In the Air: Playing "I Spy" at Art Basel

Art Basel Miami Beach 2007

On-the-ground reports from Art Basel Miami Beach and the satellite fairs.

Still Growing Strong
ABMB 2007 will be bigger than ever.
A report on everyone's favorite winter playground from Art+Auction.

Miami Satellite Fairs
Art+Auction charts the action, from Collins Avenue to Wynwood and beyond.

When in Miami…
Culture+Travel recommends where to stay, what to see, where to play, what to eat.

Jeff Koons Elliott Erwitt Christian Marclay Spencer Tunick Kehinde Wiley LACMA’s Big Endowment Drop May Derail Koons Train Crazy for Koons Phillips de Pury Makes Its (Small) Mark

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Dec. 6, MIAMI—Shuttles were clogging up the road outside of ABMB, waiting to take artgoers to the satellite fairs. But Scope had them all beat: the fair had arranged for luxury buses to transport travelers, and everyone on board was offered a cocktail and gift bag during the short ride to Wynwood.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Biting the hand that feeds? From the streets of Miami to Art Basel itself, artists are addressing the market in their work. One of Patrick Mimran's ubiquitous billboards (found in Chelsea, Venice, and elsewhere) has shown up in Miami, with the statement: "The market is the artist's twisted muse." And in the Art Positions section of ABMB, Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum's installation for Rio de Janeiro gallery A Gentil Carioca uses diagrams and text painted on the wall that question: What is the idea of an art fair? What are the relations between the artists and the contemporary art market?

However intriguing (Basbaum's project follows in the institutional critique footsteps of Hans Haacke) and self-referential (art about art fairs, at art fairs!), there does seem to be a whiff of something hypocritical about such interventions. The stuff is, after all, for sale.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Life's a Beach for Kengo Kuma: Some time around the Stone Age, in a quaint little year called 2002, ABMB contained but one product, a product that went by the very catchy name of "art." Having undergone quite an expansion since then, the Miami scene is now something else as well, something that might be called, in the biz, a "captive audience," and, to this audience, much, much more than that thing called "art" is on offer. Unfortunately, the lure of said audience brings a lot of schlocky material out of the woodwork. But sometimes it is woodwork that comes out of the woodwork, and it is not schlocky at all!

Enter Japanese architect Kuma, who has been hard at work in recent months on a wood-walled spa for Dellis Cay, a new group of architect-designed hotel rooms and residences in the Bahamas under the banner of the Mandarin Oriental. Doing a little publicity for the project, Kuma designed a special booth—made entirely of wood—for the VIP section of ABMB, and it was overflowing with guests on the fair's first preview day. Inside, Kuma, who has constructed some high-end spas in Japan, was intrigued to see his design playing double duty, as the booth's caterers (the booth has caterers of its own!) were storing wine bottles in the perforations in its design. And yet Kuma was a little disappointed. To evoke Dellis Cay's vast beaches, he'd wanted to fill the booth with sand, but fair management hadn't approved that one. It seems the beach stays outdoors.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Too many parties is a trademark of ABMB week. Luckily the good ones last night were contained on Collins Avenue. A select group guests picked at lobster tails and sipped champagne under the UBS tent behind the Delano. (UBS Bank is the main sponsor of ABMB.) Whitney Museum's Whitney Contemporaries, a young patrons program, and David Yurman jewelers sponsored a soiree around the pool at the Sagamore. There, Los Angeles dealer Philip Martin boasted he'd planned his solo show of Amanda Ross Ho at Nada before discovering she'd been accepted to the Whitney Biennial, and Town and Country magazine editor Sarah Medford dazzled in a blue Pucci dress she wore to a Pucci event later that eve.

And then, the crowds hit the sand. As in past years, hundreds of art folks mixed with–oh, my god! wait for it—the general public, to witness ABMB's "Art Loves Music" concert. This year, the spectacle was a stick-thin, bare-chested Iggy Pop writhing on stage and belting out his signature punk rock. Before Iggy had finished, the jet-set dashed back to Collins for another, very different performance at the Raleigh. Done in typical Jeffrey Deitch-style, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black seemed to transport a beach-side Miami hotel to a downtown New York boite, with an all-girl band prancing about on stage in giant black wigs and vampy eye-makeup. Talk about Miami heat—about a third of them forewent shirts. And the audience went home, and had very, very bad dreams indeed.