Mr. Safer examining a birthday cake at the Jewish Museum's 100th birthday celebration in 2004. (Courtesy Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

On Sunday evening, the television journalist Morley Safer aired a follow-up to his 1993 attack on the art world on 60 Minutes. He visited the Art Basel Miami Beach fair—“an upscale flea market, a shopping mall fair,” he termed it, accurately—and walked around making glib remarks about art and the wealthy.

Though it’s hard to define Mr. Safer’s criteria for good art, he seems to like a bit of old-fashioned hard work: he swoons for Kara Walker, scorns Christopher Wool. Though many chalked up Mr. Safer’s distaste for the outré to Hilton Kramer-style conservatism, it is worth noting that he is speaking as an artist himself.

People magazine has written about his paintings a number of times. In 1993, after his first broadside, Mr. Safer revealed to the magazine that he likes art “that knocks me out. It has to hit you not just intellectually, but somewhere in the neighborhood of the heart.” Thus, he has painted hotel rooms that he stays in while traveling. “Who is going to memorialize Room 409 of the Holiday Inn unless I do?” he told People. And he said, way back in 1982, “I find it marvelously therapeutic.”

Roused by Mr. Safer’s attack, New York critic Jerry Saltz challenged him to curate an exhibition, of his own work and that of others. “I promise to review it fair and square,” Mr. Saltz wrote. “Deal?”

Mr. Safer declined the offer, in a statement to The Observer. “Mr. Saltz’s challenge is tempting, but I decline on the grounds that I have better, more pressing challenges as a working reporter,” he wrote. “As for his eagerness to judge my talent as a curator and painter, that is a pleasure I choose to deny him.”

Mr. Safer continued:

"I would, however, suggest to Mr. Saltz that he, as a pseudo gatekeeper of the visual arts, also has better things to do. The first might be to rediscover that 60 Minutes is alive and well and leading the pack in news broadcasts. It will certainly broaden his knowledge in any number of areas including by the way, the arts."

editorial@observer.com

A version of this article will appear in the April 4 edition of The New York Observer.

'He reluctantly graced us with a few words of wisdom,' says Mr. Safer. (Courtesy '60 Minutes')

Last night, nearly 20 years after he first attacked the contemporary art world on 60 Minutes, Morley Safer returned to the subject in an episode of his newsmagazine. The result was pretty underwhelming.

Mr. Safer shot the program last December at Art Basel Miami Beach. "This is where the art trade's carefully constructed mask of Olympian high culture begins to crack, and the underside of a booming, cutthroat commodities market is revealed," he says, and adds, "There's very little sense of an aesthetic experience here."

Art is expensive, the television journalist reveals, and wealthy people buy it. Viewing art at fairs is sometimes unpleasant. Some art is good, but most of it is bad. (Surprisingly, Mr. Safer is a Kara Walker fan: "a truly gifted American artist.") It'd be nice if Mr. Safer had a more expansive view of art—or just more curiosity about it—but there's nothing here that's going to make anyone too upset.

There are, however, plenty of guest appearances by various art types, like New York/Brussels gallerist Barbara Gladstone, Eli Broad ("the one-percenter of one-percenters," quips Mr. Safer) and Los Angeles gallerist Tim Blum, who shares: "We're from Hollywood—we're in the acting game. It's theater. This is all theater."

Larry Gagosian also makes an appearance and takes his own distinctive approach to handling Mr. Safer. At first, the dealer apparently just ignores him. "At least say hello!" Mr. Safer calls over during a tour of the fair with a natty, friendly Jeffrey Deitch. And then—just watch the clip.

And now there's even more of Mr. Safer for you to enjoy, below.

Mr. Koons. (Courtesy CBS)

CBS has been kind enough to upload the the segment of 60 Minutes that Morley Safer shot about the contemporary art world back in 1993. Given how infamous the segment is, it's amazing how low-key and almost silly many of his criticisms seem today. He becomes exasperated about a blank canvas by Robert Ryman, a text painting by Christopher Wool (Rat, Rat, Rat) and a bunch of sculptures by Jeff Koons.

As Marion Maneker says over on his Art Market Monitor blog, it's worth a watch if only to see so many of today's art world heavyweights in their youth, particularly Jeff Koons, who was still honing his slick, corporate, deliriously bizarre explanations for his work. Here's what he has to say about his sculptures of basketballs suspended in fish tanks: "I was giving a definition of life and death. This is the eternal. This is what life is like after death."

Here's the video:

Can't wait for the sequel on Sunday evening.

Messrs. Safer and Deitch at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2011. (Photo by Andrew Russeth)

The last time that journalist Morley Safer filmed a segment for the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes about the contemporary art world, back in 1993, Marc Glimcher, president of the Pace Gallery, declared that it "stank of anti-intellectualism." Mr. Safer had quipped that much of today's art was "worthless junk," among other bon mots. It was quite a takedown.

Now Mr. Safer is returning for a sequel on 60 Minutes, which will air on Sunday. Yes, on April Fools' Day.

"I was accused of being a philistine, someone lacking the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate these masterworks," Mr. Safer declares in a short preview of the episode, as he examines art at the 2011 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. (Fair enough, but he looks really happy posing under that whimsical Erwin Wurm sculpture of a huge police cap!)

Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, makes an appearance in the preview. (We spotted him walking with Mr. Safer at Miami Basel.) "It was almost a send-up of the contemporary art market," Mr. Deitch tells the television journalist with a big smile, of that old episode, and adds that Jeff Koons, whose work was selling for around $250,000 in 1993, has now had pieces go for $25 million auction.

No doubt Mr. Safer will attempt to rile some people on Sunday. Nevertheless, we're looking forward to it. When was the last time you saw a Sarah Braman sculpture on network television? You can on Sunday. Plus, you can see Tim Blum and no doubt a bevy of other luminaries. Let's end with some words of wisdom on Mr. Safer's original art-world satire from the critic David Hickey:

"It was wrong-headed, ignorant, and ill-informed about art, as well, but if these afflictions disqualified folks from commentary, more than half the art community itself would be stricken mute. So I was cool with Safer's jibes. It's a free country and all like that, and who the hell watches 60 Minutes, anyway, unless they're stranded in a motel out by the highway in the middle of America?"

Morley Safer and Jeffrey Deitch strolling the aisles. (Andrew Russeth)

Shortly after entering Art Basel Miami Beach this afternoon, we spotted Naomi Campbell chatting with Diddy (who was wearing some sort of leopard-print sweater and a sling) in an aisle not far from Acquavella's booth.

Moments later, we had an even more thrilling sighting, as we watched 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer chatting with Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles director Jeffrey Deitch (in a natty pale yellow suit), walking past Paula Cooper's booth.

Mr. Safer, you may recall, has delighted in lampooning the contemporary art world over the years, perhaps most memorably in 1993, when he referred to much of the art being made today as "worthless junk," and also shared this bon mot about collectors in an interview with Carol Vogel in The New York Times:

"These are people with disposable income who dispose of it in a curious way. They buy art as appendages to show how wealthy they are. We weren't talking about connoisseurship."

Give Mr. Safer's appearance here at Art Basel, it seems safe to say that he is readying another program on the state of the art world. He and Mr. Deitch appeared to be getting on rather well, but we have no doubt there will be some fireworks.