“YOU WON’T see anything,” warned a slender, puckish German gallerist a couple of months ago. Your correspondent had said that he would be attending Art Basel—Europe’s flagship art fair, held every June in Switzerland—for the first time. The gallerist was not talking about the art: dealers show their finest offerings in almost 300 carefully curated booths spread across two sizeable halls in central Basel. His point was that sales take place in private.
Unlike auction sales, at which an audience can watch competing bids drive prices up and see which bid wins, works at Basel change hands after discreet, private conversations. Still, news leaks (or is leaked: little makes a gallery happier than announcing a big sale). Records may not have been broken at this year’s edition, but neither has the disaster that many feared materialised. As the fair heads into its final weekend, the overall mood is guardedly optimistic.