Art Basel Miami Beach is entering its vernissage period right now. Crowds of people are packing their way into the Miami Beach Convention Center, and the wine is flowing. It’s getting hard to see the art!
In the slide show at left, a look at some highlights from the opening day of the fair.
Like a closeup of a sky in a Fragonard or a Will Cotton without the nudity and sugar, which seems kind of pointless.
Paris's Tornabuoni has filled its booth with Fontanas—a batch of 22 of them, including a giant-sized pink one with a hole dug out of its. They're elegant, perverse works and, seen together, maybe even heart-wrenching.
Paula Cooper's booth is easily one of the tightest and most coherent in the fair. There's a tasty pairing of a 1991 Cady Noland floor piece and Kelley Walker brick paintings (just barely visible in the background), plus this relatively late (1987) Dan Flavin, untitled (to S.A. lovingly).
Chocolate-dipped strawberries, sushi, tuna salad wraps.
Ms. Tompkins, just killing it in the fair. Observer contributor Adam Lindemann's Venus Over Manhattan gallery is showing her drawings at the M Building, 194 NW 30th Street in Miami, through Sunday.
Four heads made of steel, plastic and handprints hanging on flagstaffs: yes.
Stuffed full of blue-chippers—a Koons wood Buster Keaton, a Richard Prince 'Nurse,' and so forth.
The beverage-art trend that was spotted in full force at Frieze New York back in May continues to have its supporters.
Super beautiful booth from the Berlin outfit—sizable paintings hung around the walls, with the floors empty. Worth the trip just for that new Ofili.
If you like Mr. Connors's current show at MoMA PS1, 'Impressionism,' you'll find plenty to savor here. A few of the works are part of series on view there. Pretty stuff.
The booth was empty save for these four Ursuta sculptures. The gentlemen who run the gallery were nowhere to be found.
There are little, tiny slits in the metal poles, just wide enough to let one insert a coin.
A super pleasant booth. The walls are filled with Nikolas Gambaroff's torn newspaper paintings. Ei Arakawas have the floor.
The figures come with bottles of designer perfume. Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Arakawa was at Reena Spaulings in New York, dousing similar mannequins with fragrance during a collaborative performance with Nora Schultz. And here are a fresh batch, stretching and ready for action.
Outsized paintings are rampant, as usual. Some are a delight (that huge Günter Förg at Galerie Bärbel Grässlin), but most are not so hot. Berlin's Klosterfelde gallery throws a curveball, dominating a long stretch of wall with Hanne Darboven drawings from 1976. Beautiful. The sculpture is by Lara Favaretto.
Plus there's a super, messy (but not too messy) Joyce Pensato just to the left of this.
This tapestry may be the tallest work in the fair. It's certainly one of the most beautiful. Bizarrely, it's now been a full 15 years since Ms. White had a one-person show in New York.
Gladstone has nicely divided its booth so individual works get plenty of space to breathe. There's also a great Rosemarie Trockel knitted work.
A stabile sized for your briefcase or purse
A man who appears to be Will Ferrell wanders through
Reblogged this on Heather McCaw and commented:
Every year, when I was living on the East Coast, I planned to visit Art Basel in Miami and, every year, something seemed to come up to prevent it. This is just a flavor of the obviously great things going on down there right now. Gives me the motivation to get down to Art Basel in Switzerland this year… No excuses!