Artinfo.com‘s reporter on the ground at the Johannesburg Art Fair saw these vignettes:

One conversation, overheard on the April 2 opening night, came to define the restrained buying mood. “It has to stop now,” a business executive from SASOL, the South African petrochemical conglomerate, instructed his company’s art buyer in Afrikaans. It was unacceptable for executives laying off staff and forfeiting bonuses to see new art acquisitions flaunted at their workplace, he said.

While buying wasn’t entirely muted — London’s October Gallery sold (by telephone) a large-scale aluminum-and-copper-wire-textile drapery by Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui for $650,000 to a royal buyer from Abu Dhabi — many of the 26 participating galleries reported sluggish sales.

And here’s another vivid tale:

For first-time exhibitor Henri Vergon, [ . . . ] business was “extremely slow.” By Saturday afternoon, the second full day of trading, the South African dealer’s only major sale had been a work by Mozambican sculptor Gonçalo Mabunda, a metal chair made from recycled weapons, priced at $12,000.

“All the sales I made here were to overseas buyers,” said Vergon, who earlier in the day had asked a South African visitor to leave his booth after he made a racist remark about Mabunda’s work and its pricing. “It is disappointing to see how South Africans are reluctant to even look at African art,” Vergon added. In recent years, Mabunda’s chairs have found increased favor, including in the design world.

Joburg Art Fair Sees Sophomore Slump (ArtInfo)

South Africa’s Mail and Guardian offers a valuable one-stop landing page for all of their stories about this year’s Johannesburg Art Fair. With an estimate of at least 10,000 attendees–up from the previous year’s 6,000–the fair is drawing a lot of traffic. According to Ross Douglas, creator of the fair, this is one reason:

Not one of the world’s 300-odd art fairs focuses on contemporary art from Africa. Our intention with the first fair was to fill this gap. It’s not that easy. Without gallerists managing and promoting art, artists don’t find the market they need to sustain their careers. As with so much talent from the continent, Europe and the United States provided the opportunities for African greats such as Owusu-Ankomah, El Anatsui and, more recently, Romuald Hazoume to exhibit. Our solution last year was to commission Simon Njami, who captured the world’s imagination with his Africa Remix show and to a lesser extent the Africa Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He chose work mainly from younger artists starting to break into the international art scene. Njami’s selection of work, entitled As You Like It, attracted interest but did not sell. By contrast, local galleries sold beyond our expectations. Between R25-million and R30-million passed hands, giving the local contemporary art market a major cash injection. [Read more...]

Alexandra Peers covers the Venice Biennale announcement in New York Magazine:

This year’s Biennale is the largest ever, with 77 nations hosting
art pavilions, including first-time exhibitors United Arab Emirates and
the Vatican (now in negotiations). “It’s the biggest art show in the
world,” notes Birnbaum.

Generally, the Venice Biennale has tremendous impact on the market and on artists’ careers.
Biennale president Paolo Baratta stressed that Birnbaum’s job is “not
to give the latest quotation on the market for contemporary art.” But
many deals started in Venice are consummated at the huge Art Basel fair
that opens in Switzerland later the same week.

Birnbaum’s hometown picks include political artist and peace activist
Paul Chan, best known for his “7 Lights” multimedia show at the New
Museum; local filmmaker and artist Tony Conrad; Yoko Ono, whose work
will include performance and poetry and who will receive a “Golden
Lion” for lifetime achievement at the show; and artist duo
Guyton\Walker, who will do “very painterly things … big paintings” and
will be prominently displayed in the show, said the curator.

Some of the other New York artists who got into the Biennale exhibition
are Joan Jonas, Rachel Harrison, Spencer Finch, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and
Jorge Ortero-Pailos.

New Yorkers to Storm the Venice Biennale (Culture Vulture/New York)

David Velasco’s Artforum Diary on the knot of art fairs in the Emirates in March is the single best take on the event viewed from the ground:

“Dubai is Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi is Beverly Hills, and Sharjah is… Santa Monica,” espoused writer Bob Colacello. [ . . . ] “The media is all too eager to document ‘the end of Dubai,’” Rem Koolhaas said to the audience. “It’s as if we need the reassurance of Dubai’s demise to restore our own confidence.”

It was late Monday afternoon in the emirate of Sharjah, and about a hundred of us were sitting in a darkened room at Dar Al Nadwa trying to catch the tail end of the first day of the March Meetings. Koolhaas had followed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi overseer Thomas Krens, capping off a tag-team of Gulf cultural attachés/apologists who were no less convincing for being on the local payroll. As Koolhaas continued, a curator leaned over. “All he does is critique the critics. Look, he’s bashing Mike Davis again.”

It was the day before the preview of the third Art Dubai fair and two days before the official opening of the ninth Sharjah Biennial—though “official” timelines shifted depending on the person; each tier of participants seemed to have its own itinerary, institutionalizing a certain status anxiety.

The Art Newspaper ties a bow around the recently completed Art Dubai. The third edition of the fair was held during a tough time for the world economy and the region as credit collapse combined with weak oil prices to put the region in difficult spot. With that in mind, there was still plenty of to-ing and fro-ing among the various stakeholders in the Gulf States’ art complex.

In total 80 museum groups attended, with a contingent of 18 patrons and curators from Tate alone. They were fully occupied rushing between a packed programme of talks, forums and performances organised as part of a Global Art Forum. One stop was at the newly opened Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and the group also visited nearby Sharjah, which had moved its biennial dates to coincide with the fair. [Read more...]