Opinion | Reunited at Art Basel in a tremendous new show: eight Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings

Jean-Michel Basquiat made it to Switzerland.

And so did I.

Having long itched to visit the mother ship fair of Art Basel in this, the mesmerizing city on the Rhine, I finally scooted last week to this oft-called “pocketbook metropolis.” Where the borders of Germany, France and Switzerland converge. And where, as it happens, eight large-scale paintings by Basquiat were also meeting, too, for the first time since he painted them together in 1982, mere years before his tragic demise at just 27.

“Does this tram go to the Fondation Beyeler?” The question in the air for moi, along with scores of art voyeurs and their hanger-oners, when landing in Basel and making the pilgrimage — among others — to one of the finest small museums in the world (one that turned 25 last year and is now the most visited museum in all of Switzerland). The tram sure did! (Gotta love Swiss transit.)

Making the 20-minute trek from the historic centre of the city to the foothills of the Black Forest, I was caught up — soon and sure enough — in an opening-week wave that included fellas who looked like Alexander Skarsgård in $900 sneakers, and women who looked like they might be Tilda Swinton if they were taller and you squinted, all of us taking in this tremendous new show dubbed “Basquiat: The Modena Paintings.”

Long story shortish: the pagan boy of graffiti artists spent a summer in Modena 41 years ago at the behest of Italian gallerist Emilio Mazzoli, making works for a one-off show. For a variety of reasons — mainly moolah — the exhibition never happened and the eight supersize canvasses (all of them scrawled with “Modena” at the back) scattered, eventually ending up in eight different private collections in Asia, in Europe, in the United States.

Inevitably, too, the works became more and more valuable, as Basquiat increasingly became a posthumous art scene poster boy and the market for him went gonzo. (Just last month, Christie’s sold a painting called “El Gran Espectaculo,” a.k.a. “The Nile,” from the collection of designer Valentino for $67 million U.S., the fourth-highest price fetched for s Basquiat painting.)

No wonder the insurance value of each of the paintings up now at the Beyeler totals $100 million (U.S.) — each.

Reunited … and it feels so blue? Well, sort of. According to the museum, the Modena paintings share several common motifs, including, well, this: “a monumental, often black figure set against a background of broad, gestural and expressive brush strokes … the human and the animal body take centre stage.”

“He was a Capricorn,” I heard a woman who looked like she might have just checked out of a White Lotus tell her friend as we neared one painting simply called “Untitled, 1982.” “Emotional heaviness,” she went on, in a singsong accent, telling me when I asked that she always looks up the zodiac signs of artists she admires.

Ah, the art world.

What I found particularly exceptional about this slice of it is that the setting for it truly rivals what is on the walls. Set in a marvel of a building designed by architect Renzo Piano, on farmland. Literally! Basquiats inside, to confirm: cows grazing visibly from its windows outside. Moo.

Think, also: old trees, cornfields, rolling hills, a water lily pond à la Monet, an events pavilion and even the easy, sophisticated hum of a restaurant on site, at another end of the park. The museum itself: laid out on a single floor, with natural light pouring in and a glass roof. No wonder since opening in 1997, housing the private collection of Ernst Beyeler and his wife, Hilda, it has welcomed more than eight million people, most drawn to its core collection of 400 works, ranging from the Monets and van Goghs to postwar greats such as Rothko.

“Initially, it just grew from the pictures we wanted to live with,” the late Ernst once said. “And that was a good feeling. A much better feeling than having money in the bank.” (Indeed, the collector never owned a car, preferring to bicycle most places.)

So the story goes: Beyeler started collecting while still a student at the University of Basel and working at an antiquarian bookshop in the city centre. Upon its owner’s death in 1945, he took over the store and swiftly turned it into an art gallery. An important fork in the road, indeed. Soon, he would become one of those most consequential for truly putting his city on the map: he was one of the co-founders of Art Basel, a consummate ground zero for the international art scene every June (a fair that later also infamously migrated to Miami).

This year, the sprawling fair itself — coming out of a pandemic haze — included nearly 300 galleries from over 34 countries, plus no shortage of ancillary events, shindigs, ragers and hoopla, set in places like Les Trois Rois (where the international-spanning Gagosian gallery group threw a bash) and a rather beautiful restaurant called Bohemia in the Märthof Hotel (where the Mexican delegation hosted a dinner one night).

In terms of a temperature-take on the art market at large, it was also instructive: the first day of sales amounted to a reported total take of $245 million (U.S.), most prognosticators seeing it as good not great, reflecting an uneasy economic picture and a Eurozone that has officially entered into recession, but also a sign of many upbeat buyers, including — most significantly — the return of Asian collectors.

Basel, as I learned, comes by its arty reputation fairly honestly, though. Spread over just 37 compact kilometres, it is — amazingly — home to nearly 40 museums. But none more famous than the one that Beyeler built. A must-visit, for sure. Right place, right Rhine.

Shinan Govani is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist covering culture and society. Follow him on Twitter: @shinangovani

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