Three Nights in Art Basel’s Ever-Vibrant Social Scene

It’s a well-worn truth by now—or maybe a tired cliché —to say that Art Basel is as much about what happens outside the Messe Basel as within it. Beyond the VIP days, the real action can be found at night over cocktails and private dinners, where collectors, dealers, artists, and advisors close deals, swap gossip, and forge relationships that ripple across the art world for months—sometimes years—to come.

So, in the name of journalistic rigor, ARTnews sent correspondents Daniel Cassady and George Nelson into the fray. Below, they recount their misadventures across three nights of sausage dinners, crypto-backed cocktail hours, and Basel’s ever-elusive velvet ropes.

Related Articles

Monday

Daniel Cassady: It’s impossible to write about my first night out in Basel without mentioning the completely vile time I had getting to the city. I chose to fly out of Newark (which I thought was a brave idea) and suffered for it. A delayed push-off was the first domino to fall, leading to an itinerary that, instead of comprising two flights, required four—stopping in Iceland, Norway, and Denmark—before finally arriving in Zurich.

After catching the train into town, I arrived in Basel six and a half hours late and walked directly to a dinner hosted by Austrian art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac at the elegantly rustic Safran Zunft. Think Game of Thrones-esque medieval church meets fine dining: 50-foot ceilings, stained glass, Toyota-sized chandeliers, with a side of white asparagus and silky béarnaise. Dubai- and London-based collector Selim Bouafsoun was in attendance, as were Sotheby’s senior vice president Bame Fierro March, Hamburger Bahnhof directors Sam Bardaouil and Tim Fellrath, and Laura Colnaghi.

George Nelson: I flew (smoothly and directly) into Basel too late on Monday evening to crash any dinners, so settled in for a midnight drink with Daniel near our Airbnb. He scrubs up well: chore jacket found in a Parisian thrift store, black polo shirt, chinos, and penny loafers (not sockless, I hasten to add). The look was completed with a Guinness. His readiness to drink the black stuff 738 miles from source was a little embarrassing (it doesn’t travel well), but I kept schtum as I sipped my lager. He is American, after all.

Note: Didn’t sleep well—street noise and the smell of boiled cabbage billowing up from the vent below to blame.

Tuesday, First VIP Day

DC: While some of the dealers I spoke to said the pace was slower this year than at previous Basels, the halls of the Messeplatz were still thrumming with collectors and curators swarming like spawning salmon. At around 8:30 p.m., I made my way to a charmingly civilized sausage-and-beer fête hosted by Pace dealer Georgie Rees and Max Lefort, a dealer at Almine Rech, on the patio at Henrietta, a local grill not far from the fair. Low-key vibe, solid DJ, and franks that put the Messeplatz offerings to shame—all art fair parties should be this good.

A few hours later, I met up with the graceful Dunja Gottweiss, who earlier this year left the Basel team to become director of Art Dubai, and we headed to a dinner thrown by the galleries BLUM, Crèvecœur, Karma, Mendes Wood DM, and Taka Ishii. Given that it was just shy of midnight, food was nowhere to be found. The venue—on the ninth floor of what appeared to be a train station—was so hidden that our Uber driver asked three separate times if we actually knew where we were going. The party, all pink lighting and umbrellas, was just beginning to gather steam.

The bar, however, was a catastrophe: not enough staff, not enough glassware, not enough patience on either side of the counter. Booze-starved art worlders flailed for attention like toddlers in a petting zoo. The bartenders, in turn, threw up their hands. One poor soul—perhaps the most tortured of the bunch—became so vexed by the grumbling that he poured 10 vodka sodas, held them high—two at a time—and shouted, “Here, just take it. Just take it, it’s vodka.”

As the night wore on, the dance floor got vibier, the guests more lubricated, the staff less frazzled. Eventually, I realized it was long past my bedtime and made for the exit, weaving through a crowd that was still filing in as I left.

GN: With our fair sales report filed at 6:59 p.m. from the level-two calm of the Madam Sum restaurant in the fair’s Collectors Lounge, it was time to head to dinner. As usual during fair week, I swatted away any creeping fatigue and speed-walked to Space 25. There, the Tezos Foundation and ArtMeta were hosting a dinner to celebrate a new partnership and the headline exhibition of the Digital Art Mile, “Paintboxed.”

Before the food came out, digital art advisor and fair cofounder Georg Bak gave a tour of the show. Featuring works made with the Quantel Paintbox—a clunky yet pioneering computer from the ’80s—the exhibition included VCR covers for cult Schwarzenegger classics Total Recall, Predator, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

I also chewed the fat with Jean-Frédéric Mognetti, executive director of the Tezos Foundation’s executive committee. “Tezos trusts ArtMeta, and that is the most important thing,” he said. “They are disruptors, and they’re doing brilliant things in the digital art world.”

Meanwhile, Ian Charles Stewart—a cofounder of WIRED and the recently appointed director of TMA Labs at the Toledo Museum of Art—was also in attendance. “Toledo’s collection starts 20,000 years ago and comes forward—we consider ourselves a living museum,” he explained. “We are current, and we feel like we’re part of the digital art community.”

At dinner, I sat next to a Prague-based collector of avant-garde Czech artists. At one point, he leaned over to tell me that many collectors at Art Basel don’t have time to dabble in the private market, so are prepared to pay the fair’s “inflated prices.” Ouch.

I considered meeting Daniel for a late-night drink, but with a panel to moderate at the Digital Art Mile the next morning, my better angels prevailed.

Wednesday, Second VIP Day 

DC: Sometimes the evening gets away from you. Usually that’s a bad thing, but on Wednesday—the second of Art Basel’s two VIP days—everything was coming up aces. I kicked things off with a low-key patio cocktail hour hosted by Independent Art Fair. We all but took over the outdoor space at Damatti Bar and Bistro, a short walk from the Messeplatz. It’s hard to say what was most impressive about the tiny Italian spot: the steady flow of Aperol and Select spritzes, or the massive fountain out front. Independent founder Elizabeth Dee floated around the patio, making introductions and connecting the right people, as any good fair founder should. It’s all about connections.

Later, I headed to the Tinguely Museum for a garden party celebrating the opening of Julian Charrière’s exhibition. Champagne, oysters, salmon tartare, and exceptionally green grass set the scene, along with a cheeky little table offering neat pours of Casa Dragones tequila. Not the usual beverage for chasing oysters—but it worked. After an hour of schmoozing and boozing, I took what I assumed would be a quick ride to the Vitra Design Museum to meet a friend. Vitra may be just a 12-minute drive from Tinguely, but it’s also across the border—in Germany.

As we passed through the checkpoint, I briefly wondered if I’d been duped and was about to be stranded in the Black Forest with a stomach full of shellfish. Thankfully, my friend isn’t evil, and Vitra was well worth the trip. The event had music festival vibes: smoke machines, thumping bass, and bean bag chairs scattered throughout the museum. If you got tired of dancing, you could recline among some of the best examples of furniture design known to man.

Then came the call every art reporter hopes for: an invite to Les Trois Rois, the famed Basel hotel where the art world’s upper echelon holds court. Kasmin gallery dealmaker Eric Gleason had a corner table. Did I want to join? Absolutely. Earlier that day, I’d made it to the Fondation Beyeler and floated down the Rhine—a classic Basel bucket list item. The hat trick was within reach, on my first trip to the city, no less.

There was a queue at the door—no surprise. I foolishly assumed that having an invite would allow me to skip it. So wrong. A bouncer, muscles bulging like a handful of walnuts in a balloon, looked me up and down and said flatly, “You can see your friend by waiting in the queue,” at which point I turned to dust and ceased to exist.

To the back of the line I went. Many others received the same icy treatment, including debonair dealer Emmanuel Di Donna, who specializes in Surrealist art, and at least 20 women dressed to the nines. (They weren’t together, but you’d be forgiven for thinking they were cast members of a new Real Housewives franchise.) I loathe waiting in lines, but luckily found a fellow New Yorker—art advisor Warren Winegar.

We whiled away the time chatting, and before we knew it, we were at the velvet rope. As I moved to pass, Walnuts dropped the rope and said, “Not yet, sir. Not yet.” Winegar, a true gentleman, stepped in: “Excuse me, he is with us. We are together and we’ll be going in together.” The big man crumbled, and in I went.

The hotel is as nice as you’ve heard. (Did you know they’ll charge your phone at the front desk?) All the rumors are true. It was Gatsby’s mansion on the Rhine. In the lobby, collectors clustered around tables showing each other pictures of their latest purchases. I slid into the corner booth. Hat trick achieved.

GN: The VIPs thinned quickly at the fair. After collecting second-day sales reports, I met American collector Jeff Magid in Art Basel’s sun-drenched courtyard. Magid is fond of comparing the art market to sports for his 41,700 Instagram followers. (With Hilde Lynn Helphenstein announcing her retirement as Jerry Gagosian, Magid has emerged as one of a few art world commentators angling to ascend the social media throne.)

Magid refused to entertain talk of slow sales being down to “global instability.” Instead, he argued, the real issue is that most dealers are still pricing both primary and secondary works far too high.

“People want good artworks at fair prices, and until that’s the norm—not the exception—many of the established buyers won’t buy as much, fewer new buyers will join, and sales will continue to be ‘slow,’” he said.

I skipped out for dinner at Zum Isaak, a restaurant overlooking the Rhine, with Amelia Redgrift, Pace’s chief communications and marketing officer; Artsy’s CEO, Jeff Yin; Brunswick Group’s art PR team; and Anna Maja Spiess, the founder of the cultural agency Upon Request. It was then a short hop to the anarchy of an overrun Basel Social Club—the upstart satellite fair held in a former bank in Grossbasel. I bumped into Politico reporter Carlo Martuscelli, who was working on a piece about Art Basel’s macroeconomics and the market’s geopolitical parallels. He’s a self-confessed numbers guy.

It was getting late. I was spent. But the night wasn’t over. Upon Request’s Spiess and Brunswick director Darrell Rocha kidnapped me and dragged me to the “Das Viertel” hot dogs and raclette techno party hosted by artist Julian Charrière on Strasse 81. I said hello to a merry Marc Spiegler, former head of Art Basel, as I slipped out not too much later.

Final note for future initiates: An invigorating early morning swim in the Rhine is a highly recommended hangover cure.