Basel blowout

“Is there anything left?” Anne Mosseri-Marlio asked as she surveyed the red dots beside many of the paintings in Paula Cooper’s booth.

The doors to Art Basel, the annual contemporary art fair here, opened promptly at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and 10 minutes later Ms. Mosseri-Marlio, a collector from Basel, looked distraught. Works by artists like Kelley Walker, Sherrie Levine and Rudolf Stingel had already been sold.

Steven P. Henry, director of the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea, seemed just as surprised. “People literally ran and were here by 11:01,” he said. . .

By Tuesday evening William Acquavella, a New York dealer, said he had sold about 10 paintings by blue-chip masters like Magritte, Warhol, Mr. Freud and Mr. Twombly. “Eighty percent of the buyers were new people, the majority of them Europeans,” he said. “It was a huge day.”

Posted by David on June 13, 2007 9:22 PM