«I LIKE MONEY ON THE WALL»

There was a notable presence of buyers from the Middle East, Latin America and Turkey. “I sold all my Hans Hartungs to Turks,” said Sheffer, while Art Basel’s representative for Mexico, Mariana Munguia Matute, said collectors, including the Coppels whose wealth derives from department stores, had been actively buying. Expected this weekend is leading collector Eugenio López, founder of the Jumex Collection in Mexico City and heir to a fruit juice fortune. While the fair offers an enormous range of price points, it seems that the bulk of sales has been taking place at under a million dollars, with some spikes at over $2m. But the stratospheric levels seen at auctions of blue-chip modern masters—where $20m-plus figures are no longer rare—were not immediately found at the fair. Bischofberger (2.0/C10) had not found a buyer on Thursday for its $80m Warhol One Hundred and Fifty Black/White/Grey Marilyns, 1980, and a $50m Bacon was unsold at Marlborough (2.0/D13).

-The Art newspaper
June 17 2011