Ahead of Art Basel, the advisor and private dealer tells us which artworks she is excited to see

As told to Julia Halperin

Art world powerhouse Amy Cappellazzo shares the artists that caught her eye

‘Last year was my 25th year at Art Basel. I don’t think I’ve missed one. I may not have always been there on opening day, but I’ve earned the silver anniversary keychain.
‘I remember going to the mall with my mother and we’d wander aimlessly, not knowing what we were looking for until we found it. It felt like a scavenger hunt. These days, at art fairs, we do know what we are going to see before we get there. But if I let the PDF email preview guide me, I miss the spontaneity of moving around. I know what my algorithm is, and then I try to break the algorithm. In a way, it’s a metaphor for modern life right now. How are you going to trick the system that has typecast you a certain way? I walk through the fair and fight what feels like an obvious star, or something that sucks the most attention in the booth, and try to look a bit around the edges.

‘One gallery I will be looking at is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1133/Galerie-Max-Hetzler" target="_blank">Galerie Max Hetzler</a>. One of the things I love about Max is that he’s an OG gallerist, but he has moved with the times in a beautiful way. He has a son in the business now, and has expanded geographically beyond Europe. At the fair, he has early 1980s works by German artist <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7393/Albert-Oehlen" target="_blank">Albert Oehlen</a>, who he has been representing and showing for decades. But he also has new work by Brazilian painter <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7301/Beatriz-Milhazes" target="_blank">Beatriz Milhazes</a>, German painter <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7869/Katharina-Grosse" target="_blank">Katharina Grosse</a>, and British sculptor <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7395/Rebecca-Warren" target="_blank">Rebecca Warren</a>. He is also bringing work by some young artists I don’t know so well, who I’m interested to see. I’ve always thought Max had a point of view as a dealer, and the booth looks like it will serve as a kind of retrospective of his whole career.

‘<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1199/Marianne-Boesky-Gallery" target="_blank">Marianne Boesky</a> has a grouping of <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/13706/Jennifer-Bartlett" target="_blank">Jennifer Bartlett</a> paintings. Bartlett was a big name in the 1980s who has been somewhat acknowledged by art history and remains a little marginal in the market. Jennifer passed last year, and I’m interested to see how her career gets interpreted today. Her work is shamelessly beautiful. It almost feels like a guilty pleasure. She also painted tiles that came to prefigure pixels – a digital way of looking at things – although I don’t know if she thought about it that way at the time. She and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/21510/Elizabeth-Murray" target="_blank">Elizabeth Murray</a> were female voices amid a sea of others – <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11311/Julian-Schnabel" target="_blank">Julian Schnabel</a>, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6910/David-Salle" target="_blank">David Salle</a>... – who were committed to the act of painting along a certain tradition of abstraction in New York in the 1980s.
‘If you were to group Jennifer Bartlett, Elizabeth Murray, and Beatriz Milhazes, you’d have an interesting show about approaches to color and abstraction.

‘The fair is also an opportunity for me to see what international dealers are showing. I always like to look at what <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/12669/Tina-Kim-Gallery" target="_blank">Tina Kim</a>
has, and what some of the Japanese dealers have, like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1448/Taka-Ishii-Gallery" target="_blank">Taka Ishii Gallery</a> and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1291/Take-Ninagawa" target="_blank">Take Ninagawa</a>. And I always look at the Italian galleries <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1301/Tornabuoni-Art" target="_blank">Tornabuoni</a>, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1563/Gi%C3%B3-Marconi" target="_blank">Gió Marconi</a>. I’m hoping there is a sense of locality in the place where an artwork is made that gives it a different point of view. Let’s hope it looks like something that couldn’t have been made in Brooklyn. 
‘Basel wouldn’t be Basel without <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6732/Alexander-Calder" target="_blank">Alexander Calder</a>. I’ve learned so much about Calder from the dealers who have brought his work over the decades. You can see how his presence at Art Basel has had an effect on collecting regionally; I see so many Calders in Swiss collections, and I consider that a legacy of the fair.

‘The Unlimited sector is also one of the special things about Art Basel that no other fair can really do. It speaks to people who have more institutional ambitions. I am eager to see <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/31226/Firelei-B%C3%A1ez" target="_blank">Firelei Báez</a>’s the vast ocean of all possibilities (19°36'16.9"N 72°13'07.0"W / 41°30'32.3"N 81°36'41.7"W) (2022), presented by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1163/James-Cohan-Gallery" target="_blank">James Cohan Gallery</a>. It is part of an ongoing series reinterpreting the archaeological ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace in northern Haiti. I just saw her incredible new commission at the newly expanded and reopened Buffalo AKG Art Museum and it is sensational. All of it.

‘I’m always thinking about what algorithm I get put in, and how to break that algorithm in my movements and my looking. Nobody wants to be predicted or read that closely or accurately. We all want to think there are surprises about what can move us or what we respond to. That’s what I’m always looking for.’

Amy Cappellazzo is a founding partner at Art Intelligence Global, and has spent almost three decades operating at the highest level of the fine art market. Most recently, she was Chairman of the Fine Art Division of Sotheby’s. She came to Sotheby’s when her advisory firm, Art Agency Partners was acquired by the auction house in 2016. Amy previously served as a market leader in the field of contemporary art at Christie’s, where she rose to the post of Chairman of Post-War & Contemporary Development over thirteen years. 
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 Caption for full-bleed image: Taka Ishii Gallery's Booth at Art Basel 2022.
Published on June 6, 2023.

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Ahead of Art Basel, the advisor and private dealer tells us which artworks she is excited to see

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