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For most, art fairs aren’t exactly casual shopping experiences. That said, at this year’s edition of Art Basel, opening today for VIPs (and for general ticket holders this Thursday) in its eponymous Swiss hometown, both collectors dropping big bucks on Josef Albers’s tableaux at David Zwirner’s booth and amateur admirers of the culturally definitive artworks on show, will find a more wallet-friendly proposition on offer: the Art Basel Shop.
With a prime location amid the fair’s sprawling Herzog De Meuron-designed expanse, Art Basel Shop is best described as an ephemeral concept store, dealing in eclectic art memorabilia and lifestyle products. Granted, the term ‘concept store’ is, at this stage in retail history, all but bankrupt — but this activation fairly earns the term due to the person overseeing the inaugural edition of the project: Sarah Andelman, founder and creative director of Colette, the landscape-shifting Parisian multi-brand store and project space that shuttered in 2017. She’s also the founder of Just An Idea, a consulting and curatorial platform, alongside Just An Idea Books, a limited-edition publishing company.
The fact that Art Basel, one of the art trade’s largest commercial forums, should branch out into retail is not so surprising in and of itself. As anyone who’s visited any of the fair’s four global events will know, each can be cynically boiled down to a — admittedly very rarified — shopping event. That said, its distinguishing feature is its aura of global cultural significance. “Art Basel is a cultural brand,” Andelman tells Vogue Business in an exclusive interview. “You notice that when you later see people carrying the tote bags that they gift out in the real world. People are proud to wear them.”
It’s an observation not lost on Art Basel’s C-suite. “The Art Basel Shop is something that people have long thought and talked about,” says Hayley Romer, Art Basel’s chief growth officer. “In fact, if you mentioned [the fair], one of the first things that would come out of people’s mouths was, ‘Well, you should have a shop!’ Over the last few months, we have increased our conviction and clarity around the real demand for Art Basel to put itself out there in new and unexpected ways — not only from our direct community, but the cultural community at large.”
Bespoke art objects
Inspired by her own experience of working alongside artists on bespoke art objects, collectables and merch at Colette, Andelman’s intention was to amass as far-reaching — yet still impeccably considered — a range as possible; one that appealed to the diversifying tastes of the fair’s ever-broadening audience, and still felt particular to its location. “For the Basel edition, we have a selection of existing products,” she says, “but we also have our bespoke AB by Art Basel line.” AB by Art Basel is an accessories, apparel and “goodies” capsule featuring the fair’s original logo that “will be entirely exclusive, available here or nowhere else — not even online”, according to Andelman. “I’ve already received messages asking, ‘How can I get pieces if I’m not coming to Art Basel?’ I think it increases its desirability.”
Besides the merch line, visitors will also be able to discover The Artist Collection: a series of homeware and apparel created in collaboration with American artist Christine Sun Kim; new and limited-edition printed matter, including 75 of a 1,250 limited-run of British artist David Shrigley’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ project; and limited-edition Caran d’Ache x Keith Haring pens. There’s also a week-long events programme at the space, offering meet-and-greets with some of the aforementioned artists.
With prices ranging “from CHF 3 ($3.35) for a sticker to CHF 5,500 CHF ($6,135) for a Josh Sperling puzzle published by Perrotin,” Andelman shares, the price bracket has been devised with accessibility and a realistic understanding of the Art Basel customer in mind. Still, amid a generally exorbitant pricing landscape, the tags for most things aren’t necessarily eye watering. A jersey hoodie clocks in at CHF 135 ($150), while plates by major institutional artist Carrie Mae Weems figure at CHF 280 ($312) a piece.
An eclectic audience
“What’s interesting about such collaborations in the context of an art fair is that you’re able to give platforms to a wider range of artists, and bring them to a wider audience,” says Jess Christie, former chief brand officer at Matches — who, during her tenure, was responsible for the luxury retailer’s partnership with fellow art fair Frieze. “Making fairs continually appeal to a more diverse audience is really important, and I’m sure it’s something Art Basel is conscious of.”
“Art Basel has long understood the power and allure of the lifestyle elements of the art world,” echoes Naomi Rea, Artnet News’s acting editor-in-chief. “Access to this world is aspirational and offering a piece of it at a more affordable price point expands the customer base significantly. Now, the casual visitors over the weekend (as opposed to the VIP days) can say they bought something at Art Basel and can signal their membership in the art tribe.”
While the product and price range seem to factor this in, whether the Art Basel Shop itself will serve as an independent draw to the fair remains to be seen. First off, there’s the fact that of the four cities in which Art Basel takes place, Basel is by far the smallest, with most attendees flying in specifically for the fair already. “You’d have to first of all be in the city where Art Basel’s happening, and then be aware of the fair to be able to access the shop,” Romer notes.
Add to that the fact that the fair, by its very nature, attracts a generally monied customer base, it’s understandable why the Art Basel Shop — while open to all — is geared towards the fair’s pre-existing, loyal audience. “While there will be a great diversity of people, a number of them will be accustomed to shopping in luxury fashion brand stores,” Andelman says. “As such, for the Art Basel Shop, we want to deliver a similar calibre of service.” Global shipping options are available on-site to save attendees from lugging French artist Philippe Parreno’s hefty Cahiers d’Art editions, for instance, around the Messe Basel all day long.
The large volume of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) is, of course, a primary motivator for establishing a retail space within the context of an art fair. Speaking of Matches’s Frieze partnership, Christie notes, “We were always looking for ways to add value and speak directly to our customer,” which, for the e-tailer, underscored the business favour of maintaining a physical presence in the fair. “In the last year of our partnership with Frieze, in just the VIP opening days, we engaged with 10,000 customers alone. It proves how fundamental it was to the business. If you engage with that many top-tier customers, it has ripple effects. And that’s all down to giving them an experience that feels unique; that they weren’t seeing anywhere else.”
A shifting cultural landscape
The business logic for Art Basel’s step into the world of concept retail is self-evident. Not only does it capitalise on the institution’s booming reputation as a global cultural brand, but it also caters to an insatiable appetite for niche, site-specific merch and memorabilia — a phenomenon that has been broadly attested to across art, fashion, music and culture writ large.
“At this moment in time, many artists are interested in disseminating their work beyond the space of the gallery and the museum,” concurs Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries in London, noting merchandise’s development into a frontier for artistic expression. “[It] has always been one of these possibilities and many artists have worked with it over the last decades. It’s great news that Noah Horowitz [Art Basel’s CEO and Serpentine’s former development associate] and his team decided to invite artists to do multiplied artworks (limited-edition works made in greater runs, as opposed to one-off pieces). He was always interested in new distribution models for art.”
There is, however, another noteworthy cultural shift that the launch of Art Basel Shop signals: the art world’s embrace of the realms of fashion and lifestyle — in particular, their endemic marketing and communications strategies. While there are numerous examples of fashion brands stepping into the art world through collaborations (Loewe), artistic programming (Bottega Veneta), institutional sponsorships (Chanel), show commissions Miu Miu) and foundations (Prada), exchanges in the other direction are far more rare. One of the few exceptions is Felix LA, a small, independent art fair held in the rooms of Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel, which earlier this year, enlisted Dover Street Market (DSM) as an official partner to help recruit brands as collaborators (pieces were sold at DSM’s Felix space).
Against this backdrop, Art Basel’s enlisting of Andelman — one of the most highly regarded fashion retail pioneers — is worth noting.
“There has been a convergence of art and fashion as both industries seek to leverage each other’s cultural cachet; as fashion seeks to borrow fine art’s higher cultural status and fine art seeks a larger, more diverse audience,” Artnet News’s Rea notes. “Sellers increasingly see the luxury and lifestyle sector as a gateway drug for bringing new art buyers into the fold, and the Art Basel Shop dovetails neatly with that trend.”
It’s a phenomenon that Melanie Gerlis, The Art Newspaper art market editor-at-large and columnist for the Financial Times, similarly attests to. She points out that the increased confluence of the two worlds speaks to a “need to provide unique experiences, which now go beyond being at an art fair or seeing a fashion show, for an ever-demanding audience”, culminating in “the growth of the broader lifestyle scene, which seeks to combine fine food, designer clothes, spa experiences, indulgent travel and, more recently, art”.
As Colette proved in its heyday, people who harbour a cross-sectional interest in appreciating and consuming art, fashion and lifestyle products generally like to be able to satiate those appetites in the same place and time. “Art and fashion need each other, and while there have historically been some walls between them, I think it’s now a question of having the two cross over,” Andelman says. “We speak to the same people. In Paris at the moment there’s a Constantin Brancusi exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, sponsored by Repossi — why not have a Repossi corner in the gift shop? You have to put a product where your customer is, not wait for them to come to you.”
Paris, Miami, Hong Kong
It will be particularly intriguing to see the guises that Art Basel Shop takes on in its three other ports of call, especially given their respective reputations as cities with extremely robust shopping cultures and infrastructures. “We won’t be bringing what we have in Basel to Paris, Miami or Hong Kong,” Andelman flags. “There won’t be any products repeated in any of the shops. Each will be totally bespoke to the particular week and city.” A move engineered to stoke independent excitement around the store as its reputation blooms.
While the outcome of this pilot will only be known after the fair’s closure on 16 June, Art Basel is optimistic regarding the initiative’s prospects. “We’re excited to start here and see where it takes us, but I would say that there’s so much room for creativity around how we do this in the future,” Romer says.
The potential that stepping into lifestyle retail unlocks for a commercial art fair like Art Basel makes it “a no-brainer”, Gerlis argues. “[Especially since] other art world players do similar — most galleries have some sort of editions offering, as a way to extend the ‘brand’ of their artists, while others such as Hauser Wirth not only have their own concept stores, but have a sister company that runs hotels, restaurants and London’s Groucho Club.”
The move also signals a degree to which the art world is dispelling its own “snobbery around art businesses behaving as retailers”, Gerlis continues. After all, “the bottom line is commerce. People buy a ticket to watch hundreds of galleries sell things to stay in business”. The Art Basel Shop, therefore, offers “a quick way into a broader audience, not yet ready to spend five figures or more on art, but with enough disposable income to spend three figures on a special candle or tin of biscuits. These are potentially future art collectors”.
Whether art fairs will become go-to fashion and lifestyle shopping destinations is a hypothesis that remains to be proven. What seems clear, though, is that, as Romer says, “Art fairs are evolving into so much more than just art fairs,” and retail will play an important role in whatever they become.
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