On Monday afternoon in Basel, Switzerland, a push alert pinged the phones of several art-world VIPs who gathered for the opening of Unlimited, the wing of the city’s eponymous art fair that features large-scale works too big for a booth. Across the hangar-sized exhibition hall, the well-heeled clientele fished phones out of pockets or clutches and saw that the news, for once, was good: The U.S. announced that it would ease travel restrictions for non-U.S. citizens coming to the states from abroad, with proof of vaccination, starting in early November. Many had assumed that, with the delta variant still raging, COVID travel bans would continue until 2022, making Art Basel in Miami Beach—which kicks off in late November—a one-continent event barely worth attending. Now it will effectively be the first art-world gathering open to the world in nearly two years.

The idea of light at the end of the tunnel was an adrenaline shot to the heart for the 51st edition of Art Basel, the most hotly hyped contemporary-art shindig on each year’s calendar, but this year written off by many given the circumstances. Collectors and dealers from countries in Asia were largely unable to travel due to restrictions, and U.S. citizens feared stringent testing requirements. Many collectors who typically make the trek from America to this Swiss town on the Rhine instead decided to skip it in favor of the next edition, just nine months away in June 2022.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Messeplatz. A smaller but serious contingent actually showed up to the VIP Champagne breakfast Tuesday morning, and not just for the endless fresh-shucked oysters and bottomless flutes of Ruinart. They were, imagine this, there to buy art.

“There actually are some very serious collectors here,” Jeffrey Deitch told me in the middle of his booth, his first at the fair since 2009, the year before he took a break from gallery business to run the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “Yes, some people were intimidated by the rules, but art collectors, they’re a special breed, they’re adventurous people. Look, here are some collectors now!”

Deitch darted off to greet an excitable group of English speakers, but later added that in the early hours of the fair, he had sold enough to cover the costs of the whole week, with plenty of inventory waiting for new homes. Most prominently, he had convinced longtime client Dakis Joannou, the Greek Cypriot industrialist billionaire, to part ways with Urs Fischer’s Untitled (Bread House) (2004-2006), a 16-foot abode that was indeed constructed from fresh loaves. It’s on sale for $3 million, waiting for that special someone who has room in their home to install…another, smaller home that is getting moldier every day.

But Deitch was talking on Tuesday, and at that point there had already been a few days of action in the Rhineland. In Zurich, the typically packed pre-Basel days at first seemed relatively muted, with no crowds streaming in and out of the Löwenbräu, the old brewery that’s been turned into a long complex stuffed with galleries, museums, and art-book stores. The shows were excellent. Those who made it to the Luma Westbau, the Zurich outpost of patron Maja Hoffmann’s Arles-based art foundation, saw a nimble and innovatie video work by Ian Cheng, just a few walls away from another stunning video work in Korakrit Arunanondchai’s show at the Migros Museum. Elsewhere in the Löwenbräu, the Kunsthalle Zurich presented a wonderfully tweaked version of the ’90s-tastic Art Club2000 show that was at Artists Space in New York earlier this year.

But the lack of crowds did not mean that the heavy hitters were skipping town.

Longtime Zurich gallerist Eva Presenhuber presented a new show of stunning portraits by Steven Shearer—the king of punked-out opulence who just got picked up internationally by David Zwirner—and fêted him after with a dinner in the pavilion room at the Baur au Lac hotel, the Talstrasse beauty straddling the ancient Swiss lake. The galleries seemed empty, but the dinner drew Presenhuber’s fellow gallery heads Sadie Coles, Barbara Gladstone, Dominique Levy, and Pilar Corrias, as well as the curator Beatrix Ruf and artists such as Shara Hughes, Ugo Rondinone, and Liam Gillick. Even more impressive: The event was held at the Baur while Hauser & Wirth hosted an equally starry dinner at the same hotel, in the newly refurbished bar room called Baur’s. Held in honor of Simone Leigh and Glenn Ligon, who just debuted new shows at Hauser’s Zurich spaces, the dinner ended with gallery partner Marc Payot gleefully showing the works that Hauser had given the ancient hotel to kit out its new gilded drinking den: paintings by Louise Bourgeois, a set of Raymond Pettibon drawings, and photos by Annie Leibovitz.

In Basel, Monday brought the opening of the Liste fair, often fertile ground to find fresh talent. The sight of power adviser Patricia Marshall—who’s whispered buying advice into the ears of LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault and Jumex billionaire Eugenio López—entering Liste was a good sign, and it was encouraging to see young Los Angeles dealer Matthew Brown fill his booth with massive ceramics by Heidi Lau, a rare sight of the medium during a week so heavy with paintings. Brown said he shipped them from Los Angeles only to sell to a collector in Los Angeles—a good problem to have, especially when America was virtually written off before the fairs opened.

And at night the town somehow managed to fit fêtes for Gagosian at Nomad, Zwirner at Chez Donati, and Pace at the Volkshaus. Marc Glimcher, the Pace president in from New York, had wrangled some of the more prominent Yankees to his supper, including the collector and dealer Adam Lindemann, who was presenting at the fair a little-seen suite of work by Peter Saul that includes shockingly phallic portraits of society folk like Jackie O and Andy Warhol.

“It’s kind of the opposite of what everyone else brings to Basel—I mean, who’s going to buy a painting of Jackie Kennedy with dicks coming off her all over the place?” Lindemann said.

Perhaps the best measure of the success of the grand Swiss fair isn’t the Messeplatz on Tuesday morning, but the night before, on the deck of the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois—the stately hotel hugging the Rhine that becomes the only adequate martini-quaffing spot for the world’s top art sellers with their name on the doors of galleries on many continents. Zwirner and Glimcher held court at separate tables, surrounded at other perches by dealers such as Max Hetzler, Joe and Helly Nahmad, Per Skarstedt, and Christophe Van de Weghe, who was trying to solicit offers on a Basquiat he apparently convinced Swiss bigwig Bruno Bischofberger to consign to him for the booth, with a price tag of $40 million. (It’s still available.)

The next morning, the swagger it takes to bring a major Basquiat to the fair seemed justified. Yes, there were fewer American collectors, but their advisers showed up. Eleanor Cayre, the adviser and collector, was seen eyeing work on the upper floors of the circular convention center, home to the younger, hipper galleries. Larry Gagosian himself didn’t make the trip, but Sandy Heller—the adviser who has worked with billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen and Garage Museum founder Dasha Zhukova—was in the Gagosian booth, chatting with chief operating officer Andrew Fabricant. And the lack of New Yorkers wasn’t a problem with Lévy Gorvy cofounder Brett Gorvy, he told me, standing by a booth where works by Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, and Joan Mitchell sold for as much as $5 million. He simply set up a viewing room in New York before shipping the works to Switzerland, so the stateside guys staying put could see the works in a pre-Basel, booth-like simulacrum.

Instead, he was selling to European collectors who save up to spend in Art Basel, and could easily come into the city if only for a day.

“It’s their one art-shopping experience,” Gorvy said. “Why would you come to Basel apart from the art fair? Europeans, they buy at the fair, come to the same three restaurants, they overpay, and then they leave.”

Los Angeles powerhouse David Kordansky Gallery also did its homework before coming, senior director Mike Homer said, telling me that “we sell pretty much everything beforehand, so there’s not that much actually in the booth to buy.”

“But,” he continued, “we’re here to make contacts, and to meet people we met online in the last two years, so it’s exciting to be here—even with the masks.”

(Ah, right, forgot to mention: Everyone’s been wearing masks this whole time, as they’re required in the fair.)

In the back of the second floor, a mini-frenzy erupted when Maurizio Cattelan stopped by the Perrotin booth to personally inspect the installation of his new work, Brother (2021), his first sculpture in pure 18-karat gold since the infamous America (2016), the glistening toilet that was stolen from the Blenheim Palace, and, according to an art detective, presumably melted down to be sold off as a precious metal. (Brother sold for 380,000 euros, though it’s an edition of three, and two are still available.)

Next to Perrotin, Bowery mainstay Bridget Donahue had a solo booth of new work by Jessi Reaves, and was explaining that she convinced four of her artists to fly in for the fair when a trio of men in cowboy hats showed up at the booth.

“Sorry I have to go chat with these Texas collectors,” she said, ducking back into dealer mode.

Around the corner, Berlin gallery Société had to do a full booth rehang after so much sold the first day, and cofounder Daniel Wichelhaus celebrated at a roughly 150-person dinner at Safran Zunft, one of the city’s ancient fresco-filled dining halls.

“The fair this year is truly for the die-hards, the people who really want to be here,” he said, approvingly. “They’re here for the culture, they’re not here about hanging out.”

Appropriately, the hottest ticket of Wednesday night wasn’t a Champagne-soaked dinner, but a rare live performance by Matthew Barney—long the avatar of the American avant-garde—at the Schaulager. The lucky few who received an invite knew little about the performance, apart from the name, “Catasterism in Three Movements,” and that it would contain “loud sounds” and “a laser light.” Upon arrival, it was noted by staff that pictures and video were strictly forbidden. At 8 p.m., the Schaulager greeted a small group studded with museum directors (outgoing MOCA director Klaus Biesenbach and the outgoing director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, Stefan Kalmár) and private museum owners (Julia Stoschek, Hoffmann) and next-generation artists who are in some ways indebted to the hugeness of Barney (Arunanondchai, Precious Okoyomon).

Attendees, phones firmly in pockets, were led into the museum’s first atrium space to find the string section of the Basel Sinfonietta dotting the corners of the large space. There were two performers, a woman in jeans and a figure in a white jumpsuit holding a large rifle. The two figures circled each other as the musicians plucked at their strings ominously, and after a few minutes, the gunman slowly walked, weapon in hand, across the platform to the lower level of the museum, out of sight of the audience. Then, as the violins swelled, suddenly a gunshot ripped through the Schaulager, and another, and another, the VIPs jerking and clamping their ears at each boom. And while looking at the fear on their faces, I spotted Barney himself, mask on, wearing a headset that connected him to the dancers, directing the spectacle that these few dozen attendees would be talking about the rest of the week.

This is the way Art Basel ends, not with a whimper, but a bang. See you all in Miami Beach.

Your crib sheet for comings and goings in the art world this week and beyond…

…United Talent Agency is the Hollywood power center that seems to be betting the biggest on the NFT market, and recently named longtime agent Lesley Silverman—sister of San Francisco’s primo young gallerist, Jessica Silverman—its head of digital assets. She’s currently working with one of the newest UTA signees: Larva Labs, the creators of CryptoPunks, the NFT craze that surpassed $1 billion in sales last month.

…Meanwhile, Vito Schnabel is getting into the NFT business in a big way—he’s launching a platform called ArtOfficial that will sell NFTs and other digital artworks, developed alongside the online wine guy Gary Vaynerchuk. According to a press release, first up for sale is an NFT by Francesco Clemente, the first the artist has ever made, in an edition of four. They’re on sale starting today (ed: that’s Friday) and the buyer gets a very IRL experience to go with the joy of owning something that doesn’t physically exist: Clemente will paint a watercolor portrait of the buyer from life.

…Hauser & Wirth cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth recently bought the iconic Lovell Health House in Los Angeles, Richard Neutra’s breakthrough design and a crucially important International Style Icon. The price was a reported $8.75 million, and it will serve as a private home for the couple, not a viewing room or gallery of any kind, a source close to the gallery said.

…Tobias Meyer rarely makes public appearances at art fairs—the former swashbuckling Sotheby’s rainmaker is now a spotlight-averse private adviser who mostly does nine-figure deals from his office in Manhattan’s Seagram Building. He advises the Newhouse family on their collection, got tapped by the Met to help with its deaccessioning project, and in May teamed up with Iwan Wirth to sell Citadel founder Ken Griffin a Barnett Newman masterpiece with a price tag said to be north of $100 million. So why was Meyer in the bar room of Zurich’s best restaurant, Kronenhalle, Sunday night, having a clandestine drink with a client? We couldn’t ID the mystery man, but there’s plenty of collectors in Switzerland ready to unload a pricey picture from their wall, or their free port.

…Marcel Dzama and Katherine Bradford were on hand Thursday in New York to unveil their new permanent installations on two stops of the L train—Dzama crafted massive mosaics for the Bedford Avenue stop, and Bradford made a new work, Queens of the Night, for the First Avenue stop.

…Jarrett Gregory, who made waves as a young star at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, has been named curator at the Beyeler Foundation, the gorgeous institution cofounded by Swiss mega-collector Ernst Beyeler in a town on the outskirts of Basel.

…Jason Biggs, actor still best known for experimenting with a warm pastry in the late-’90s hit American Pie, slid into the DMs of artist Lucien Smith to try to buy a work from a particular series by the artist, saying, “I’ve been talking about how I need to get one of your Pie Paintings for a while now, As you can imagine, it speaks to me on many levels lol.”

“It’s just like old times,” Tolga Albayrak screamed into a reporter’s ear in the middle of the dance floor at Das Viertel, a nightclub in an industrial corner of Basel, Switzerland. The old times being June 2019, the last time Art Basel was able to hold the fair, and the last time Tolga (it’s always just Tolga) was able to hold his marquee eardrum-bursting, up-all-night Director’s Cut party, where famous-in-Europe DJs hit the ones and twos until daylight. To those who enjoy both contemporary art and face-melting bass drops, these two events are of similar importance. There’s a reason why, on Wednesday-night-slash-morning, one of the people logging time in the VIP area behind the DJ booth was Art Basel’s global director, Marc Spiegler.

The place was packed, loud, sweaty, and overall extremely pre-pandemic. (But safe, or at least as safe as can be—all attendees had to be vaxxed, or take a rapid test at the station outside.) Each year at Art Basel, the promise of a Tolga party is the carrot on a stick that gets a dealer through two grueling days of convincing people to spend hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs on pictures. Yes, the billionaire Art Basel attendee kicks back post-fair with a casual 30-franc glass of champagne at the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois. But the mid-level gallery director who’s spent two straight days shaking down clients and filling out spreadsheets? That person wants nothing else but to suck down tequila sodas and dance.

And sure, sometimes a Tolga–party attendee takes the occasional break to sell art—it’s not like deals weren’t getting done in the backyard smoking deck, where the Berlin art-macher Johann König was chatting with artist Austyn Weiner, a prominent Los Angeles collector made the rounds, and directors at Gladstone, Kasmin, and Sotheby’s mixed with Gagosian staffers. But when a DJ ripped into a low-end-slathered version of Todd Terje’s “Strandbar,” cigarettes got smashed outside and everyone surged inside to hit the floor, not thinking about how they had to be standing in an art-fair booth in just a few hours.

And that does it for your Art Basel True Colors. Like what you’re seeing? Hate what you’re reading? Have a tip? Drop me a line at nate_freeman@condenast.com.

This article has been corrected to reflect that this year’s Art Basel is its 51st edition.

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