Any other business

Photo courtesy of Art Basel.   When I visited Art Basel in September , I had the good fortune to share a flat with, among others, art writer Nadine Khalil. Unlike me, Nadine has written a serious, full report about the fair for Pioneer Works, an artist-run cultural centre in Brooklyn. I particularly liked this candid passage about how viewing contemporary art often turns out to be: '... the experience was abstruse and confusing. Even with my decade reviewing art, I’m sometimes left with the feeling that a secret has been withheld from me. Or like I’m in a crowd where everyone is familiar with each other but me. ' Spot on. This is a link to Nadine's article .

I don't usually 'do' international art fairs. I don't have enough black clothes for a start. But this year, as Tehran gallery Dastan was presenting a solo show of Mamali Shafahi's recent flocked reliefs, Heirloom Velvet , I took a week out of my summer holidays in Greece to go, for the first time, to Art Basel and Liste. I don't really feel at home in these events, with their VIP cards, air-kissing and cocktail parties, and Basel itself is otherwise a dull city, albeit an expensive one. But I must say the main fair, Art Basel itself, was spectacular. People I met there said it looked as if the galleries, post-Covid, were pulling all the stops out to show their very best works, and for once it seemed to me as if, in the huge central exhibition halls (it took me four-and-a-half hours to go round once ), there was hardly anything actually bad. Liste is a different affair, where less fancy galleries can show edgier (and cheaper) work in grungier surroundings. There ...