the economist's art correspondent, along with 200 private jets and the world's top art dealers, visit my pretty hometown...
--- http://economist.com/daily/diary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8839363 Where money meets magic Mar 12th 2007 >From Economist.com Our books and arts editor at a market for masterpieces Monday ONE hour after the doors open to the select few who are invited to the European Fine Art Fair’s preview day, James Ede, quite possibly the most prestigious antiquities dealer in London, has taken out his vacuum cleaner. His stand, against the back wall of the fair and facing the carpeted Via Veneto, appears at first glance to be immaculate. In a perspex cabinet two delicate racing chariots careen across the surface of a black Apullian mug of the fourth century BC. To the left, against the Etruscan red felt covering the walls, rise the burnished granite breasts of the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet (shown below). But Mr Ede has spotted three specks of white that have floated down from the newly painted ceiling on to the dark carpet. There is a rumour about that Sheikh Saud al-Thani, first cousin to the emir of Qatar, has begun a special tour of the fair. The white specks must go. The European Fine Art Fair at Maastricht is where money meets magic. For ten days, nearly 200 dealers, the world’s most discerning eyes, are exhibiting their wares. Two hundred private jets line the taxiway of the town’s tiny airport, bringing some of the 85,000 visitors who come to see the treasures on offer. After 20 years the Maastricht art fair has become so good at attracting moneyed collectors that some dealers do as much as 60% of their annual volume of business here. For many these are the ten days that shake the world. Maastricht is one of the few places where the rich are prepared to queue. Even before the doors open there are lines, offering an opportunity for anthropological survey. Lipstick is full colour, not gloss. This being northern Europe, there is no big hair, just good highlights and lots of spray. It is March so there is an abundance of fur. A shy fringe of gleaming black otter at hem and cuff marks a French visitor, a floor-length mink a Russian. Ferragamo is the maker of choice for black patent pumps and there are enough Kelly bags (calf and crocodile) to start the fair’s very own Hermes shop. In sharp contrast to the way many of these visitors will have been treated at the airports from which they travelled to Maastricht, security here is unexceptional. A quick check that you have your pass, a glance into your bag. On preview day a London dealer accompanying a client sees the latter turn a whiter shade of pale at the sight of a security guard with an Alsatian dog. The client had spent the previous night in Amsterdam where he had acquired a generous helping of the best black Afghan hash. He needn’t have worried. This being a discreet Maastricht Alsatian, the dog took no notice. The organisers of the Maastricht art fair are keen to boast that it is a truly international gathering. And if you calculate that the dealers who exhibit are drawn from 15 countries, it is. But a glance at the crowd visiting on preview day shows the white world at play, a Caucasian monochrome. Even Sheikh al-Thani of Qatar, the buyer of the splendid Jenkins Venus and Clive of India’s treasure and one of the world’s most affluent collectors, when he visits the Maastricht art fair this year, swaps the elegant white robes of the Gulf for a discreet suit and tie. If there is anything non-conformist or subversive at Maastricht, it is not among the living, but present in the (mostly dead) masters' art hanging on the walls.
