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There’s an electric atmosphere outside Art Basel at 11am this morning. The art world waits with baited breath. The doors to the fair open followed by a rush of excitement. Ready steady go! This is it, this is business, this is war!

Inside the foyer the VIPs, the IPs and the Ps are squashed together in a massive crowd as they are slowly herded towards the gates. Nobody’s smiling. Nobody’s complaining. Everybody is focused and silent. Finally we push through the gates and then the race begins.

We zip around the bottom floor, from David Zwirner to Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth, but no matter how fast we run, we are still too slow. Works are being swallowed up by the very many collectors. Adrenaline is pumping. The fair seems like a slide show as we waltz past amazing works by Sigmar Polke, Thomas Houseago, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol. There is too much to take in, but somehow we do.

We rush upstairs. A fantastic work by Nick van Woert in Yvon lambert, intriguing works by Seth Price, an emotional and extremely strong work by Gillian Wearing at Maureen paley, a very colourful and eye catching Mark Bradford at Sikkema Jenkins and a completely awesome work by Haegu Yang at Greene Naftali, a wonderful Isaac Julian at Victoria Miro and everyone’s new favourite, Garth Weiser at Casey Kaplan!

After a mad morning we run off for a working lunch. Here we sit on the grass outside and enjoy some real German sausage and catch some sun. There should be a clock ticking in the background as people run around the roundabout networking, eating and running back to their booths.Whilst we munch in the madness the more civilised people go upstairs to the VIP area and the netjets lounge.

Seth Price

In the afternoon the excitement continued. We saw a great deal of high quality works at Simon Lee gallery, The Pace Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar and White Cube, to name but a few of the best.

We also loved Statements, where in a work by Alexander Singh, inanimate objects, such as cigarette packets and an hourglass, communicate with each other about philosophy and other such wordly matters, creating an interesting dichotomy. At times it was very funny for example when a father cigarette packet told his son that every star is the glowing embers of a cigarette butt. There were also works by Alex Heim, in which he made ceramic sculptures using car parts. These were very individual.

At Art Unlimited, with Hanging Piece by Kendel Geers you literally had to dodge out the way to avoid being smashed by bricks hanging on red string. There were also strong works by Anish Kapoor, John Turrell and Baldessari. Although Basel is an amazing fair and I love having the opportunity to see so many great works, the shopping mall atmosphere is somewhat unsettling. As dealers deal and collectors buy, not to mention all the others like curators or consultants, one cannot help but question the position that art is put in. Great masterpieces are ripped from their context and stuck onto whitewashed walls in white cubes where I can only hope that they go to a good home. However, it is important to note that Basel attracts more artists than any other fair, which is certainly a good sign. This I believe is due to how serious everyone at Basel is. Regardless of the madness, there really is art devotion taking place.

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