A brush with Basel

I caught a lift home from the Basel art fair in an art collector's private jet. I mention it not to stir feelings of envy, but because it confirms that contemporary art is big business, and that its patrons are flying at a speed of which museums can only dream. In short, the new art is driven by private wealth, and my fellow travellers have a right to be seen as the new Medicis.

The art world has been rushed off its globetrotting feet for the past month. Three weeks ago it was Manifesta, the European biennial, which opened in Frankfurt. Then, after four years' anticipation and debate, Documenta opened in Kassel, in the heart of Germany.

Intellectuals head for Documenta for a state-of-the-art update. Wannabe eggheads cluster at Manifesta. But my preference is more vulgar and up-front. Sometimes I take in all three, but if time (not money) is tight, I'll always choose the Basel art fair. Other shows have ponderous theses and themes; Art Basel is self-explanatory. There's art, it's in Switzerland, there is lots of it, and it's all for sale.

Some 250 of the world's leading galleries pitch their wares to 50,000 visitors over the course of five days. Just to appear at Basel confers serious credentials on the exhibitor.

The fair is so oversubscribed that eager dealers are vetted by a star chamber of beady-eyed professionals before they are allowed to stump up about $100,000 for a modest booth, shipping, insurance and fancy dinners.

Basel has been going for more than 30 years, and there's no art fair to touch it. The town is bursting at the seams, with not a hotel room to be had. No one will give you a straight answer as to how much business is done, but it runs into tens of millions of whatever currency you care to nominate.

This year, Frieze, the coolest of the art magazines, ran a text-messaging service for the pros who were running themselves into a frenzy up and down the aisles, reporting all the hot numbers and alerting us breathlessly to the news that Picassos were spotted in more than 20 booths.

One of those bluer-than-blue-chip gallerists with a couple of sevendigit Picassos on his walls said he had experienced a passable afternoon on the opening day, selling "only" three paintings. He did not get a buzz, he said, unless the cheque had eight numerals.

It's not all millions, but a steady flow of fashionable names makes it possible to drop tens of thousands on a handshake. And you have to be quick. The seasoned pro knows that unless you are at the prepreview, seven hours before the preview, with a VIP smartcard to give you access to all areas, you'll be too late. There's even a preprepreview cult, when buyers go in disguised as construction workers or shippers to get first dibs on the exclusives.

The prize is acquiring one of the hot names of the moment at what the dealers call "primary" prices. Some galleries have such long waiting lists for certain artists that they oblige collectors to buy lesser names before they amass enough brownie points to own a biggie. The art fair allows the illusion at least of some queue-jumping - just for the day.

Last year the hot ticket was the work of Dusseldorf-born Andreas Gursky. One of his digitally manipulated photographs was priced at £100,000. The faint-hearted baulked. Less than six months later, a Gursky sold for more than £400,000 at Christie's. This year, Gursky's friend Thomas Struth, whose interior shots of museums are already a hit at auction, was being tipped for similar exponential growth. The serious crowd learn not to baulk.

Photography is where the big deals were done. The New York-based Richard Prince, for example, who does not even take photographs in the normal sense but rephotographs images from mass-produced sources, had one of his influential Marlboro Man cowboys for sale at $150,000. "But it's the biggest one he's done," his dealer explained to me. Don't let anyone tell you size doesn't matter.

And video. It used to be that a connoisseur of the arts bought a painting to hang on the parlour wall - the new collectors aren't frightened of forking out tens of thousands for a single DVD. It's sophisticated thinking when money's being put into an ephemeral projection rather than something tangible carved in stone. Now that American artist Matthew Barney has completed his epic cycle of surreal, high-tech-and-high-budget Cremaster films, for example, the crowds were swarming around for something to slip into the home entertainment centre.

Returning on the plane, I got talking with an American connoisseur. In the United States there are huge tax breaks for collectors. She knows that whatever pleasure she gets from a work of art, when space becomes tight at home one of the important museums will readily accept her surplus buys as a gift. Isn't it time we offered such incentives to art patrons in this country?

There are a handful of individuals who spend more money on art, in Basel and elsewhere, than all the museums in Britain put together, and without red tape or ministerial approval. With a little encouragement from the Treasury, a shopping trip to Basel would be more than a barometer of all that is hot in the art world - it could be a shopping trip in the public interest.

? Andrew Renton is Slade Curator at University College, London.