It’s not unusual for towns to throw festivals, block parties, exhibits, fairs—but most cities schedule them one at a time. Not Miami. Once a year for almost a week the city is host to hundreds or possibly thousands of events all happening at once all over town—the extravaganza that is Art Basel Miami.
This is Art Basel Miami’s eleventh year and during the first week of December more than 250 galleries from 31 countries and five continents brought their great and giant works of art to display. But in addition to the main fair at the Convention Center, there were two-dozen “satellite” art shows.
SCOPE, AQUA, PULSE—exhibits at public and private museums, tours of artists’ studios, lectures and discussions, public art on display in Collins Park, video screenings on the Southscape surface of Frank Gehry’s New World Center auditorium—to say nothing of dozens of parties each night promoting books, liquor, fashions and celebrities. From all over the world, 50-70 thousand people flocked to town, paying the Convention Center’s $42 admission to see each other—and almost incidentally—to see and shop for cutting edge art and design.
Wednesday December 5
The official show dates, December 6-9 are for latecomers. Arriving “early” on December 5 for the preview I had already missed Tuesday’s kickoff openings of Design/Miami, Art Miami/CONTEXT, and the Vanity Fair International Party at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
After the 10 a.m. press reception with greetings from the art fair directors and local dignitaries, Ruinart champagne, a sponsor, served complimentary glasses of their sparkly beverage.
At 11 a.m. the doors opened for VIP shopping and we spent the next several hours wandering the aisles among works by Tom Friedman and Vik Muniz, Robert Motherwell and Sam Francis, a preponderance of Andy Warhol “Mao” renderings and lots of pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Mid-afternoon we crossed the parking lot, walked through “Drift,” Snarkitecture’s “floating environment” of inflated white sausage-shaped balloons and visited exhibits at Design/Miami—20th-century Italian and Scandinavian furniture along with Mark McDonald’s offering of Eames iconic color block storage units, an undulating resin fossil table that the Gabrielle Ammann Gallery brought over from Cologne, and Wendell Castle’s 1969 “Pinkie” floor lamp at 20th Century Design.
After admiring the collection of artist embellished BMW cars (my favorite was Frank Stella’s), we had a salad in the Botanical Garden outdoor cafe and returned to wander through the aisles of art.
That evening I was invited to dinner with collectors Audrey and Martin Gruss who had assembled influential art adviser Kim Heirston, Ritz-Carlton proprietor Paul Kanavos and his wife Daisy Olarte and her sister Norma for delicious French-Japanese-Peruvian cuisine on the outdoor terrace of Juvia Restaurant overlooking the sparkling lights of the city.
Before going back to my hotel, I stopped by “Endless Renaissance” at the Bass Museum, wandering amongst Pierre Ardouvin’s melting snowman and Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s melting tower in the outdoor Art Public exhibit.
Thursday December 6
I started the next day at the Art Basel Conversation session with textile/pottery artist Richard Tuttle and then raced over to the Design district where I ran into Martha Stewart at the Rubell Collection private museum. Escorted by French artist Bernar Venet she was admiring the sleek black and copper Grand Sport race car he had painted in collaboration with Bugatti.
From there I walked to nearby satellite shows: Art Miami/CONTEXT Red Dot, Art Project. At Art Miami, I recognized the small town street portrayed in a painting, which turned out to be a picture of Amenia, NY, near my country house in Millerton.
Sitting on hand in the Eckert Gallery booth was its artist Eric Forstmann, an acquaintance who paints exquisite realistic still lives in his barn/studio in Sharon, CT. I joined a group marveling at the miniature diorama landscapes of Patrick Jacobs at the Zadok booth, and at ManganMetz I encountered Alexandre Arrechea who will be taking over Park Avenue’s malls in February with his sculptures of rolled up buildings and spinning “tops.”
At Miami Project, a new show this year, Forum Gallery was showcasing Alex McGee’s trompe l’oeil burshes, and Kopelikin had one of Katrin Korfmann’s overhead photos of scattered figures I had been spotting among the booths.
At the Buena Vista Building, Harper’s Bazaar magazine had set up a pop up store to promote their online shopping site www.shopbazaar.com. “See it, Want it, Buy it, Shop Bazaar-dot-com,” was the slogan on tee shirts they were giving away. Standing underneath “Bazaar Love,” an overhead mobile of 10,490 chenille pipe cleaners, guests snacked on mini BLT’s and sipped champagne and a raspberry rose petal cooler while playing shuffleboard and waiting for make-up artist Fernando to redesign their eye shadings.
Next door we wandered through the temporary site-specific installation “HERE/THERE, NOW/LATER” a gauzy labyrinth created by Designer of the Year Vito Acconci.
From the Design District I drove south to the grand re-opening of the Intercontinental Hotel, which has spend 30 million dollars refurbishing rooms and the lobby, uniquely built around a massive travertine marble Henry Moore statue. The ne plus ultra is a 19-story “digital canvas” light show illuminating the building’s exterior. Broadcast live on television the switch was pulled and giant letters spelling “Welcome to Miami” flashed across the towering facade, followed by projections of a gyrating disco dancer.
Back inside we joined Martha Stewart at the hotel’s redecorated Toro Toro Pan-Latin steakhouse restaurant where she was coaching the bartender on the niceties of creating her preferred version of a caipirinha cocktail. Chef Richard Sandoval sent out samples of his delicious cusine—notably an irresistible orange ceviche and Martha’s favorite Brazilian cheese bread.
Later, I returned to the Design district and walked through the outdoor Vodka party, decided to skip the popular Miami Art Museum “Party on the Plaza,” and drove down to Vizcaya, the picturesque Venetian villa museum, which was hosting an outdoor reception and viewing of the commissioned film “The Light Club of Vizcaya” screened outdoors by moonlight.
Friday December 7
This morning’s Art Basel Conversation featured museum directors Thomas Campbell of the Metropolitan and Michael Govan of LACMA “Rethinking the Encyclopedic Museum”— both confirming the importance of art institutions adapting to the changing scene.
After lunch I walked to the beach to see the oceanfront oval beehive “Guiro” installation by Los Carpinteros and strolled further along to the new satellite show “Rethinking” which was set up in a big white tent on the sand with sunbathers basking right outside and natural light and water views complementing the art in the booths.
The notable satellite show of the New Art Dealers Association NADA was installed in an airy hotel up north. Designer Adrienne Vittadini was admiring a piece in Rawson Projects, I eyed Scott Ingram’s stack of “cement blocks” in flexible urethane foam, and left just as St. Germain started serving a libation of their elderberry liquor mixed with champagne for Happy Hour.
Back downtown I stopped by the Williams McCall Gallery to see a show curated by artist Dorothy Palanza who assembled works by various artists with the intention of bringing a different perspective of the ocean as an environment. In “Post-Millenial Jonah” air space becomes water space as conveyed in pieces such as Eliot Hess’s picture of Croatian fish and a video/poem collaboration by Elizabeth Bradfield and Demet Taspinar
The iconic Fontainebleau Hotel was the setting for a party celebrating Pointed Leaf Press’s publication of Talking Heads striking portraits of ventriloquist dummies by notable photographer Matthew Rolston. Discovering a collection of the characters in remote Kentucky’s Vent Haven Museum, Rolston was drawn to their varying makeup, hairdos, and clothes—finding them endearing and deeply moving, “I love faces, and this was without a doubt one of the greatest casting calls I’ve ever seen,” portrayed in a simple, straightforward photographic style that contrasts with their flamboyance, the inanimate figures covey a compelling and eerie energy.
Every year the Wolfsonian Museum-Florida International University holds an open house. This year guests viewed an exhibit of Weiner Werkstatte postcards collected by cosmetics executive Leonard Lauder and then gathered in the lobby for Cuban cocktails.
My last stop was a party at the Christian Louboutin shoe shop. We arrived just as it was winding down, but in time to be given the consolation prize of a big red balloon to take along home as a souvenir of another year of gawking, gazing, and gallivanting.
