The director of Fondation Van Gogh and co-founder of Parkett reflects on her evolving experience of the fair

From leftist student to acclaimed curator: Bice Curiger recalls her Art Basel trajectory

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Bice Curiger has been an Art Basel regular since the 1970s – first as a leftist student and later as a Swiss art critic; as a co-founder, editor and publisher of Parkett magazine; as a curator at the Kunsthaus Zurich; as the curator of the 54th Venice Biennale; and currently as the Artistic Director of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles. In this conversation, she reflects on the early art scenes in Basel and Zurich, recounting a few of her many memories from the last five decades.&nbsp;

Clément Dirié: Art Basel is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. What were you doing in 1970, the year it was founded?Bice Curiger: I started studying art history at the University of Zurich in the fall of 1969 and in 1968, I was part of the Basisgruppe Kunstgeschichte, which was basically a leftist student reading group with about a dozen people. When we heard about the introduction of a new art fair in 1970, a few of us from that group decided to take action and go to Basel: We printed A4 flyers that were against the commercialization of art and for what we called ‘art awareness’ for social and world issues. We distributed the flyers during the first Art Basel in front of the fair’s building. I have not really distributed flyers since then and 50 years later it makes me laugh – we were so naïve. CD: What do you remember from the first years of Art Basel?BC: Even when distributing flyers, we visited the fair at the end because we wanted to see contemporary art, and some artists were only exhibited at Art Basel back then. Art publishing was still in its infancy and information was scarce – that only developed in the 1980s. In Basel, I met gallerists from Dusseldorf who represented artists I liked and still do, such as Michael Buthe. I also met the Neapolitan gallerist Lucio Amelio, who was a leading figure of the Italian scene in the 1970s and early 1980s. Discovering the drawing practices of Dieter Roth and Claes Oldenburg also made a great impression on us. The way the fair worked was not so different from how it is now. It has always been a matter of: ‘Have you seen this artist? And this one?’ Novelty was really exciting. But in the 1970s, the fair was more of a social place to exchange ideas than a commercial place, so to say. I also remember the Editions sector was very strong during that decade. Dealers came from all over Europe, selling Picasso and Miró lithographs – and they were much more successful than Oldenburg’s or Roth’s drawings!CD: You mentioned Lucio Amelio, but are there any other figures who stood out to you during that time?BC: I would mention Werner Düggelin, who sadly just passed away in early August, aged 90. He was the director of Theater Basel in the 1960s and always collected art, was very active in the Basel scene, and was very close to collector and patron Maja Sacher. In the 1970s, he was part of the acquisition committee of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, whose collection is now housed at the Schaulager. He was also a good friend of Yvon Lambert, the Parisian gallerist, and introduced him to Maja. Art Basel was a place of international exchange from very early on.

CD: What was the Zurich art scene like in the 1970s?BC: It was quite active, both commercially and culturally. Some international galleries had branches in Zurich, like Marlborough and Gimpel &amp; Hanover from London, Maeght Lelong from Paris, and André Emmerich from New York City. The local gallerists Bruno Bischofberger and Annemarie Verna opened in the 1960s, and Renée Ziegler was also active. As for me, I was more involved in counterculture circles. In the mid-1970s, I was looking at what Jean-Christophe Ammann was doing at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, where he not only introduced Arte Povera, the Dusseldorf group, etc., but also organized ‘Transformer – Aspekte der Travestie’, a show about gender, in 1974. It's also important to mention the artist Urs Lüthi and the young David Weiss, before he started to work with the younger Peter Fischli, as well as people like Friedrich Kuhn –the ‘Swiss David Hockney’ with a touch of punk – and the Bern-based gallerist Toni Gerber, who had a visionary program with Markus Raetz and Sigmar Polke.CD: Starting in 1984, you came to Art Basel as an exhibitor, namely for Parkett, the magazine you co-founded with Jacqueline Burckhardt in an effort to foster dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and North America. One of the primary features of each issue was an accompanying editioned artwork.BC: Right. Jacqueline and I started Parkett in April 1984 with Walter Keller and Peter Blum, and we came to Art Basel later that year with the first issues. For the very first one, we collaborated with Italian artist Enzo Cucchi, and we did the second one with Sigmar Polke. For that issue, I went to Cologne to work with Sigmar without knowing what he would do. He ended up creating a five-meter-long, completely oversized Leporello in addition to 60 unique photographs. He worked for two days and nights in the darkroom to develop the first batch of the edition and the Leporello, which remains one of Parkett’s most legendary editions today. One night, with the help of a friend, we were cutting, pasting, xeroxing, and folding the Leporello to insert it into Parkett, and the next morning I took the train to Basel to show it. We sold the unique photographs for CHF 750 each and the regular issue with the foldout for CHF 25. We immediately had our own booth because we were publishing both a magazine and editions.We also met Dieter von Graffenried, who became Parkett’s publisher in charge of the business side, in Basel, and for the first few years, we manned the booth with Walter. Everything was very DIY; my mother even embroidered the logo we have used for 33 years. We would stroll through the aisles distributing flyers and meeting artists, gallerists, and colleagues.

CD: In the 1990s, you started to visit the show as a museum curator. How did that change your experience?BC: I was much less efficient. I knew too many people, so it was impossible to visit the show properly. Think about it: I studied in Switzerland, I was the art critic for the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, and my old school friends, my hairdresser, and my dentist all visit Art Basel. There were too many people asking, ‘What have you seen? What should I buy?’ I was unable to see a single thing.Christoph Becker, the director of Kunsthaus Zurich, and the museum's curatorial team&nbsp;used to meet at the café next to the Parkett booth and discuss what we had seen and what the museum should collect. Of course, the beginning of the Unlimited sector in the early 2000s was also something important for museum curators. It was very exciting to see these large installations and video works – we were even a bit jealous!CD: If I offered to print a flyer for you today to distribute in front of the fair, what would you put on it?BC: One of the most important things to fight for today is to keep room for debates and intellectual exchanges about art and culture. We cannot leave it to the rankings of the market alone to determine the important artistic statements of the time. We need to have a cultural vision, alongside the economic, social, and political ones. It is vital to foster access to ideas and nurture intellectual life as much as we can.

‘Really,’ he says, ‘the only thing that has stayed the same is the sausage stand.’

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The director of Fondation Van Gogh and co-founder of Parkett reflects on her evolving experience of the fair