Europ’ART 2007

Direc­tor: Patrick Barrer

The his­tor­i­cal art fairs (in order of arrival on the mar­ket: Art Cologne, Art Basel, Fiac, Arco) which only aimed, orig­i­nally, at “con­fronting all the mer­chants and pub­lish­ers in a vast salon, with no other cri­te­rion of selec­tion than pos­si­ble finan­cial gain” in order to allow ama­teurs “to define them­selves per­son­ally by plac­ing them in front of all man­ners of expres­sion,” have pro­gres­sively become museum-like fairs, their ambi­tion to gather, in one space, the most influ­en­tial sell­ers and buy­ers of the moment. From then on, they have con­stantly been at war in an attempt to dom­i­nate the inter­na­tional con­tem­po­rary art mar­ket, which would not be what it is today with­out them. And this war has reached their younger rivals such as Frieze in London.

One may, log­i­cally, won­der about the rel­e­vance of such an eco­nomic strug­gle in art cir­cles, and, above all, about the effect it has on the pub­lic and the artists them­selves. Are these fairs, which cost a lot of money to exhibitors, con­demned to reserve art, even in its most sub­ver­sive ver­sion, to a nou­veau riche clien­tele, thereby ignor­ing a whole movement—founded by 60s art which, in its turn, declared war on the bour­geois after Dada and Duchamp?

This strange para­dox is not the only one in this mar­ket, and this is espe­cially appar­ent when you com­pare it with its own his­tory and with the his­tory of 20th cen­tury art. Have we not just been told about a fair to be held in China, i.e. a fair in a coun­try where free­dom of expres­sion does not exist (one only needs to remem­ber the cen­sor­ship of Google), but where there is, nev­er­the­less, “a poten­tial mar­ket of an incred­i­ble size” to quote the founder of that fair, the Genevan art mer­chant Pierre Huber, a for­mer organ­iser of Art Basel. And it is true to say that, under this com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship, mil­lion­aires are grow­ing like mush­rooms. Will this be ben­e­fi­cial to art, and if so, to which art?

This mar­ket, dom­i­nated by peo­ple who became very wealthy recently, began to evolve in the 80s, before reach­ing its present level under the effects of a tri­umphant glob­al­i­sa­tion. It was this evo­lu­tion which resulted, in 1992, in the cre­ation of Europ’ART, the inter­na­tional art fair in Geneva.

Want­ing to explore a wider clien­tele and other artis­tic fields, Europ’ART returned not only to the orig­i­nal con­cept of the art fair, as recalled above, but also, and above all, the fair devel­oped this con­cept by report­ing on a new art form—one that does not limit the path of artists and inter­me­di­aries to the wor­ship of mas­ter­pieces and a cult to the star-system. Nor does it make one pro­fes­sion pre­vail against another.

Indeed, right from the start, we rejected the very idea of com­pe­ti­tion and gave pref­er­ence to emu­la­tion, shar­ing and meet­ings. Addi­tion­ally, the exhibitors’ price range rarely goes beyond 10,000 Swiss francs.
We thus “invented” a fair acce­si­ble to the pub­lic and to the artists, at a moment when indi­vid­ual artis­tic knowl­edge and skill was ripen­ing. We gave life to a fair, which is, on a human scale, acces­si­ble to most (it is held next to, and at the same time as, the Inter­na­tional Book and Press Fair), one that works accord­ing to its own rules and that is devel­oped accord­ing to its own rhythm, in its own region. It is like a his­tor­i­cal cross­roads in Europe.

Europ’ART’s oper­at­ing mode, there­fore, quickly became dif­fer­ent to that of other fairs since exhibitors were not nec­es­sar­ily art gallery own­ers. We also gave a wel­come to groups of artists, muse­ums, insti­tu­tions, art pub­lish­ers, asso­ci­a­tions and cul­tural mag­a­zines. This was done in order to group together the pro­fes­sions, artis­tic trends and per­sonal paths that are expressed around us, in Geneva and else­where. In stu­dios, gal­leries and on other cul­tural scenes, whether com­mer­cial or not, all this is done with­out neglect­ing the voca­tions in need of encour­age­ment, the impulses of the audi­ence or the tal­ents to be revealed.

Since the first edi­tion of Europ’ART, over 600,000 vis­i­tors have thus been able to dis­cover some 4600 artists from dif­fer­ent parts of the world. And, since 2003, almost 1500 works have been sold, all for­mats and tech­niques included. Besides, in 1997, Europ’ART cre­ated the Visual Arts Foun­da­tion with a view to encour­age exchanges and projects between artists, inter­me­di­aries and all types of audi­ences. In fact, we will be cel­e­brat­ing its 10th anniver­sary this year (some 50 exhi­bi­tions have been organ­ised under this impulse and 30 dif­fer­ent coun­tries were represented).

Europ’ART’s growth is now largely reported in Switzer­land and abroad. Back in 2003, Wall Street Jour­nal Europe remarked on Europ’ART’s sin­gu­lar­ity among those fairs which “are test­ing a new idea in sell­ing art: approachability.”

The 16th edi­tion of Europ’ART is a new exam­ple of this approach­a­bil­ity and it hap­pily con­firms the excel­lent impres­sions gath­ered dur­ing our 15th anniversary.

Indeed, the audi­ence will find a pro­gramme that reflects a wide spec­trum of local and inter­na­tional artis­tic news, with many a nov­elty, even among the artis­tic crafts, on a suc­cess­ful expan­sion at Europ’ART since the Musée Ari­ana took art from its selection.

Apart from the exhi­bi­tions organ­ised by art gallery own­ers, art pub­lish­ers, asso­ci­a­tions and groups of artists (a good 20 coun­tries will be rep­re­sented), new inter­me­di­aries and insti­tu­tional guests will be shed­ding some light upon a spe­cific event related to their activities.

Such is the case with photography—brought to the fore this year—through the pres­ence of the Musée de l’Elysée, set up in 1985 in Lau­sanne and the bookshop-cum-gallery, Focale, which has devoted itself to the pro­mo­tion of con­cep­tual pho­tog­ra­phy since 1982, in Nyon.

The Musée des Boîtes à Musique et des Auto­mates from Sainte-Croix is offer­ing a guided visit through a selec­tion of rare items from its col­lec­tions. That will also be a great oppor­tu­nity to dis­cover the pro­fes­sions hid­den behind such jewels.

After its dis­play in Barcelona and Paris (Musée du Mont­par­nasse), the ret­ro­spec­tive on Morales, the painter, will be on offer in Geneva, under the impulse of art gallery owner Augusto de Marsanich (Mar­bella), a reg­u­lar exhibitor at Europ’ART.

An exhi­bi­tion by French and for­eign artists, includ­ing the Swiss pho­tog­ra­pher Iseult Labote, has been organ­ised by the French art critic, essay­ist and nov­el­ist Jean-Philippe Domecq, who ini­ti­ated the debate on con­tem­po­rary art in France dur­ing the last decade of the 20th cen­tury and whose pref­er­ences among emerg­ing artists are still unknown to the major­ity of inter­na­tional art circles.

Mean­while, Olivier Del­houme, a jour­nal­ist but also a plas­tic artist, video-maker, pho­tog­ra­pher and writer in Switzer­land, is show­ing sev­eral of his works related to Japan, a coun­try which has been fas­ci­nat­ing him since he vis­ited the uni­ver­sal exhi­bi­tion in Osaka in 1970.

The entire pro­gramme for the 16th edi­tion is on-line on www.europart.ch.