From Spear's Magazine, October 17:
‘It’s so bizarre that you don’t believe that it’s happening’: how an armed robbery shook up TEFAF Maastricht
Spear’s speaks to eye witnesses of the theft that received global attention, where four ‘well dressed’ men entered the MECC and conspired to stuff artworks into a bag. By Arun Kakar
At the turn of the 21st century, there were fewer than 60 art fairs in the world each year. By and large, they were exclusive, discreet events in historic art world hubs such as Cologne and Basel. Then there was an explosion. By 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, the number had swelled to almost 300.
In principle, this is a good thing. Art fairs are a buyer’s dream: all the best galleries are stuffed under one roof, exposing collectors to new dealers and vice versa, with the commercial buzz of an Eighties trading floor. Recently, however, the sheer number of fairs has also made it harder to sniff out the best work and has prompted industry magazine Artnet to coin the phrase ‘fairtigue’ to describe the hamster wheel of ‘alcohol and air kisses’ that art world insiders know so well.
‘There are too many fairs, too many galleries, too many artists and not enough collectors,’ one leading art dealer told me this summer as we chatted on the white-carpeted concourse of the MECC exhibition centre in Maastricht during one of the two VIP days at the European Art Foundation (TEFAF) art fair. Yet here he was, in the thick of the hubbub; Tefaf Maastricht is not like those other art fairs.
‘For a lot of dealers, including me, this is the foremost fair that we participate in,’ said Omer Tiroche of his eponymous gallery on Conduit Street. ‘The quality of the work was not compromised.’ Tiroche’s booth was stuffed with work from the likes of Dali, Basquiat and Caro, among others.
Work of this level is par for the course here, where visitors can breeze from Gainsborough to Baselitz and segue between ancient Japanese Samurai armour to late medieval astronomical instruments in less than half an hour.....
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