The soaring Swiss franc and driving rain did not seem to deter business at the 46th edition of Art Basel (18-21 June), where top-price sales were reported with an almost mechanical regularity. ”It was mainly in the first two days that the big collectors visited the fair, but sales were quite spread throughout,” said Alexander Platon, a senior director at Marlborough Fine Art.
The highest-priced work brought by almost 300 participating galleries was the $50m painting by Rothko on Helly Nahmad’s stand (the gallery would not confirm if it had sold). Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange) (1955) had come from the collection of the US heiress Bunny Mellon and sold for $36.6m at Sotheby’s in 2014.
Other hits included, as ever, the fair’s Unlimited section of large-scale installations, where sales were strong. Hauser & Wirth said that it had sold all four of its Unlimited works, including Pierre Huyghe’s live marine eco-system, Cambrian Explosion (2014), which went to a private buyer for €500,000.