Looking back at the Cape Town Art Fair
The commercial aspect still triumphs and while airport art was in abundance there were gems in the smaller corners
The fallacy underpinning the contemporary phenomenon of the art fair was demonstrated by an art enthusiast with a small collection who quietly wanted to know, “How do you ask the price?” It was the annual art jamboree called the Investec Cape Town Art Fair on the past weekend and the joint was jumpin’. The cultural circus was in town — and they were even poppin’ balloons (an artwork), not to mention an oversupply of subtle snobbery. (Asking the price of an artwork was an act of social risk.) Anyone who says art fairs are not about money is, well, talking baloney. There may not have been prices on site, but you could be sure that the zeros added up. One Cape Town gallerist whispered in passing that he thought his prices were too low. Another said that the amount they were paying to be there meant using every available display space as sensibly as possible. The latter is also why, when the crowds came to ogle — what goes for art these days ... — it was sometimes pretty difficult to ac...
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