Notes from the Basel Preview

The press preview opened at six, and by six-fifteen the main hall was the predictable clot of collectors, advisors, and the occasional artist who had clearly been told to smile for specific people.

Three booths were worth the trip. One Berlin gallery was showing a painter nobody under forty-five has heard of and everybody over sixty-five was lining up to see. Another had committed the entire space to a single installation, which is either brave or reckless depending on whether you like the work.

Nobody was talking about the elephant in the room, which this year was the absence of two galleries who have shown here every year for a decade. Their absence felt less like a logistical footnote and more like a soft statement.

By eight we were back on the tram.