Andy Warhol Cy Twombly Rene Magritte Remembering Michael Jackson London Gallery Stroll Light and Grace Triumph in Renzo Piano’s Chicago Debut Market Motors Along at Christie’s Contemporary Sale Slim and Conservative, Sotheby’s Sale Proves a Winner

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"You don't know where you are in this market," said Paolo Vedovi, a Brussels-based modern and contemporary art dealer and art-fair vet. "The prices are so crazy, but then again, you hear that so many things have sold."  

"Collectors are frustrated," said Vedovi's tram companion, who declined to identify herself. "They put a reserve on something at one of the stands, only to find out that someone bigger or more important gets it."

Welcome to Art Basel and the still-surging bull market.

Prices were out of this world at New York's Shafrazi Gallery. A royal trio of Andy Warhol commissioned portraits from 1977 and 1978, featuring the Shah, Empress, and Princess of Iran, were priced at $6 million. A huge Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1981 was pegged at $20 million. In that context, Keith Haring's jumbo-scaled, untitled tarp painting from 1987 looked almost cheap at $2.6 million.

"There's a lot of interest in Haring now," said gallery director Hiroko Onoda. "It's only the beginning for him. He's a slow burn."

Down a Decimal...or Two

If it was still a waiting game and early in the fair for Shafrazi and company, elsewhere lower-priced action was unrelenting and furious.

"We've sold all our Korean art," said Tina Kim of the Seoul/New York Kukje Gallery. "We're very happy."

Sungsic Moon's quirky landscape Uneasy (2007) sold for $9,000, marking his Western debut. Kwang-young Chun's mixed-media abstraction Aggregation 07-005 went for $160,000. Duck-hyun Cho's A Memory of the 20th Century (2007), in graphite and charcoal and featuring a faded pair of Japanese geishas set in an artist frame, sold to fashion diva Jil Sander for $50,000. Lee Ufan's large abstraction Dialogue (2006) sold for $60,000.

New York dealer Paula Cooper joked that she was an hour-and-a-half late for the opening of her stand on Tuesday, but that didn't affect the box-office business handled by her staff. "People really knew what they wanted," she said, "and they were here the moment we opened. I'd say it's brisk."

Though Cooper rarely divulges prices, she seemed in a rather expansive mood.

Her list went from Christian Marclay's Chorus II (1988), comprising 29 black-and-white photo close-ups of singers' mouths, which sold for $150,000, to three large and untitled black abstractions by Rudolf Stingel from 2007 that went for $280,000 each.

Cooper also sold out the remaining eight bronze casts of Sherrie Levine's baroquely antlered Caribou Skull (2006) at $125,000 each. The other four in the edition had already been bought in New York.

"We sold more work yesterday than we've ever done before in a vernissage," said Paul Gray of the Chicago/New York Richard Gray Gallery. "There seemed to be fewer people here but more serious buyers."

Of the 17 works that shot off the walls, prices ranged from approximately $75,000 to $3.5 million, the latter for Philip Guston's pink- and red-hued Inside (1969), featuring a smoking, hooded figure set against an urban landscape.

Gray also sold works by Keith Tyson, Jean Dubuffet, Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Elizabeth Peyton, Eric Fischl and David Hammons.

Basquiat Redux

The steady roar of lusty commerce continued at New York's Van de Weghe Fine Art, a first time outing here for the secondary-market gallery.

"This is my first Basel," said gallery owner Christophe van de Weghe, "and I'm very happy, because I did so surprisingly well. I think it's because I'm European and have so many clients here. I've sold ten things so far."

One of the most stunning works I’ve seen at the fair was Cy Twombly's Untitled (Roma) (1957) in oil on paper and laid down on canvas, which sold for $2.5 million to a European collector. It was only one of seven paintings the artist made that year and it appears to be in pristine condition.