How a Dealer Prepares for the ‘Most Important’ Art Fair of the Year
The art dealer Dominique Lévy during a recent meeting at her Manhattan gallery.Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
Who knew you could parse Benjamin Moore Classic Gray by percentages?
That’s what Dominique Lévy was doing with her team recently while readying their gallery’s booth for the Art Basel art fair in Switzerland, which starts next week — determining how deep the shade of a wall should be behind a Gerhard Richter landscape (50 percent? 75? 100?).
It’s hard to imagine paint color making much of an impression on the moneyed collectors who will be breezing through the exhibition hall near the Rhine.
But for Ms. Lévy, even the most minute detail matters. That is because she is one of the many leading figures in the art world who consider Art Basel the most important art fair — the one they work on the hardest because it attracts the most international, serious clients.
Art fairs, having proliferated around the world, are a potent force in the art market, a kind of one-stop shopping that allows collectors access to major galleries from numerous countries without having to visit the galleries themselves.
As a result, fairs account for about 40 percent of gallery sales by value, according to the Tefaf Art Market Report, making the limited number of spots at top fairs especially coveted: More than 800 galleries competed for about 300 booths in Basel this year.
During the past few weeks, Ms. Lévy allowed this reporter to be privy to her extensive preparation in New York for Basel, offering a rare window into the intense process galleries go through to bring their A game to the fair.
“It’s really your one moment where you can show who you are,” she said. “It’s acutely important for existing relationships, new relationships, the way the art world perceives you.”
“You’re put to really high standards,” she added. “Every collector would say to you Art Basel is the most important art fair.”
Because Ms. Lévy is Swiss, Art Basel also matters most for personal reasons. The dealer, who recently announced that she would be taking over the whole building at her Madison Avenue gallery, has been coming to this fair since she was a child. (Her mother still attends.)
“Art Basel is what made me want to be a gallerist and an art dealer,” she said.
So Ms. Lévy pulls out the stops, bringing a staff of 11 (six from New York, three from her London gallery and two from her Geneva gallery) for a week; enlisting an architect, painter and lighting designer for her booth; entertaining clients with a major event — this year a circus-themed party created by a tightrope acrobat with “dinner under the big top”; even insisting on a specific brand of Swiss chocolate in the booth (Villars).
“I won’t go as far as to say I curate the bowl of chocolate, but...,” Ms. Lévy joked.
Her total spending on all this is steep: more than $300,000. (She also produces a glossy brochure and previously bought Le Corbusier furniture for the booth.) But for Ms. Lévy, the fair is a worthwhile investment — a gallery’s calling card and a crucial place to make connections.
“There’s not a year where we haven’t met a minimum of three to five meaningful people,” she said, describing important buyers.
There is a hierarchy to the placement of booths at the fair, and Ms. Lévy has worked her way up, having attended as part of the former L&M Arts gallery before starting her own shop three years ago. “I had to graduate from behind the toilet,” she said.
“Now I’m opposite Zwirner and near Nahmad,” she added, naming two prominent galleries. “It’s a fantastic position, but it took time.”
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Ms. Lévy arranged scale models of the artworks for her gallery’s booth.Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
From the moment the fair ends, Ms. Lévy said, she starts planning the next one, keeping her eyes open for art she may want to sock away for the next year. The preparation is both exhilarating and exhausting.
“Basel is the fair where I’ve lost the most sleep,” she said.
The fair itself is also a marathon; Ms. Lévy said she barely eats and never sits down, despite high heels — “I can’t sell art in flat shoes” — bringing two pairs along with an ice bucket in which she soaks her feet after the first four hours.
“Then I can do another four hours,” she said.
Booths at the fair used to be highly specialized, Ms. Lévy said — with one dealer, for example, focusing on postwar French works. Now a preoccupation with contemporary art has made it more homogenized.
So Ms. Lévy seeks to stand out, providing a complete art experience within the confines of her booth, combining the contemplative nature of a literary salon with the competitiveness of, say, a couture sample sale.
“What depresses me the most is if people walk past the booth and don’t stop,” she said. “I want people to come in and then have a journey.”
The theme of Ms. Lévy’s booth this year is postwar Europe and America, showing how a Pierre Soulages painting, for example, echoes a David Smith sculpture.
“There is a harmony, which I think is important,” she said, “a story to be told.”
At a recent meeting — at which Ms. Lévy presided with an aura of elegant efficiency some find intimidating — staff members pored over an architectural model of the booth, moving mini reproductions of the artworks around on the foamcore walls.
“Has the Calder arrived?” ... “The small silver Stella is not coming” ... “The Fontana’s being framed right now” ... “When will you know if the Ryman is coming?”
Considerable time was devoted to the composition of artworks in the booth; placing them is an art in itself. “Maybe we have to go back to this idea of giving Günther Uecker a complete area,” Ms. Lévy said.
“The Burri and the Fontana are both small and intimate paintings,” Ms. Lévy said. “Do they need to be incredibly close to each other?”
Emilio Steinberger, the gallery’s senior director, said, “They have to be in the same vicinity” because the two works have a strong relationship.
The team analyzed the booth’s circulation; how to best feature the sculpture; how to create moments of stimulation and repose.
“The other side of the Richter has to be incredibly soft and quiet,” Ms. Lévy said. “If the Calder goes here, I would love that Fontana next to it. You want the clean Stella here — you really want a moment of breathing.”
If last year’s booth “had a preciousness,” Ms. Lévy said, featuring the likes of Ryman and Giacometti, “this year is much rawer.”
Ms. Lévy was particularly excited about a large canvas by the Russian artist Nicolas de Staël, unusual for its multiple layers of paint. “We want to give this painting a presence because it hasn’t been seen for 40 years,” she said. “It’s Barnett Newman, it’s Pollock — it takes your guts.”
Even as the booth must have a cohesion, Ms. Lévy said, it also needs to convey a sense of the gallery; for example, that it recently began to represent the artist Pat Steir.
But while the booth demands the care and curation of an exhibition, it is ultimately about selling art, Ms. Lévy said, not just looking at it.
“This is not an exhibition, this is an art fair,” she said. “It’s about commerce.”
Behind the Lenses: Interview with Photographer Nuno Veloso
It is no secret that fashion is a growing industry in Macau. Granted it might still have a long way to go, but mostly it is doing good. As like any other industry, fashion involves a number of different professions. Models and designers, for sure but also stylists, make-up artists, hairstylists, writers and, last but not least, photographers. It is in this last category that Nuno Veloso fits in the grand scheme of things. However, this fashion photographer is on to another entrepreneurship challenge, a project that sounded (and looked) exciting This Portuguese who has grown up in Macau, studied in Porto and worked in Portugal, London, Paris, Hong Kong and Macau, is a true citizen of the world, a great fashion photographer and my personal friend. To be frank, I first met Nuno in a fashion shoot for one of the local magazines. Being in the business for some time by then, the first thing I noticed was the refreshing lack of artistic ego he had. Don’t get me wrong, Nuno is a true artist of his craft, he just very nice about dealing with clients too!
As soon as you enter the Core Studio in Nape, the headquarters for Nuno Veloso & Core Productions, it will breathe professionalism. It will also immediately show-off some of Nuno’s best work as it is nicely hanged on the walls. You can even go through a proper, hardcopy, portfolio, have a good espresso (the man is Portuguese after all) and laugh a bit before you start your session.
“I dabble in different types of photography such as Commercial & Advertising, but fashion really is the work that gives me more pleasure, it has always been my main focus. I just love the freedom it gives you whilst at the same time giving you specific boundaries. No picture is ever the same. In fashion, it’s not just about great light and a perfect frame but also about the person. You have to know how to work with the model”, he explains shyly.
When asked about his new project, he smiles. “Well to tell you the truth I’m quite excited about it. Core Studio is the answer the local market needed, we bring good quality photography to people’s everyday lives. People always make good photographic subjects and it will be nice to bring studio photography back. In a time full of selfies, it is easy to assume anyone can take a good photo, but it is a completely different experience to have it done in a professional studio. In essence, any professional photographer is excited to be capturing moments” he told me.
In a time when Macau is learning more about its native talent, Nuno’s story is a great one because it shows just how commercially successful a small, creative business may become. When we tell him this he laughs “well… I think anything is possible with perseverance and dedication. Basically, never taking no for an answer helps, and liking what you do… well that helps even more (smiles) “
A wax figure of Cristiano Ronaldo is displayed at CR7 Museum in Funchal, Madeira island on April 29, 2016. Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo's talent was first revealed in the CF Andorinha, a little club of his native island of Madeira, where pictures of this gifted kid, who became inspiration for the younger generation, are today displayed everywhere. PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP.
LISBON(AFP).- Cristiano Ronaldo's museum on Madeira has upsized to a larger home in anticipation of the Real Madrid star winning "future trophies", his cousin told AFP on Monday.
The Portugal striker's self-financed shrine now occupies a prime seafront position in Funchal, the island's capital where "CR7" was born in 1985.
The museum's new two-storey site "will be able to welcome Ronaldo's future trophies," his cousin and museum director Nuno Viveiros said.
The treasure trove charting the success of Madeira's most famous son draws in 200,000 visitors a year.
It boasts two waxworks of the former Manchester United forward whilst a 3.4-metre-high (11 feet) bronze statue he unveiled of himself in December 2014 has been moved to greet visitors at the entrance.
In January the statue was the target of graffiti when it was tagged with the name and shirt number of arch-rival Lionel Messi, hours after the Barcelona superstar saw off Ronaldo to claim a fifth world player of the year award.
Among the 160 trophies on display are Ronaldo's three Ballons d'Or.
But one glaring omission is any honour relating to his time on international duty.
The 31-year-old, who won a third Champions League title last month, will be hoping to redress that anomaly at Euro 2016 with Portugal opening their Group F campaign against Iceland on June 14.
Irrespective of Ronaldo's success or not at the European Championships his cousin is confident he will soon be taking delivery of fresh silverware.
"After the Euro Ronaldo will be starting a new season with Real," when he can win more trophies, Viveiros predicted.
Stuck for summer reading ideas? Why not find inspiration from Walter Benjamin? Since he was a student, the German philosopher and culture critic wrote down and numbered every book he read in a journal. The small black notebook catalogues Benjamin’s reading from the age of 22 in 1917 until 1939, shortly before he left Paris fleeing from the Nazis. It begins with number 462—earlier entries are lost—and ends with number 1712, Robert Hichens’ Le Toque noire. Putting to shame the more leisurely reader, Benjamin was averaging more than one book a week.
The notebook is on show this month at Berlin’s Galerie Max Hetzler as part of Irrkunst, an exhibition on the ceramicist Edmund de Waal, the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes. Irrkunst is De Waal's first exhibition in Berlin, which, he says, is a city he feels he knows "through the writings of Walter Benjamin". Building upon this influence, De Waal collaborated with the Walter Benjamin Archive to exhibit the philosopher’s original manuscripts alongside his own works in the show. (The gallery in west Berlin looks out onto Benjamin’s former school.)
Walter Benjamin in the 1920s.
“What you have here is an archive of Benjamin’s knowledge. You’re reading the story of his own education,” says Ursula Marx, a researcher at the archive. Generally, Benjamin noted only the author and title of the books in his list, but he sometimes included where and when he read a book, whether he read it only in part, and on some rare occasions included his opinion, describing some works as “schund” (trash), or “albern” (silly).
Proust and Baudelaire feature heavily, as do the stars of Russian literature (Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gogol) and German philosophy (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marx). But Benjamin’s love of mystery novels is one of the more unexpected revelations—he was planning to write his own crime novel with the playwright Bertholt Brecht. Three Agatha Christies are listed, two books by Arthur Conan Doyle as is The Red House Mystery, the only crime novel written by A.A. Milne, the author of Winnie-the-Pooh.
• Edmund de Waal: Irrkunst, Max Hetzler, Berlin, until 16 July
Inside the main house on Heneage Street, a former brewery, soon to become The Gilbert & George Centre
Gilbert & George are planning to convert an East End house into a non-profit gallery and foundation for contemporary art. The artists have lived and worked in Spitalfields since 1969 and often draw inspiration for their work from the local multi-faith community. They rescued their current house and studio on Fournier Street from dereliction and painstakingly restored it to its 18th-century origins themselves.
The site for the proposed gallery, called The Gilbert & George Centre, is a house on nearby Heneage Street, which previously belonged to the late artist Polly Hope. As part of the refurbishments, Gilbert & George propose to rebuild the 1970s workshop as a gallery and create a new basement.
According to the planning statement, the art foundation would “operate purely for the public benefit” with the aim of “promoting the education of the public in the arts”. The gallery would “benefit both the local community as well as the wider community, attracting visitors from other locations”.
Because the centre is a non-profit foundation, the number of exhibitions are limited to two a year. It would be open to visitors by appointment, with typical opening hours from 10am to 5pm, free of charge. Gilbert & George are expecting 200 visitors a week to the gallery and will create two full-time positions. Unlike their own collection, which mainly consists of 19th-century furniture and decorative arts by designers including Augustus Pugin, George Bullock and Christopher Dresser, the gallery will show contemporary art.
The architects Sir Solutions have prepared the planning statement for Gilbert & George and Tower Hamlets Council is expected to make a decision on 5 July. Neighbours are currently being consulted; according to the planning report, Anne Butler, the landlady of the Pride of Spitalfields pub next door, is “supportive of the overall proposed scheme” and thinks the plans will “enrich the area”. The artists were not available for comment.
PARIS.- Entitled “The Intimate World of Josef Sudek”, this exhibition is the first of this scale to revisit the life and work of Josef Sudek (Kolin, 1896 – Prague, 1976) within its sociogeographical and historical context: Prague during the first half of the twentieth century, at a time when the Czech capital was a veritable hub of artistic activity.
The exhibition features a selection of 130 works spanning the totality of Sudek’s career, from 1920 to 1976, and allows the public to examine the extent to which his photography was a reflection of his personal relationship to the surrounding world. On display are works that are the result of Sudek’s photographic experiments carried out within the privacy of his own studio, images of the garden seen from his window, and photographs of adventures further afield. The artist enjoyed meandering through the streets of Prague and its surrounding suburbs, and made frequent excursions to the nearby countryside.
Sudek’s enduring fascination with light, and its absence, is at the root of some of the most haunting photographs of the twentieth century. Nature, architecture, streets and objects are magnified by his sensitivity and mastery of the effects of light, contrasting with the impenetrable cloak of darkness.
As a photographer, Sudek was particularly concerned with the quality of the photographic print, an essential component in terms of the expressive potential of an image. His mastery of the pigment printing process enabled him to produce highly atmospheric and evocative images, thereby reaping all of the reflective and descriptive power of the gelatin silver print.
The exhibition presents work from Sudek’s early career, but also features photographs from a pivotal period of experimentation and innovation, beginning in the 1940s. Focusing on the technical and formal aspects of the medium of photography, Sudek created pigment prints, halftone prints, puridlos (photographs between two windows) and veteše (photographs inserted into old frames), techniques which allowed him to transform the objectal quality of photography.
The loss of his right arm during the First World War and the difficulties he now encountered in transporting his view camera did not dampen his passion for photography.
Sudek’s studio window became an object of abiding fascination—rather like the surface of a canvas—reflecting moments of exquisite tenderness and hope when a flowering branch brushed against its pane, or of poignant melancholy when he observed the world beyond his window transformed by the playful infinity of mist. His room with a view allowed him to capture, on film, his love of Prague. His photographs demonstrate both a precision and a depth of feeling, fitting odes to the rich history and architectural complexity of the Czech capital.
Like many artists of his generation marked by their experience of war, Sudek expresses a particularly acute awareness of the dark and tormented aspects of human existence—feelings that would inspire some of his most melancholy and most moving pictures. A photograph taken at night, through the glass pane of his window, shows a city plunged into darkness during the Occupation of the Second World War, and communicates a sentiment of unspeakable despair—a dramatic illustration of Sudek’s technical ability to transcend the literal.
The first part of the exhibition features images that herald the photographer’s later work, showing his early landscapes, portraits of fellow patients at Invalidovna, the Prague hospice for war invalids like Sudek, his hesitant foray into modernism, and his interior shots of St. Vitus Cathedral.
Through images that recount the narrative of his life, the viewer gains access to Sudek’s inner world, and an insight into his immediate environment, the views and objects he loved, his studio and garden. His endless walks in Prague found expression in the views of the city and its surroundings, as well as in photographs of its more sordid “suburbs”, a subject explored by other Prague artists. The eastern and northern areas of Bohemia, the Beskid Mountains and the Mionší forest were other destinations close to the photographer’s heart.
The exhibition "The Intimate World of Josef Sudek" provides a fascinating panorama of the work of this unique artist.
Curators: Vladimír Birgus (director of the Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University, Opava), Ian Jeffrey (art historian) and Ann Thomas (curator of photography, The Canadian Photography Institute of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa).
This Portuguese who has grown up in Macau, studied in Porto and worked in Portugal, London, Paris, Hong Kong and Macau, is a true citizen of the world, a great fashion photographer and my personal friend. To be frank, I first met Nuno in a fashion shoot for one of the local magazines. Being in the business for some time by then, the first thing I noticed was the refreshing lack of artistic ego he had. Don’t get me wrong, Nuno is a true artist of his craft, he just very nice about dealing with clients too!
