a real desire to experience artworks in person and all that the fair and its surroundings have to offer.

Perhaps the most direct, and colorful, message about the market’s resilience was sent to press by Hauser & Wirth cofounder Iwan Wirth. “In spite of the ‘doom porn’ currently circulating in the art press and along gossip grapevines, we are very confident in the art market’s resilience and the first day of Art Basel has confirmed our perspective,” Wirth said in a statement.

“The advantage of the market returning to a more humane pace is that the most discerning international collectors are committing here and now to the very best of the best,” he continued.

There were certainly collectors galore taking advantage of that “more humane pace”—in other words, a time for good deals—including mega-collector Steve Cohen, who made the rounds with a colleague dressed in paraphernalia from the New York Mets, the baseball team Cohen bought in 2020. Despite Cohen’s prodigious art collection, he is not a usual sight at the fair.

Other dealers too were seeing some excitement in the air. By afternoon, news spread through the crowded halls that David Zwirner gallery had sold a Joan Mitchell diptych titled Sunflowers (1990–91), for $20 million. (ARTnews has heard disputing reports from well-placed sources that the actual selling price was closer to $18 million.)

“I would call that a very strong fair,” Zwirner told ARTnews, before pointing to works throughout the booth repeatedly saying “sold.” 

He continued, “And it really happened today. People want to see [the works], experience, talk about them. So, it’s happening here, much more this year than last year.”

Zwirner noted that, in some cases, advisers came on behalf of collectors from all over the world and used FaceTime or messaging to close deals.

“There’s been a narrative out there that the art market is weak and I feel like, when we do well, other galleries do well,” he said. “I assume this will be a very successful fair for the galleries. If the art market is not performing well in the auction environment, that’s one problem, but it’s certainly performing well right here.”

Zwirner also sold Gerhard Richter’s 2016 Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting) for $6 million, and Yayoi Kusama’s giant Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart (2023) for $5 million in the fair’s Unlimited section.

For what it’s worth, secondary market markups seemed more reasonable than usual. At Gagosian’s booth, an Ed Ruscha painting, Radio 1, which last sold at Sotheby’s in May of last year for $2.1 million, was on offer for $2.8 million. Also at Gagosian, Andy Warhol’s Hammer & Sickle (1976), which last sold at Sotheby’s in 2017 for $5.5 million, was on offer for $8.5 million.

“Overall, most galleries are better off today than they were in 2019,” Alex Forbes, the vice-president of galleries and fairs at Artsy, told ARTnews, referring to the last pre-pandemic fair. “It’s always important for folks to zoom out and take in the longer trend, rather than just focusing on year to year. In my view the art market in particular tends to respond to uncertainty more so than, necessarily, the ups and downs of the S& P 500.”

The European Central Bank’s decision to cut interest rates last week, offers some of that needed sense of stability, according to Forbes. ”I’m optimistic in the long run, particularly as we’re coming out of maybe the period of peak anxiety around possible runaway inflation,” he said.

Despite the top line successes, many dealers told ARTnews of a “slow down” in sales at the fair, with dealers taking longer to close sales and having to “work harder” with their clients to get pieces sold.

A New York–based art adviser who wished to remain anonymous told ARTnews that a market slump, and what she called “disastrous” auction sales, have given her access to excellent artworks that were out of reach a few years ago.

“They will call you up, and before they didn’t have the time, because they had like 50 people calling them,” she said. “They are doing a really good job. They are the only people in the art world who put their money where their mouth is, [and] they are working harder.” When asked, the adviser echoed others who said primary prices have not changed, or gone down, despite concerns they have gotten too high.

“We do the very best we can, and when things do get quieter, it’s always also a moment of opportunity of getting even closer to the relationships you have, and build more there,” Marc Payot, president and partner of Hauser & Wirth, told ARTnews, while nevertheless noting sales are taking more time at the fair.

Basel is the mega-gallery’s home turf, and it had one of the fair’s stronger presentations, including mostly works by women and two artists of color.

“We have always done well when the market was not as hot,” Payot said, because the slower pace allowed them to spend more time “building relationships” with clients and artists. Despite any market cooling, by day’s end, the gallery said it sold more works Tuesday than on the first day of the 2023 fair.

In terms of sales, Hauser & Wirth placed its most expensive work brought to the fair, Arshile Gorky’s, rare 1946–47 large work on paper, Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), for $16 million. The gallery also sold Jenny Holzer’s red granite benches to an Asian museum for an undisclosed sum, Blinky Palermo’s Ohne Titel (Untitled), from 1975, for $4 million, and Louise Bourgeois’s Woman with Packages (1987–93) marble sculpture for $3.5 million. Coinciding with their museum-caliber Vilhelm Hammershøi show in their new gallery space in Basel, a 1906 painting by the Danish painter, depicting a woman pinning up her loose hair, was sold for an undisclosed amount.

On Wednesday, the gallery reported selling the large Philip Guston painting Orders for $10 million, and Georgia O’Keeffe‘s serene white moonscape Sky with Moon for $13.5 million. (The price for the O’Keeffe is notable, considering that it sold for $3.5 million at Christie’s in 2018.)

“Almost everything was sold in-person today,” said Pace’s Rubell, calling the gallery’s first day at Basel “fantastic.”

She continued, “In years prior, there has been a good amount of pre-sales from previews, but this time we’re really trying to capture new interest, and this moment of suddenly engaging, and having that feedback and response—it’s really worked. The energy is very good.”

A sprawling Jean Dubuffet bench sculpture titled Banc-Salon, overhung with suspended kites, was a welcoming attraction for visitors who stopped at Pace’s booth. By early afternoon, the gallery had sold three editions of a total of six of them, priced at €800,000 ($860,000) each, in collaboration with Galerie Lelong & Co. 

Pace also sold its star Agnes Martin painting, Untitled #20 (1974), which last sold at auction in 2012 for $2.43 million. Though Pace would not share the price, a source told ARTnews that it was $14 million. In 2021, a similar work sold for $17 million at auction. Pieces by First Nation artist Emily Kam Kngwarray, whom the gallery recently took on, also sold: one for $250,000 and the other for $220,000. Kngwarray had a retrospective at Australia’s National Gallery, and next summer will be featured at Tate Modern in London.

Thaddaeus Ropac, which historically does not presell its offers, was humming early in the fair, with fast-paced sales from the get-go. “Like the old days,” one spokesperson told ARTnews. The gallery sold a major Robert Rauschenberg work from 1985 for $3.85 million, several editions of a Georg Baselitz bronze sculpture for €2 million each, along with other works by the artist, priced between €1.2 million and €1.8 million.

At White Cube, a Julie Mehretu painting from 1999 went for $6.75 million; it was last seen at auction six years ago, when it sold for $2.5 million. A “monumental” Mark Bradford, titled Clowns Travel Through Wires (2013), also sold for $4.5 million. Jeff Wall’s The Storyteller (1986) sold for $2.85 million, along with works by David Hammons, Tracey Emin, Gabriel Orozco, Antony Gormley, Howardena Pindell, and others. At the time of writing, the $1.75 million Richard Hunt sculpture and the $1.35 million Frank Bowling were not listed as sold.

“It’s neither the end of the world nor is it speculation,” Belgian collector Alain Servais told ARTnews. But that can make for a lack of newsy buzz. In fact, Servais says presales and a broader commercialization of the fair have helped sap the fair of its urgency so that, “the froth (or the buzz) is down, so the excesses are down, but you’re still selling.” Now, “80 percent of the reason I go to Basel is for the networking,” he added.

Others felt differently. Wishing away the preselling model is “nostalgia,” Madrid-based art adviser and curator Eva Ruiz, a friend of Servais, told ARTnews. She said she sees excitement in the way people share what they’ve seen and talk about in the early moments of the fair. “I still see collectors excited to be there the first day,” despite having seen a PDF in advance. “They still want to rush to see the work, and to be the first to buy,” she said.

As to whether Art Basel Paris might soon eclipse the Swiss fair, Ruiz said other regional fairs remain limited to their geographic locations. Basel is the exception. “Art Basel, Basel is seen as the prized, first art fair to visit,” she said, before adding that there is “room” for two European fairs. Americans, in particular, she said, are happy to come back to Europe for the Paris fair.

On the fair’s upper floor, where midsize and smaller galleries have their booths, New York’s Canada gallery featured color- and material-rich abstractions by Joan Snyder, which have attracted a lot of attention. They sold and reserved her pieces for $180,000 and $190,000. The artist is enjoying some overdue attention in her 80s, selling above estimates at auction and set for her first solo exhibition with Thaddaeus Ropac in November. Canada gallery also placed a 2013 painting by Joe Bradley for an undisclosed sum. Cofounder Phil Grauer agreed collectors were calculating and taking their time.

“They’ve got time, it’s not a rush,” he said. “But there’s still desire and interest and enthusiasm.”

But in 2002, when dealer Wendi Norris visited the British-born artist at her home in Mexico, Carrington was known primarily to Surrealism enthusiasts. One was the art historian Whitney Chadwick, who wrote what is now regarded as the most important book about female Surrealists (now in its second edition); Chadwick recommended that Norris seek out Carrington.

Norris, who was just getting her start as a dealer, followed Chadwick’s tip, expecting to spend just a few hours with the artist. She ended up chatting with Carrington all day—mostly about politics and literature, not art, as was Carrington’s preference. But because Norris did not initially come out of the art world, she brought a perspective to Carrington’s paintings that the artist prized.

“I don’t have an art history background. I have an economics background,” the San Francisco–based dealer told ARTnews, speaking by phone. “She really appreciated my way of viewing her paintings. She knew I was seeing something in a way that wasn’t through a scholarly lens, but in the way most people probably would.”

That first visit was the start of a friendship and business relationship between Norris and Carrington that lasted through the artist’s death in 2011, and continues to this day via her estate. In 2022, Norris’s gallery lent one of the five paintings by Carrington—Portrait of Madame Dupin (1949), featuring a lithe figure whose neck sprouts a flowering branch—that featured in the 2022 Venice Biennale. This week, her gallery will spotlight Carrington’s art once more, this time at Art Basel, the world’s most preeminent art fair, where Norris’s dealership is making its Swiss debut.

The booth will feature Portrait of Madame Dupin and other gems by Carrington, including one piece that includes text Carrington wrote backwards, so that it is only legible when a mirror is held to it. (“I think only Carrington and Leonardo da Vinci were able to do that,” Norris conjectured.) Dealers regularly bring older works to Art Basel, but these Carringtons are likely to be some of the most art historically important pieces at the fair this year.

Their presence in Norris’s booth testifies to her commitment to Surrealism, a movement which her gallery has quietly helped rewrite in the past decade. Although Norris’s gallery is not limited to Surrealism specifically, with contemporary artists such as Chitra Ganesh and María Magdalena Campos-Pons on her roster, it is shows for modernists such as Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Wolfgang Paalen, Alice Rahon, and Remedios Varo that have defined her programming. Norris has been exhibiting these artists for over a decade, but only recently have they begun appearing regularly in blockbuster exhibitions that reassess Surrealism, often by adding more women and non-European artists to the movement’s canon.

But, Norris said, “I didn’t start out wanting to represent Surrealists.” In fact, she didn’t start out in the art world at all.

While studying economics during the ’90s, she spent time abroad in Madrid, where she was given the option to take one class outside her chosen discipline. She chose to take an art history course, and as part of it, she visited the Prado. “I remember just standing in front of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas,” she recalled. “I had goosebumps.”

Though she had a strong attachment to art, Norris continued to pursue a business career, graduating in 1996 from Georgetown University with an MBA and soon taking a job as a Paris-based director of strategic planning for the biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb. After that, she worked for several years at Scale Eight, which she recalls as a “really geeky data storage company that was probably ahead of its time.”

Then the dot-com bubble burst, and Norris sought a new direction. “I decided I needed to change what I was doing and do something that I loved, and I just kind of came to it naturally,” Norris said of her transition to the art world. “I had no real idea about the art industry—and it is an industry. Thankfully, I had a business background where I analyzed industries, so I was able to get a sense of it. But it took a while.” She went on to open her eponymous gallery in 2002.

Gallerists are generally not fond of talking publicly about their businesses in percentages and numbers, but Norris credits her business background with making her comfortable with doing just that. In 2017, amid a wave of gallery closures, Norris made the decision to turn her space nomadic, staging shows beyond one base in San Francisco. In an Artsy op-ed, she said that “less than 10 percent” of the gallery’s sales were actually done in its space in San Francisco. “The data,” she wrote, “is not adding up for me or for my artists with respect to maintaining a stationary gallery space.”

It was a gamble, and Norris said it paid off. Through the offsite program, she has staged shows by Carrington and Varo in New York. The Carrington one, held in 2019, ended up in New York Times critic Roberta Smith’s list of the top art shows of the year. The Museum of Modern Art bought a Carrington painting from that show that now hangs in the institution’s Surrealism gallery.

Since the pandemic, however, most of Norris’s shows have been staged in San Francisco, whether at the gallery’s headquarters or elsewhere in the city. She said she is now more focused on “helping my artists realize their visions and meeting them where they are.”

And part of that project has been finding unusual forms of crossover between her Surrealists and the contemporary artists she represents.

Norris said that María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who recently had a Brooklyn Museum survey, joined the gallery in the first place because it had shown work by Remedios Varo, a Spanish-born Surrealist who made a name for herself in Mexico. Campos-Pons’s first show was with Norris’s gallery in 2017; the catalogue for her 2023 Brooklyn show ended up featuring a reproduction of a Varo painting within its first few pages.

Last year, Campos-Pons won a MacArthur “genius” award, a moment that Norris has continued to celebrate alongside the record-breaking Sotheby’s sale of the Carrington painting earlier this year. “I want to continue to be the catalyst for these momentous art moments for each and every one of my artists,” Norris said.

The 172,000-square-foot hall reserved for Unlimited is currently home to 76 projects and live performances by Seba Calfuqueo, Resto Pulfer, and Anna Uddenberg and others. Giovanni Carmine, director of the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in Switzerland, has curated this edition of Unlimited, which, for the first time ever, will also feature a People’s Pick award, selected by visitors themselves. A winner will be announced by the end of the week after the votes are tallied.

There is no shortage of old works that have returned to view here: Wu Tien-Chang’s Farewell, Spring and Autumn, which appeared in the Taiwanese Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale; Christo’s 2014 recreation of his 1963 wrapped Volkswagen; a 153-foot-long Keith Haring frieze from 1984; a reactivation of Carl Andre’s 1988 Körners Repose, consisting 50 floor units. But fear not, there are new works here, too.

Below, a look at some of the best and most impressive works on view in Art Basel’s Unlimited section.

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From the Archives: Read What ARTnews Critics Said About Robert Mapplethorpe

LGBTQ+ Artists Having Institutional Shows This Pride Month

“Robert was smart with his board because he knew that appointing family members or life partners who can make emotional decisions is not always great to manage an artist’s legacy,”lawyer and Mapplethorpe Foundation president Michael Stout told ARTnews. Mapplethorpe instead assembled a board with professional specialties in both law (Stout is a copyright expert) and photography to shape the future and legacy of his impressive oeuvre.

Stout estimates that Mapplethorpe left behind approximately 14,000 prints, made from around 2,000 negatives, as well as a smaller number of sculptural objects and Polaroids. And in recent years, the management of the artist’s legacy has become an intricate feat: 15 galleries around the world manage the sales from the estate based on their respective geography. Gladstone Gallery, Morán Morán and Olga Korper Gallery are among the five in charge in North America; in Europe, Xavier Hufkins Gallery, Thaddaeus Ropac, Alison Jacques Gallery, and Galerie Thomas Schulte are half of the eight galleries holding representation deals; Brazil’s Galeria Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel manages the South American demand; and the Asian market is handled by Seoul’s Kukje Gallery.

At Art Basel next week, Gladstone Gallery, Ropac, and Alison Jacques will each have a Mapplethorpe work on offer. There’s also various institutional shows each year and brand partnerships, like those with Uniqlo, Chrome Hearts, and Honey Fucking Dijon, who license Mapplethorpe’s images. In its earliest days, the foundation only licensed paper-based products, such as postcards, calendars, and posters. “There was no way we could know if Robert would like a Chrome Hearts leather jacket, but we did it, as many artists started making licensing deals,” Stout added.

“We have to make careful decisions about licensing and act meticulously about publishing because books do survive,” Stout said. “They are not as popular in terms of sales anymore with everything being online, but Robert knew it was important to have them and he did an awful lot of books with different publishers.” He also added that the foundation’s trustees have reached a consensus of being “conservative about licensing” and that they aim “to make decisions that we thought he would have made.”

In addition to its management of Mapplethorpe’s art, the foundation has a lesser-known remit, acting as a grant-giving entity invested in supporting HIV research. “We largely depend on gallery sales, and running a photographer’s estate is more challenging than a painter’s,” he said about the given vast difference in pricing for the two mediums.

Mapplethorpe’s intriguingly enigmatic visual lexicon however has perhaps been more popular than ever in recent years. The first quarter of 2024 has so far seen four solo gallery exhibitions for the photographer: at London’s Alison Jacques, Gladstone in New York, Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, and Morán Morán in Los Angeles, as well as a three-artist show, with Ann Craven and Mohammed Z. Rahman, at Phillida Reid in London. The Paris and LA shows both had high-profile curators: fashion editor Edward Enninful and artist Jacolby Satterwhite, respectively. Last month, the Currier Museum of Art in New Hampshire opened the exhibition Filippo de Pisis and Robert Mapplethorpe which places the photographer’s work in conversation with that of the 20th-century Italian painter. Their mutual fascination with flowers anchors the show, which features 38 photographs, all on loan from the foundation. 

The Gladstone show, which closed in April at the gallery’s Upper East Side outpost, sought to shine a light on a lesser-known part of Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre, his three-dimensional assemblages and photographs in sculptural frames. The exhibition benefitted from the gallery space’s former life as a townhouse, as the installation conveyed a demure blend of theatricality and domesticity. His ca. 1972 Untitled (Coat Rack Sculpture), for example, occupied a corner with a lit lightbulb (in lieu of a coat) adjacent to a black-and-white photograph of artist Jay Johnson in which the same sculpture appears next to Johnson’s nude body. In front of a backyard-facing window was Open Book (1974), a large aluminum floor structure in which a quartet of photographs of penises sit above a sleek triangular base.

The recent Gladstone show followed the Guggenheim Museum’s year-long exhibition “Implicit Tensions” (2019), which presented a considerable group of Mapplethorpe’s mixed-media constructions for the first time. The ambitious undertaking was an extension of the foundation’s gift of 194 artworks to the Guggenheim in 1993, which also established a photography department at the museum and a gallery named in the late photographer’s honor.

“Before Mapplethorpe, photography frames were more incidental, reflecting the uneasy transition of the medium from page to wall,” Guggenheim associate curator Lauren Hinkson recently told ARTnews of the two-part show.The second part of her project invited living artists like Lyle Ashton Harris, Glenn Ligon, Zanele Muholi, and Catherine Opie to exhibit their own images about queer resilience as a response to the first part of the exhibition. “Like the work of any canonical figure, Mapplethorpe’s work and its meanings are neither stable nor static, but are continually open to reinterpretation as other artists offer alternate approaches to image-making,” Hinkson said.

New-generation queer creatives, on the other hand, still find inspiration in Mapplethorpe’s unabashed handling of carnality, whether in his allusive flowers or dramatically lit double fisted rears. Ludovic de Saint Sernin, a fast-rising French designer with cult following, unveiled his Mapplethorpe-inspired men’s collection, in collaboration with the foundation, during New York Fashion Week in February. Pop star Troye Sivan currently wears some of the pieces from the bondage-inspired collection in his ongoing word tour, Sweat. The leather-heavy garments veer away from Uniqlo’s 2015 T-shirt line which were printed with the artist’s more approachable photographs.

Inviting new perspectives has been one lucrative way for the Mapplethorpe Foundation to keep his legacy alive. A suite of gallery exhibitions curated by cultural luminaries, from Isabelle Huppert to Elton John or the recent Enninful and Satterwhite ones, activate his large oeuvre through different personal lenses. (Ropac’s Enninful-organized exhibition drew around 2,000 visitors on its opening day in March.)

For Satterwhite, the opportunity to curate a Mapplethorpe show finds resonance in his own practice, which also traverses themes of power, autonomy, and euphoria. The foundation gave the Brooklyn-based artist access to the photographer’s entire oeuvre, and the resulting show, titled “Animism, Faith, Violence, and Conquest,” included a medley of Mapplethorpe’s less-charted images about utopia, resistance, and devotion. The show’s titular themes are subjects Satterwhite explored about belief systems and survival while working towards his recent Metropolitan Museum of Art commission, A Metta Prayer (2023).

A 1982-dated photograph, for example, shows a television with a chain hanging from its bottom; an image from 1985 includes a young boy in pirate costume looking through a spyglass. “I was thinking about how to subvert video games and ideas of violence, surveillance, and conquest in my project,” Satterwhite told ARTnews. He noted that he has long dreamed of doing a project around Mapplethorpe, “but if I had the chance 10 years ago, the result would have totally been different,” he said. Organizing the show fresh off his Met commission, in which he marinated similar ideas of devotion, power, and toxicity in beauty, the artist said he felt closer to Mapplethorpe’s similar concerns at this point in his practice.  

Mapplethorpe’s gallery representation itself has been important in the shifting perspectives of the artist’s work. “The dominant aesthetic of Robert’s estate, with calla lilies and nudes, was established by the foundation and Robert Miller Gallery, which initially had an exclusive representation,” Stout, the foundation president, said. The foundation changing its representation to New York’s Sean Kelly gallery in the early 2000s, helped bring forth a more multivalent approach to Mapplethorpe. In 2003, with the help of Sean Kelly, Cindy Sherman organized the first of these artist-driven curatorial projects that are now done multiple times a year.

“The public reaction and a Roberta Smith review in the New York Times convinced us that we should let other people make decisions for exhibitions,” Stout said. “Even we still see works this way that we never saw or forgot about.”

The challenge for the Mapplethorpe Foundation these days is to run an endeavor with funding from a finite repertoire. In an effort to monitor sales in various price points and avoid exhibiting the same work concurrently in separate shows, the foundation has established what they internally call “a core system.” The layout helps the board and staff break down and control the types of images sold across the globe and maintain a balanced inventory in terms of value and future demand. The works with exceptionally iconic subjects such as Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe himself, or Andy Warhol, as well as calla lilies are “for more special moments,” Stout said. This system also helps the foundation shuffle works between different gallery inventories for an even distribution.

“When we started the foundation with Robert, we weren’t sure if we would go on for over 20 years,” Stout recalled. “We don’t have trustees making emotional decisions and holding onto sentimental pieces on our board—we just want to place everything well.”

But back in the country’s capital city, at the historic 798 Art District, it was business as usual with the launch of the eighth edition of Gallery Weekend Beijing. Running from May 28 to June 2, 2024, with a VIP preview in the days before the event’s opening, Gallery Weekend Beijing this year included 27 participating galleries and nonprofit institutions in the main sector, and 8 galleries from locales beyond the city in the visiting sector, plus “The inner side of the wind,” a show curated by Yuan Jiawei.

This year, Gallery Weekend Beijing, as well as the city’s two major art fairs, Beijing Dangdai and Jingart, all held their openings at the same time, drawing a larger crowd to the city in the hopes of reigniting flagging excitement surrounding Beijing’s art scene, according to industry insiders.

The main theme for this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing, or GWBJ as it’s known for short, was “Drift to Re-Turn.” It encapsulated the international artistic connections that participating galleries, institutions, and curated projects aimed to create through the annual showcase.  

Speaking to ARTnews, GWBJ program director Yang Jialin said, “On a deeper level, GWBJ, as a platform for contemporary art exchange, hopes to help the outstanding artists and their work ‘drift’ out to the world, allowing the voices from Beijing to reach the international stage; and to let excellent international art content ‘return’ to the local art scene, presenting it to the Chinese audience.”

Victor Wang, chief curator and artistic director of M Woods, a private museum at 798 Art District, said, “Unlike Hong Kong and Shanghai, Beijing’s art ecology operates uniquely through a mix of connections and disconnections with the outside world.”

The city’s scale, legacy, and structure provide the opportunity for some galleries and institutions to thrive in isolation, building frameworks that benefit from this separateness. Meanwhile, others continue to actively seek connections with the global art scene, striving to create bridges and establish networks beyond Beijing.

“I’m personally uplifted whenever I see marginalized voices and radical thinkers presented in Beijing, in dialogue with this local cultural context, especially those perspectives we might not be able to showcase or engage with often locally,” Wang added.

One such exhibition was tucked away in a small private room at Magician Space. The quietly provocative show is paradoxically titled “Room of Boundlessness” and is curated by Liu Ding, one of the artistic directors of Yokohama Triennale 2023. Upon first look, there seemed to be nothing contentious: viewers were greeted by nothing much at all, with the artworks left facedown on the floor or propped against the wall. That, it turned out, was just the beginning of the show. Visitors were invited to pick up the works, by the likes of Hu Shangzong and Feng Guodong, and hang the pieces themselves.

“Our objective is to offer both local and international audiences the opportunity to engage with diverse forms of art and contribute to the overall artistic ecosystem,” said Pojan Huang, researcher at Magician Space. By way of example, Huang cited the dedicated project called the Antechamber, which was designed specifically for experimental art.

Magician Space also presented a solo exhibition running till July by New York–based artist Timur Si-Qin. The show, which explores the relationship between humans and nature from different perspectives, including a spiritual one, proved particularly popular.

Some quality exhibitions, stunning artist studios, and frenetic programming aside, there were still concerns regarding the volatile climate of geopolitics and fiscal uncertainties in China and beyond.

“In the current global landscape, the first layer of meaning of the theme of GWBJ is its literal sense: we are always in an unstable state, with an uncertain future,” said Jialin.

Just a few months ago, Bloomberg reported that China faced a series of challenges from shrinking population to record property downturn to rising trade tensions. Amid conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and with trade wars ongoing, the global economy looks precarious, and China is not an exception. In fact, as tensions with the US ratchet up, Chinese businesses are reportedly looking toward countries such as Mexico and Vietnam.

“The art market is not optimistic in light of the ongoing deterioration of geopolitics and the decline of the global economic situation,” Huang said. “A cold wave is approaching not only China, but also the global gallery industry, making future prospects for the art business increasingly challenging.”

“Certainly, the days of quick sales and waiting lists are waning,” said Mathieu Borysevicz, founder and director of BANK, a Shanghai gallery that participated in GWBJ. “Right now, everybody has sobered up and is working a lot harder to make each sale. China is still the second-largest art market in the world, and the economy is resilient, but it has created a widespread sense of precarity. In fact, I must say that in my 20-plus years of coming to China, this is the first time I have witnessed widespread pessimism.”

Yet there remains cause for some optimism—or at least artistic resilience.

“Usually, when the economy isn’t so great, art tends to get more interesting,” Borysevicz added. “For too long, the emphasis was disproportionately on the market at the expense of criticality. I hope the shift away from the market will help vitalize the work.”

Huang agreed, saying, “When Magician Space was established in 2008, it coincided with the economic crisis, and the exhibition was not conceived for commercial purposes, thus our objectives extend beyond business. It has been a source of great satisfaction to continue delving deeply into the work of our favourite artists and to persevere.”

Meanwhile, other industry leaders are paying more attention to their regional counterparts.

“Connecting local artists and the Beijing art scene with international communities is crucial—especially now, given the growing skepticism toward globalization and the current economic and geopolitical climate,” Wang said. “It’s awesome to see our colleagues and communities from South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and other countries perambulating 798, experiencing firsthand our institutions and galleries, and seeing what Beijing has to offer.”

Several changes will be introduced to this year’s fair, including a new floor plan and a new lead partner, American Express. The 2024 edition also marks the second iteration since the fair was acquired, alongside Expo Chicago, by Frieze and the first to be planned completely under Frieze ownership.

The fair is also currently without a director, after its longtime leader Nicole Berry departed the fair in March for a development role at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; it is currently helmed by Frieze’s director of fairs, Kristell Chadé, and its Americas director, Christine Messineo.

In a statement, Messineo said, “The addition of The Armory Show to our network of fairs solidifies Frieze’s standing in New York by building on the collective of galleries. The upcoming edition inaugurates a floorplan that enhances the visitor experience with reimagined meeting spaces, reoriented sections, a new theater hosting conversations with art world luminaries, and engaging partnership activations.”

In recent years, the Armory Show has been unable to secure one of the four mega-galleries or several other blue-chip exhibitors that are hallmarks of Frieze’s exhibitor line-up. That appears set to continue for this year’s edition. In its release, however, the fair said it will see more than 145 exhibitors return from last year, which fairs often cite as a metric of successful sales conducted during the fair’s run. Among those are dealers like Victoria Miro, Almine Rech, James Cohan, Nara Roesler, Sean Kelly, Kasmin, Jessica Silverman, and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

Exhibitors returning after at least a one-year break include Jeffrey Deitch, Proyectos Monclova, Sperone Westwater, Mariane Ibrahim, Bank, and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, while first-time participants include Commonwealth and Council, Labor, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Hannah Traore Gallery, Gallery Baton, and Experimenter. Blade Study is also a first-timer, after recieving the fair’s Gramercy International Prize, which goes to a New York–based gallery that has never shown at the fair before.

Last December, the Armory Show announced the curators who will organize certain sections of the fair: the Kitchen’s senior curator Robyn Farrell for Focus and independent curator Eugenie Tsai for Platform. Among the galleries in Focus, for single- and duo-artist presentations related to the Armory Show’s first edition in 1994, are Kapp Kapp, Monique Meloche, Lubov, Whatiftheworld, Et al., and Luis De Jesus. Platform presentations, for large-scale works, are being brought to the fair by dealers like Lehmann Maupin, Peter Blum Gallery, Goya Contemporary Gallery, and Tern Gallery.  

In a statement, Chadé said, “For the past 30 years, The Armory Show has been an anchor of the city’s cultural landscape, championing art at the forefront and providing galleries an opportunity to engage with New York audiences. It has been a pleasure working with the team to build on the strengths of the fair and expand its reach. We look forward to welcoming a number of new exhibitors and thoughtful presentations, underscoring The Armory Show’s position as a platform for discovery.”

The full exhibitor list follows below.

Galleries

Solo

Focus

Presents

Platform

Not-for-Profit

If one were to liken the marquee New York auctions in May to the homecoming game between rival high schools, then Art Basel is certainly the art world’s prom. Next week, 287 galleries from around the world, including the four biggest, will jet to Switzerland, closely followed by the traveling circus of collectors, art advisers, and, of course, journalists.

And, while rumors are flying that the newly christened Art Basel Paris may soon overshadow the Swiss flagship fair, plenty of dealers are pushing back. As one dealer told ARTnews, the fair in Basel is still where galleries show their best work, and the collectors—even if they prefer Paris—will follow. That sentiment was echoed by Tornabuoni gallery coordinator Ursula Casamonti, who told ARTnews the gallery saved its best—six works by proto-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico—for Art Basel.

“I hope all the galleries do the same,” she said. “I’m worried that the people around the world have the idea that Paris+ will be better than Basel.”

ARTnews reached out to art dealers with reputations for bringing the most select, choice, and rare secondary market works and asked: what’s on the menu? Bon appétit. Or perhaps, more appropriately, En Guete.

Hauser & Wirth

The Swiss gallery giant is bringing several big-ticket works to its home art fair, none perhaps more exciting than Philip Guston’s Orders, a defining late-era work completed two years before his death in 1980. Priced at $10 million and depicting a cluster of shoes silhouetted against a pink-and-blue sky that rises above a crimson horizon line, the work was included in Guston’s 1980 retrospective at SFMOMA. It continued to travel for the following year, before being sold at Sotheby’s in 1989 for $528,000 from the collection of art collector and Southern California real estate magnate Edwin Janss Jr. As the gallery told ARTnews in an email, “The forms in Orders are personal symbols of the broader historical and psychological trauma that reverberates powerfully throughout the artist’s late oeuvre.”

The gallery is also bringing the largest charcoal drawing by Arshile Gorky still in a private collection, Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), from 1946-47 priced at $16 million. There is also the marble and wood Louise Bourgeois sculpture Woman with Packages (1987–93), consigned by her trust for $3.5 million. Other works include an oil-on-cardboard Francis Picabia painting titled Nu assis listed at $4.85 million, and the David Smith stainless steel and wood sculpture Aggressive Character (1947), being sold from Smith’s estate.

Gagosian

For Gagosian’s booth at Unlimited, the fair’s sector for monumental works, the gallery is bringing a work that may carry some sentimental value: an untitled 1970 masterwork by Minimalist Donald Judd that was first shown by Gagosian’s late mentor, Leo Castelli, in New York. A related work is in the Guggenheim in New York’s permanent collection. The sculpture consists of a band of five-foot-high galvanized iron panels standing end-to-end, eight inches from the surrounding walls. The gallery’s booth presentation will be supplemented by a show of works by Judd at their Basel location consisting of 11 single-unit, wall-mounted works made between 1987 and 1991 at the artist’s home and studio near Lake Lucerne. While the gallery did not provide an exact price for the 1970 work, ARTnews has learned that is priced in the region of $15 million to $20 million.

Pace

While Pace is bringing an extensive presentation anchored by historical 20th-century works from marquee names like Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Pablo Picasso, the gallery is betting that Jean Dubuffet’s Banc-Salon will be the showstopper. Anchoring the booth, the installation comprises a low swooping bench with three kites that hover above, encouraging tired fairgoers to sit and reflect.

But, for our money, Agnes Martin’s Untitled #20 (1974) will be the real star attraction. The painting last sold at auction in 2012, at Christie’s New York, where it made $2.43 million. But, as we wrote this past November, the artist’s market has been heating up in the intervening years—in November, Sotheby’s sold a 1961 painting by Martin, Grey Stone II , for $18.7 million. While Pace declined to provide current pricing, it is very likely that the Martin will be the gallery’s priciest offering at the fair.

Thaddaeus Ropac

Among the significant works heading to Basel courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac are Sigmar Polke’s 1994 canvas Lapis Lazuli. The picture, priced at $3.8 million, is a brilliantly blue abstraction from what Polke called his “alchemical” turn, during which the artist moved away from artistic takes on consumer culture and began exploring the use of forgotten pigments like lapis lazuli, a blue shade ground from stone that was prized in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Also notable is Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985), the inaugural work from Robert Rauschenberg’s 1984–91 Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) program. Not seen publicly since the final ROCI program exhibition in 1990 and never having been on the market, the work is priced at $3.85 million.

The gallery is also bringing Georg Baselitz’s roughly five-foot-tall sculpture of a female head in cadmium yellow, Dresdner Frauen – Die Elbe (1990/2023). The carving was roughly hewn with a chainsaw, an axe, and a chisel from a single tree trunk in 1990; it was cast in bronze in 2023. There are five “Frauen” in museum permanent collections, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. It is priced at $2.18 million.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan

An untitled David Hammons sculpture from 1990 anchors Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s Basel presentation. Consisting primarily of a coat rack with hat stand, the five-and-a-half foot sculpture, priced at around $9 million, features rubber, plastic bags, paper bags, a tin can, and a baseball cap, all of which give it a very humanlike aspect. The work’s first appearance at an art fair, it has been exhibited publicly only once, at Tilton Gallery in 2006.

“It’s an incredibly powerful piece that is very political and it’s very much, I feel, a self-portrait of the artist,” Dominique Lévy told ARTnews. “It’s the heart of our presentation.”

The gallery is also bringing Übernagelter Hocker (1963) by German artist Günther Uecker. Basically a wooden stool, the seat and one leg of which are covered in painted nails, the sculpture was created the same year as Stuhl II (Chair II), in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to fetch around $1.5 million.

Landau Fine Art

The Montreal gallery will be bringing Wassily Kandinsky’s Murnau mit Kirche II, 1910, a piece stolen by the Nazis in 1938. Gallery founder Robert Landau purchased it this past March at Sotheby’s London for 37.2 million GBP ($44.8 million), making it the 9th most expensive work sold at auction last year. Landau then promptly exhibited the painting at both TEFAF Maastricht and TEFAF New York. And though the painting may be at Art Basel, it won’t be for sale.

“It does not have a price on it and it’s going to be front and center at Art Basel and I’m sure there will be a lot of people looking at it,” Landau told ARTnews. “Why not? It’s of great interest to people.”

Landau said that he has spent the last year working on a book about Murnau and has invested millions additionally in the work, including a consultation with a museum curator. Landau claimed that an auction house evaluation put the work’s value at more than $100 million.

Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art

With Jean-Michel Basquiat continuing to run hot with numerous auction sales in May, the Upper East Side gallery will be bringing Cash Crop, a 1984 acrylic-and-oilstick depicting a silhouetted figure in front of a sugar box. The $5 million to $6 million price tag is significantly higher than at its last appearance at auction, when it sold for £713,250, or around $1.11 million, at a 2010 Phillips evening sale in London. The estimate for the work then, when it was consigned by Gagosian, was £600,000 to £900,000.

Gallery director Stacie Khandros told ARTnews that the recent auction sales had prompted more conversations with potential consignors compared to last year. “I think we’re still optimistic that … what we have is still competitive pricing. And I think our works are spectacular. It’s just finding the right price to entice potential buyers,” Khandros said.

Editor’s Note, 6/11/2024: An earlier version of this story stated that the price of the 1970 work by Donald Judd offered by Gagosian was $10 million. It has been updated with a revised figure of $15 to $20 million.

The sales included plenty of guarantees and several works by artists whose momentum has cooled amid higher interest rates, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and concerns over the upcoming US national election.

While Phillips’ spring evening sale in Hong Kong had only 24 lots, the auction house managed to ride the ongoing wave of demand for Jean-Michel Basquiat by selling Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari for HK$99 million or U$12.6 million, the highest amount for the season across all the auction houses and categories in Hong Kong. The work carried an estimate of HK$90 million to HK$120 million.

Phillips was also the only auction house to consign a work by Banksy. The popular street artist was absent from this past New York spring auction season but The Leopard and Lamb sold at Phillips Hong Kong on May 31 for HK$36.8 million or $4.7 million on an estimate of HK$18 million to $28 million.

Phillips said its Modern and Contemporary art spring sales in Hong were 22 percent higher compared to last season, with works by Zao Wou-Ki, Yoshitomo Nara, Yayoi Kusama, and Andy Warhol accounting for six out of the top ten lots.

Christie’s said in a press release that its Asia Spring auctions on May 28 and 29 generated a total of HK$963 million ($124 million), with “close to 90% sold by lot and by value and over 40% of lots sold over high estimate.” However, last year Christie’s spring auctions in Hong Kong generated HK$1.24 billion ($159 million), indicating a drop of 22 percent in sales including fees.

Other declines included the number of works which sold for above HK$10 million ($1.3 million) compared to last year (22 for 2024, versus 36 for 2023). There were also fewer lots (81 in 2024; 88 in 2023) in this year’s 20th and 21st Century evening sales compared to the 20th/21st Century and Post-Millennium evening sales, as well as more works that did not sell (14 in 2024; 12 in 2023).

A bright yellow acrylic and silkscreen Flowers painting from 1965 by Andy Warhol was the top lot, at HK$66.625 million with fees ($8.5million USD), on an estimate of (HK $62.8 million – HK $92.8 million). Other top sellers included Zao Wou-Ki’s 10.01.68 for HK $63.175 million, or approximately $8.13 million (estimate of HK$68 million to HK$ 98 million), Yayoi Kusama’s 83-inch tall sculpture Pumpkin (2012) for HK $48.775 million, or $6.28 million (estimate of HK$40 million to HK$60 million), and Rene Magritte’s 1944 painting of a rose L’Invitation au voyage for HK $42.725 million or just under $5.5 million (estimate of HK$28 million to HK$38 million).

Eight of the top ten lots across Christie’s four sales on May 28 and May 29 had guarantees, with the exception of Yoshitomo Nara’s Portrait of AE (2009) and Rock You! (2006).

It’s worth noting that Paul Cezanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves (circa 1902-1906) sold for HK$22.16 million or $4.5 million, on an estimate of HK$20 million to HK$30 million. That figure was a drop from when the consignor purchased the work in June 2014 from Christie’s in London for £3.55 million or about $6 million.

The selling price for Zao Wou-Ki’s 10.01.68 was also lower than when it previously appeared at auction at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in November 2018, when it sold for HK$68.9 million or $8.8 million, as the lead lot for a sale of Abstract artworks in the house’s Brushwork series.

Breakout results included a Salvo for HK$3.2 million (estimate HK$1 million to HK$1.5 million), a Marina Perez Simao painting for HK$2.1 million (estimate of HK$700,000 to HK$1.2 million), and a Ben Sledsen work for HK$1.6 million (estimate of HK$200,000 to HK$400,000). Works by Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Miriam Cahn, Lee Bae, Xia Yu, Katherine Bernhardt, and Sholto Blissett also sold above high estimates.

Christie’s said world auctions records were also set for Rhee Seundja, Nguyen Tu Nghiem, Skygolpe, Ay-o, Sholto Blissett, Jeong Young-do, Son Dong-Hyun, Daniel Correa Mejia, Jeon Hyun-Sun and Kim Su-Yeon.

Notably, two works by Nicholas Party did not sell (one had an estimate of HK$22 million to HK$28 million, or $2.8 million to $3.6 million), as well as a Wayne Thiebaud (estimate of HK$30 million to HK$40 million, or $3.8 million to $5.1 million), which had the third highest estimate of the house’s 21st Century sale.

Christie’s also officially announced at the end of its sales that it would hold its inaugural auctions at its new Asia Pacific headquarters at The Henderson building in Central district on September 26 and September 27, starting with sales of 20th and 21st Century art.

The famous “Help!” Framus Hootenanny hammered down an astonishing $2.86 million in Julien’s two-day Music Icons sale at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York, making it the most expensive Beatles guitar ever sold at auction. (The record was previously held by Lennon’s J-160E Gibson, which sold for $2.41 million in 2015.) The instrument was initially expected to fetch between $600,000 and $800,000 but achieved three times the high estimate. It was sold to a telephone bidder.

“We are absolutely thrilled and honored to have set a new world record with the sale of John Lennon’s lost hootenanny guitar,” Julien’s Auctions CEO David Goodman said in a statement. “This guitar is not only a piece of music history but a symbol of John Lennon’s enduring legacy.”

German firm Framus made the 12-string acoustic guitar in the early 1960s, with Lennon purchasing it in late 1964. The Beatles frontman famously used the Hootenanny during the Help! recording sessions in 1965. It can be heard on legendary Beatles tracks such as “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “It’s Only Love,” “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” and “Help!” Fellow Beatle George Harrison also used it to play rhythm on “Norwegian Wood.” In addition, the guitar can be spotted in multiple scenes from the 1965 film Help!

The Framus fell into the hands of Gordon Waller of the pop duo Peter and Gordon in the late ‘60s, after which it fell off the radar for half a century. The current owners recently found the instrument in the attic of their home in the British countryside and contacted Julien’s. Good thing they did, too.

The first day of the Music Icons auction pulled in $6 million in sales, three times as much as Julien’s expected. Nearly all lots were snapped up, for a 98.5 percent sell-through. The full Julian Lennon Collection, which included rarities such as gold Beatles records and a “Yellow Submarine” animation cel, realized more than $570,000 alone. Other standouts included a Dolly Parton guitar that sold for $10,400, a Rolling Stones print that achieved $16,250, and an Eric Clapton guitar that took in $101,600.

The sale continues today (Thursday, May 30) at the Hard Rock Cafe and online at Julien’s Auctions. The lineup includes pieces connected to Prince, Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, and U2. Let’s see if any more records are broken then.