In the world of art fairs, ARCO has always stood out for its range of exhibitors and emphasis on education. Even if it has never had the cachet of neither Frieze and Art Basel nor the nightlife of Art Basel Miami Beach, the Madrid-based fair has become over the past 27 years a favorite of collectors, dealers, and an art loving public more interested in learning than pizzazz or chic. Last year, ARCO attracted 190,000 visitors, one of the highest attendance numbers of any fair. And this year’s edition, which began February 13 with a two-day preview and runs through February 18, received 543 requests for booths, a record for the fair.

Altogether 224 galleries are participating in ARCO’08, 67 from Spain, and 157 from 29 other countries. This year’s fair is also notable for being the first planned primarily by director Lourdes Fernandez, who took over in January 2006, and therefore is the first indication of where she’ll take the fair in the future.

“People always say they want change,” she said during a break in conferences and events, “but when it comes, they often resist. It’s a very different scene than when ARCO started, especially in Spain. Then, there were so few places for the Spanish to see art… Now Spain has many museums and collections. We will not stop our educational programs but we need to reemphasize that we are a market. The contemporary art sector has seen its prices rise steadily by 233 percent between September 2001 and July 2007.”

Fernandez’s most significant innovation is a section called ARCO40, in which 54 galleries present work produced in the last three years by emerging artists. She also introduced an area devoted to solo projects, with each stand containing works by a single artist, most of them created specifically for ARCO, and selected by a team of international curators. Other special sections included the Expanded Box section, devoted to electronic art and new media, and ARCOBrasil, which features 32 galleries from Brazil presenting 100 artists.

“I want to develop closer ties with all the Latin American countries,” Fernandez said. “Brazil is the most powerful member of the Latin American contemporary art market, with a great diversity of high quality contemporary art and a highly developed infrastructure of galleries and museums. I’d like us to become a platform for Latin American art. We share the same language [as much of the region], and with Brazil, a similar culture. They are like family.”

The fair has also moved to new quarters in Feria de Madrid, a huge complex of exhibition halls on the city outskirts, and ARCO now has more than enough space to provide exhibitors with almost gallery-size areas. The architect Juan Herreros designed the interior from scratch, replacing the old squares and avenues set up with irregular aisles and odd corners, which give it the feeling of a dynamic city—and/or a vast marketplace.

American artist Christopher Makos is visiting ARCO now for the fifth time. “The Spanish do everything really authentically,” he said. “The energy in Spain is just so wonderful. Even this new space is so feng shui.”

Sales
Although it is too early to indicate how well ARCO’08 will do overall, following the second day of the invitation-only preview it appears from all reports that dealers were doing at least as well as last year.

The first floor of the Feria de Madrid complex is where you’ll find the world’s best galleries from the major art centers—New York, Berlin, London—and beyond offering works by blue-chip artists like Gordon Matta-Clark, Alex Katz, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, Kiki Smith, Willem de Kooning, Jean Dubuffet, and countless others.

Nuria Misert, director of Marlborough Madrid, reported that they had already sold 10 works, with their prices ranging from €60,000 to 200,000. The upper mark was for a Francis Bacon painting.

And while selling is obviously paramount for a dealer, Rena Bransten, who owns a gallery in San Francisco, said the atmosphere also made a big difference to her. “It’s not such a feeding frenzy here,” she said. “The visitors, whether collectors or not, genuinely engage with the art. Lourdes has been smart in her decisions about the fair. She hired top curators from London, Moacir dos Anjos and Paulo Sergio Duarte, for the Brazil section and created quite a buzz.”

Another advantage of ARCO is that it serves to introduce more Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American art to collectors and institutions. Along with Mark Di Suvero and Dubuffet, the Parisian Galerie Jeanne-Bucher featured the Brazilian artist Luiz Arthur Piza, who was selling well. The stands of Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, Galeria de Arte, and Galeria Oeste, all from Sao Paulo, were packed with viewers. “They’ve given us great space,” said Ana Christina Degens, director of Galeria Oeste, “and exposure to new audiences.” This was also the experience of Xin Dong Cheng, director of the Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art from Beijing, part of a large Chinese contingent at the fair, who hoped to call attention to Chinese artists.

Established galleries like Christopher Grimes of Santa Monica were no less pleased. “We’ve come here for 14 years,” Grimes said, “and it’s evolved, showing more challenging work every year. I think it’s as good as a fair gets. No other attracts so many visitors. There’s a real emphasis on the art. We do much better here than in the United States. The Europeans collect with much more confidence than most Americans, who usually don’t buy with any depth. They’ll buy one or two pieces but not make any commitment to the artists they collect. I think of them doing one-stop shopping in most fairs. They’re far too quick to follow trends. This fair still cares about the artists as much as the market.”