A Grand Tour For Our Times, Financial Times

Bettina von Hase attends four of Europe's big contemporary art fairs.

The great art marathon of 2007 has drawn to a close after two gruelling weeks. It is only once a decade that the great shows and events of the Venice Biennale, the Swiss Art Basel, German Documenta and Skulptur Projekte in Munster coincide, so there was a dazzling succession of modern and contemporary works - serious competition for anything featured in recent auction house sales. In Venice, the first stop of 2007's Grand Tour, there was a more overtly commercial aspect than usual, reflecting the power of contemporary art at the moment. 

Visiting all four events meant seeing some of the same artists in different locales. The Canadian David Altmejd, whose installation "The Index" was much admired at Venice, showed a work called “Wood Clock" at Basel. In the Swiss pavilion at St Stae church in Venice, Urs Fischer had breathtaking paintings of dust at $250,000 each, shown with Ugo Rondinone's white tree sculptures (also $250,000). At Basel, Fischer designed the booth of the Zurich gallery Presenhuber. But where some of the shows doubled up, all offered a large number of new artists, particularly at Documenta.

Venice was a celebration of the great US and German modernist masters, more museum show than biennale. Dealer Michael Werner gave a dinner at Harry's Bar for Sigmar Polke, in jolly mood, perhaps because French entrepreneur Francois Pinault had purchased the artist's suite of paintings. "Axial Age" (2005-2007), for "many millions", according to his dealer. The work will stay in Venice in a specially designed space in Pinault's new museum at the Palazzo Grassi, but until October has prime position in the show's Italian pavilion (there are 77 countries participating), curated by biennale director Robert Storr.

Storr also included a suite of Sik superb Gerhard Richter paintings named "Cage" after composer John Cage - that are rumoured to be going to Tate Modern. There were works, too, by Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Ryman (the "White" series) and by Romanian Dan Perjovschi ("V Drawing"), whose wall drawings are humorous observations on the over-heated consumer society.

In Venice, vaporetto rides are always good for collecting recommendations from fellow visitors. When I bumped into George Soros, the financier, he told me he had sponsored the first-ever Roma (Gypsy) pavilion, which he considered a "political statement". Noteworthy there were Kiba Lumberg's and Gabi gouaches Jimenez's painting, "Caravanes linge". Dealer Sadie Coles mentioned Rudolf Stingel at Palazzo Grassi and Matthew Barney's drawings in a superb show with Joseph Beuys at Venice's Peggy Guggenheim museum.

The Arsenale was beautifully paced, the most exciting aspect a strong African and Chinese presence, also in evidence at all four art events.

“Francois Pinault purchased Sigmar Polke’s suite of paintings for ‘many millions’”

Outstanding examples were Lion d'Or winner Malick Sidibé's photographic portraits, "L'Afrique chante contre le Sida" ("Africa sings against Aids"), and Yang Zhenzhong's haunting video projection, in which people Of different ages and nationalities say "I will die" into the camera, their embarrassed smiles more eloquent than words about the universal mystery of death.

At Basel, Swiss-based Italian collector Jean Pigozzi summed up the pace: "You better put on your running shoes because there's no time to futz around." Indeed, 10 minutes after the 11am opening on June 12, many booths had sold out, such as Dutch artist Marcel van Eeden's exquisite drawings at Zurich-based Galerie Bob van Orsouw (€1,400 each). At Art Unlimited, Allan McCollum's monumental "The Shapes" stood out: row upon row of framed pictures of varying shapes on steel shelves. A smaller, similar work was available at Berlin based Galerie Thomas Schulte's stand for $9,000. In a totally different mood, I loved the elegaic 19th century photo album at dealer Hans P. Kraus Jr's stand, salt prints of male nudes and apple trees by an unidentified photographer, attributed to the circle of Charles Simart ($300,000-$750,000).

Collectors are usually tight-lipped about whether they buy but Pigozzi, having acquired several works at Basel's adjunct fairs, Liste, Scope and Volta, said: "For me, it's like venture capital." Volta had several striking works in the more affordable category: "Living History", a series by English photographer Neil Hamon ($3,000 - $7,000); the Ed Ruscha-like paintings by Russian Elena Pankova ($3,500): a small abstract by Texan Rosson Crow (€5,000); and a large-scale painting called "Terminus" by Francesca Lowe (£30,000).

At Documenta, a conceptual approach resulted in confusion rather than coherence, not helped by pouring rain and the disastrous Aue-Pavilion with its dark-brown floors and badly lit spaces. However, it did contain one of the most striking works of the whole show, Romuald Hazoumé's full-sized boat sculpture made of plastic fuel canisters. In the Fridericianum, I was moved by Imogen Stidworthy's "I Hate" room installation and at the Neue Galerie by Bulgarian Nedko Solakov's "Top Secret", a card index documenting his brief time as a government informer.

I took the train from Documenta in Kassel to Skulptur Projekte in Munster, my favourite of the four venues. The sun came out and everyone jumped on bicycles to explore sculptures by 36 artists dotted around the city. Worth seeing were Rose-marie Trockel ("Less Sauvage than Others, Lake Aa"), two cuboids of dark-green yew coppice nestling by the artificial Aa Lake; Susan Philipsz's beautiful sound installation "The Lost Reflection"; and Pae White's marzipan "Taco" sculptures.

White's fascination with the local marzipan displays led her to transform snack food into master confectionery (available at Munster's Café Kleimann), a cultural transfer that seeming a fitting conclusion to my travels.

Bettina von Hase