The Art Newspaper takes a look at the resurgence of the DIY art trend at this year’s Art Basel.

Don’t just buy it, DIY it, Some collectors prefer paintings but others want to interact with their art

By Cristina Ruiz and Gareth Harris. From Art Basel daily edition, Published online: 14 June 2012

What do you think of every time you make a salad? Fifty years ago, the American artist Alison Knowles elevated the humble acts of chopping cucumber and washing lettuce into a work of art with her performance Make a Salad, 1962. In the mind of the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, “she has occupied the idea of salad. I’m a terrible cook but I always think of Alison Knowles if I make a salad. That’s what art can do.”

The legacy of Knowles and other 1960s artists of the Fluxus movement is everywhere at Art Basel this year. They believed in the integration of all art forms with everyday life and that any member of the public is a potential practitioner or participant.

In true Fluxus fashion, Andrew Kreps of New York’s Andrew Kreps Gallery (2.1/H6) is today serving chopped fruit and vegetables to visitors as part of a piece by the artist Darren Bader. One edition of the 2012 work, which has no title, has already sold to a collector in New York for $25,000, and Kreps is in negotiations to sell a second edition to a European buyer. What these collectors receive is a certificate entitling them to restage the Bader performance at their pleasure using local produce. If the work is staged in Korea, for example, “they don’t need a US banana”, Kreps says.One edition of another work that requires the active engagement of the collector to complete it has sold to a European collector at the stand of Marlborough Contemporary (2.0/D13). The Portuguese artist João Onofre’s Promise of a sculpture, 2012, consists of a framed photograph of a man holding a water diviner. An accompanying text instructs the buyer to “choose a site and… engage a water diviner to locate a source of water”. Once water has been found and the site has been drilled and plumbed, Onofre will design a fountain to stand there.

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