前卫行为艺术挑衅巴塞尔艺术展

BASEL, Switzerland — In an old market hall adjacent to the cavernous center where Art Basel, the gold standard of contemporary art fairs, is taking place, there is a happening unlike anything ever staged here. Called "14 Rooms," it consists of 14 mini-performances created by artists including Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst and Yoko Ono, each secreted in a small space behind mirrored doors. Open one door, and there's a Marina Abramovic look-alike naked and astride a bicycle seat, arms outstretched. In another, identical twins sit in front of identical spot paintings by Mr. Hirst.

瑞士巴塞尔——巴塞尔艺术展(Art Basel)是现代艺术展会的金标，它在巴塞尔洞穴般的艺术中心内举行，在它旁边，一个古老的市场里，一件前所未有的事情登场了。它名叫“14个房间”(14 Rooms)，由14个小型表演组成，它们由玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇(Marina Abramovic)、达米恩·赫斯特(Damien Hirst)和小野洋子等艺术家创作，他们每人隐藏在一个装镜子的门后的一个小空间里，打开门后，会有一个长得很像玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇的人裸体跨坐在一个自行车座上，双臂伸开。在另一扇门里，有一对双胞胎坐在赫斯特创作的同样的几幅点油画前面。

"Performance art is usually at the periphery, so why not put it front and center?" said Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1 in New York, who organized the project with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, a director of exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London. "It's a temporary museum. Nothing here is for sale."

“行为艺术通常处于边缘，为什么不把它推向前台和中心呢？”纽约MoMA PS1的理事克劳斯·比森巴赫(Klaus Biesenbach)说，他与伦敦蛇形画廊的展览主管汉斯-乌尔里希·奥布里斯特(Hans-Ulrich Obrist)一起组织了这个项目。“这是一个临时艺术馆，这里的一切都不出售。”

But next door at Art Basel, almost everything is. As big and boisterous as ever, with 285 galleries from 34 countries participating, this fair is still a magnet for the contemporary art world. Spotted at Tuesday's V.I.P. opening were big-money collectors like Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire; Daniel S. Loeb, the activist hedge fund manager and Sotheby's new board member; Mitchell P. Rales, the Washington industrialist, and his wife, Emily; Jerry I. Speyer, chairman of the Museum of Modern Art; and Daniel Brodsky, chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his wife, Estrellita, an independent curator. Few artists ever make an appearance at art fairs but Oscar Murillo, the Colombian-born painter, did.

但在隔壁的巴塞尔艺术展，一切都是用来出售的。它和往常一样喧嚣庞大，有来自34个国家的285个画廊参加，这个展览对于当代艺术世界来说仍然极具吸引力。在周二的贵宾开幕式上，有许多富有的收藏家光临，比如对冲基金亿万富翁史蒂文·A·科恩(Steven A. Cohen)；激进的对冲基金经纪人与苏富比新的董事会成员丹尼尔·S·罗伊布(Daniel S. Loeb)；华盛顿工业家米歇尔·P·拉莱斯(Mitchell P. Rales)和他的妻子艾米莉(Emily)；MoMA馆长杰里·I·斯派尔(Jerry I. Speyer)，以及大都会艺术博物馆的馆长丹尼尔·布罗德斯基(Daniel Brodsky)和他的妻子——独立策展人艾斯崔尔丽塔(Estrellita)。几乎没有什么艺术家会来艺术市场，但是哥伦比亚出生的画家奥斯卡·穆里洛(Oscar Murillo)来了。

Last month, $2.2 billion worth of art changed hands at the big auctions in New York. The strength of those sales affected everything about this year's fair, from the higher prices to the choice of art. So have museum exhibitions. "Collectors are driven by institutional context," the dealer David Zwirner said. Prominently displayed in his booth is a shiny blue stainless-steel sculpture of a dolphin by Jeff Koons, whose retrospective is opening this month at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Priced at $5 million, it sold on Tuesday to a collector from China, Mr. Zwirner said. His booth also features paintings by the South African-born Marlene Dumas, who has a traveling show opening at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in September; and canvases by Gerhard Richter, who is the subject of an exhibition at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel.

上个月，有价值22亿的艺术品在纽约的大型拍卖会上易手。这些拍卖会的后果影响了今年艺术展的方方面面，从更高的价格到艺术上的选择。画廊的展览也受到了影响。“藏家会跟着美术馆走，”艺术商大卫·泽沃纳(David Zwirner)说。他的摊位上最醒目地展示出一尊闪亮的蓝色不锈钢海豚雕塑，是杰夫·库恩斯(Jeff Koons)的作品，他的回顾展本月将在惠特尼美国艺术馆展出。泽沃纳说，星期二，一位来自中国的藏家以500万美元买下了它。他的摊位上还有南非艺术家玛丽娜·杜马(Marlene Dumas)的油画，她的流动展将于9月在阿姆斯特丹的市立博物馆展出；还有格哈德·里克特(Gerhard Richter)的油画，他的作品将在巴塞尔贝列尔基金会主办的展览中展出。

Mr. Zwirner wasn't the only dealer touting works with a museum presence. Dominique Levy, a New York dealer, had a 1964 black-and-white comic book drawing by Roy Lichtenstein that was in a show at the Morgan Library & Museum four years ago. It sold for an undisclosed price to an American collector.

和泽沃纳一样，其他很多艺术商也按照博物馆的展览安排出售艺术品。纽约艺术商多米尼克·利维(Dominique Levy)有一本1964年罗伊·李奇登斯坦(Roy Lichtenstein)的黑白漫画书，四年前曾在摩根图书馆与艺术馆展出过。它以一个保密的价格被一位美国收藏家买走。

"Sotheby's and Christie's went through a record cycle, and that gives people confidence," Mr. Zwirner said. "Basel is our biggest weapon, if we want to go mano a mano with the auction houses."

“苏富比与佳士得不断创新纪录，这给了人们信心，”泽沃纳说，“如果想同拍卖行抗争，巴塞尔是我们最大的武器。”

Brett Gorvy, chairman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie's, was here, too. Prices, he said, are "informed by the auctions." "Collectors have sticker shock, yet they're pulling the trigger," he added, using as an example one of Andy Warhol's "fright wig" self-portraits from 1986 that several people said had belonged to Thea Westreich, the New York collector and dealer. It was bought by another New York collector for around $34 million, according to Per Skarstedt, the dealer who sold it. In addition to examples of Warhol and Bacon — both top sellers at auction last month — Mr. Koons, whose sculptures had adorned the covers of both Sotheby's and Christie's contemporary art auction catalogs, was ubiquitous. The Gagosian Gallery is featuring "Hulk (Wheelbarrow)," a giant green painted bronze Hulk carrying a wheelbarrow filled with live flowers; it is priced at $4 million. Almine Rech, another dealer, brought two "Gazing Ball" sculptures made this year, one priced at $2 million and the other at $1.6 million. Both sold to European collectors, she said.

佳士得战后与当代艺术部的负责人布莱特·戈尔维(Brett Gorvy)也来到了这里。他说，价格“是由拍卖行提供的”。“收藏家们看了价钱会很震惊，但他们还要买，”他补充说，并以安迪·沃霍尔(Andy Warhol)1986年的“恐怖假发”自画像为例，有人说它曾经属于纽约收藏家与艺术商提亚·威斯特里彻(Thea Westreich)。经销商珀尔·斯卡斯特兹(Per Skarstedt)说，它被另一位纽约收藏家以3400万美元买走。除了沃霍尔与培根（两人都是上个月在拍卖中拍出顶尖高价的艺术家），库恩斯的作品也无所不在，他的雕塑曾经用于苏富比与佳士得当代艺术拍卖目录的封面。加戈西安画廊推出了《绿巨人（独轮手推车）》(Hulk[Wheelbarrow])，一个巨大的青铜绿巨人推着独轮手推车，里面装满鲜花，它标价400万美元。另一位艺术商阿尔米恩·莱彻(Almine Rech)带来今年完成的两座《凝视球》(Gazing Ball)雕塑，一座价格是200万美元，另一座是160万美元。她说，两件作品都卖给了欧洲收藏家。

Younger trendy artists are also represented here, with paintings by Jacob Kassay, Joe Bradley and Mark Bradford, many of which were spoken for.

年轻时尚的艺术家们的作品也在这里出售，有雅克布·卡塞(Jacob Kassay)、乔伊·布拉德利(Joe Bradley)和马克·布拉德福特 (Mark Bradford)的油画，很多都已被卖出。

One young artist determined to control his market is Wade Guyton, the American painter who produces canvases on inkjet printers. Last month, protesting an enormous price asked for one of his paintings at auction, he made copies of the 2005 image from the original disk and posted them on Instagram. (Prices for his paintings were stronger than ever anyway, with one bringing nearly $6 million.) Undeterred, for Art Basel he gave each of the five dealers he works with — Frederich Petzel from New York, Gió Marconi in Milan, Galerie Gisela Capitain from Cologne, Galerie Francesca Pia from Zurich and Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris — a black painting, all the same size and all made from the same disk. They each had a $350,000 price tag, and all of them sold either on Tuesday or before.

年轻的美国画家韦德·盖伊顿决定不去控制自己的市场，他主要在帆布上创作喷墨画。上个月，为抗议他的一幅作品在拍卖会上定为高价，他从原始光盘复制这幅2005年的画作，贴在Instagram上（但他的画作价格却继续上涨，其中一幅接近600万美元）。他未被阻挠，在巴塞尔艺术展上给了纽约的弗里德里克·佩泽尔(Frederich Petzel)、米兰的齐奥·马可尼(Gió Marconi)、科隆的吉塞拉船长画廊(Galerie Gisela Capitain)、苏黎世的弗朗西斯卡·皮亚画廊(Galerie FrancescaPia)和巴黎的尚塔·克鲁瑟画廊(Galerie Chantal Crousel)这五位合作者每位一张画，这是一张黑色的油画，五张画尺寸一样，都是用同一张光盘复制而成。每张上面都标价35万美元，周二之前都卖出去了。

In an email, Mr. Guyton explained that he instructed the dealers to hang his paintings at identical heights, "so each time you walk up to one, you would have a similar physical encounter." He added: "On the one hand, it is a way to satisfy all my galleries simultaneously and fairly. It's also a way of talking about the repetitive experience of seeing similar artworks throughout a fair and embracing that aggressively by showing almost identical works."

在电子邮件中，盖伊顿解释说，他要求经销商把自己的油画悬挂在同一高度：“所以每次你走过一家画廊，就会有同样的身体感觉。”他补充，“另一方面，这可以同时公平地满足我的所有画廊。这也是一种艺术方式，去表达在艺术展上看到类似重复的艺术作品，把出示几乎相同的作品视为具有攻击性，这样一种体验。”

For a few years now, people have complained that dealers have been selling or reserving work by sending collectors images of what will be on view in Basel well before the fair opens. That discussion grew louder this week. "Preselling should be forbidden," said Philippe Ségalot, a private New York dealer whose antics in years past — including hiring a Hollywood makeup artist to disguise him so he could sneak into the fair before everyone and snap up the best works — have become Art Basel legend.

近几年来，人们抱怨经销商在出售或保留作品的时候，不等巴塞尔艺术展召开，就把商品的图像拿给收藏家看。这个星期，有关讨论更加热烈了。“应该禁止预售，”纽约私人经销商菲利普·塞加洛(Philippe Ségalot)说，他在去年做出了许多奇异举动，诸如雇了一个好莱坞化妆师帮他易容，让他提前溜进会场，抢购最好的艺术品，今年这些事已经成为巴塞尔艺术展的传奇。

"If I had done that this year," Mr. Ségalot said, "there would have been nothing to buy."

“如果我今年还做这种事，”塞加洛说，“那这儿也没什么好买的了。”