Serop Simonian was arrested in his hometown of Hamburg and transferred to France The suspected head of an alleged Egyptian antiquities trafficking ring, Serop Simonian, has been arrested in Germany and transferred to France. Investigators believe the octogenarian is the source behind a string of allegedly smuggled Egyptian antiquities sold for around €60m to the...
‘Shipping has become a nightmare,’ says Mihai Nicodim, owner of Nicodim Gallery (Los Angeles and New York City). ‘It almost doubled. When the pandemic hit, we were getting quotes that quadrupled overnight.’ Talk to any dealer right now about shipping costs and you are likely to get the same reaction. Dealers responding to a survey for the Art...
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–88) was by most accounts a sweet kid. He had a baby face and a distinctive walk, one foot pigeon-toed, so he was easy to spot from a block away. He was a pussycat – at least the girls said so – soft-spoken and polite. And he liked to draw. My mother-in-law, an art...
German playwright Heiner Müller once dubbed Paris Bar the ‘hell of Berlin bars.’ Müller lived in the Communist East, but had documents that allowed him to pass between East and West when the Berlin Wall still divided the city. In the 1980s, he was a regular at Kantstrasse 152. Then as now, Paris Bar felt...
Wherever he goes, Guadalupe Maravilla plays a childhood game called tripa chuca, or ‘rotten guts’. Two people take turns connecting numbers on paper by drawing lines that cannot touch, creating a map that tracks how they charted a path in relation to each other. Maravilla played tripa chuca throughout his journey from El Salvador to the United States in...
In the first interview in a new series dedicated to artists’ work beyond art, we (Art Basel) speak to Yto Barrada about her vision for The Mothership, a community-led research center grounded in the Moroccan landscape. Artists don’t just make art. Over a decade ago, this realization led to the launch of ‘The Future of Art Practices:...
Contemporary art has found its footing in the home of Salone del Mobile When contemporary art and Milan come up in conversation, many observers point to one seminal event that put the city on the art world’s radar: Expo 2015. Before the world’s fair, Milan’s two leading creative industries – fashion and design – routinely...
The haute couturière behind Rihanna’s iconic Met Gala dress creates wearable masterpieces that put Chinese cultural heritage center stage. Art Basel’s ‘Inner Worlds’ film series visits creatives in the places that most inspire them Discover the world of Guo Pei, the renowned Chinese couturière and founder of Rose Studio. For the latest episode of our...
Art Basel and UBS present The Art Market Report 2023, an annual global art market analysis. The Art Market Report provides a review of the international art market, highlighting some of the most important trends and developments taking place each year. Authored by Dr. Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, it is an independent and...
In collaboration with Stetson, the artist personifies the hidden Black cowboy, reimagining Lon Megargee’s iconic painting ‘The Last Drop From His Stetson’ The American West has its own mythology, bolstered by characters who’ve taken on their own significance over the course of their representation across film and painting and literature: Natives and cowboys, the horses...
