Michael Stipe, still of animated GIF, 2012:

Michael Stipe, RoseLee Goldberg, Ryan Trecartin and the Rodarte sisters are just some of the artists and curators signed up to take part in "Moving the Still: A Festival of GIFS," the "first ever large-scale open call and exhibition" dedicated to GIFS as an art form, both in digital and real space. The festival, which is being presented by Paddle8, the online site for art collectors, and Tumblr, the social blogging platform, will launch its online call for submissions on Oct. 17.

The GIF file format turns 25 years old this year, but it wasn't until recently that it started popping up in gallery shows and art fairs. Remember when Lauren Cornell sold animated GIFS at Rhizome's booth at the Armory Show last year?

In honor of the anniversary, when the open call is done (it will stay live through Nov. 7), there will be a real-space exhibition of a selection of GIFS on view in the Wynwood District at Art Basel Miami Beach in December.

This is where the artists and curators come in. Messrs. Stipe and Trecartin, Ms. Goldberg and the Rodarte sisters, along with Richard Phillips, James Frey, Nicola Formichetti and Vinoodh Matadin & Inez van Lamsweerde will choose 25 GIFS for the Art Basel Miami Beach exhibition.

Winners will be announced on Nov. 26. Get on it.

Penelope Umbrico, 'Suns from Flickr.' (Courtesy Scope Art Show and Aperture Foundation)

Nothing foreshadows the end of summer like news trickling in about Art Basel Miami Beach. Today's announcement that the Scope Art Show has struck a sponsorship deal with cable network VH1 was just such news, and it gave us a slight shiver. Scope, the satellite art fair that will run concurrently with ABMB from Dec. 4 to 9, will make its biggest splash to date, occupying a 100,000-square-foot pavilion in midtown Miami, replete with a VH1 Outdoor Lounge for post-fair frolicking.

Known for being an incubator of emerging contemporary art galleries at over 45 art fairs over the past decade, Scope will present 20 innovative Breeder Program galleries along with 85 established international exhibitors. Scope's Breeder Program includes some distinguished alumni, with Peres Projects, Bischoff/ Weiss and Taxter Spengemann among them.

The VH1 sponsorship will involve a series of collaborations on-site in Miami, online and on-air, and VH1 will present the Scope Miami Official Party with musical guests from VH1's "You Oughta Know" franchise, which helped launch the careers of Amy Winehouse, Regina Spektor and James Blunt. The party will also feature visual work co-curated by SCOPE & VH1.

“The worlds of music and art are cross-pollinating more and more," said Phil Delbourgo, SVP, Branding & Design, VH1 in a statement, "so we’re excited to partner with the visionaries at SCOPE." We know, we know. Let the ABMB cultural cross-pollination fanfare begin.

From Ryan McGinley's new show at Team, "Grids." (Courtesy Team Gallery)

This morning the organizers of the Art Basel fair, coming up in June, announced that its Unlimited section in Hall 1, in which artists present ambitious new work, will feature 62 displays.

You'll find the full list of participating artists, and the press release, below:

Art 43 Basel
Art Unlimited: 62 ambitious, large-scale art projects

This year’s Art Unlimited sector will for the first time be curated by Gianni Jetzer, Director of the Swiss Institute in New York. The sector will feature 62 projects by artists representing a cross-section of the leading figures from several generations of today’s international art scene. Many pieces have been created especially for Art Unlimited and are marked both by their ambition and the relative youth of the artists creating them. The new curation will also be expressed in a very new design and architecture for the sector.

In the 17,000-square-meter exhibition space of Hall 1, Art Unlimited offers artists and galleries a platform for works that surpass the possibilities of the conventional gallery booth, showcasing outsize sculptures, video projections, installations, wall paintings, photographic series, and performance art.

Since its launch in 2000, many of the world’s leading contemporary artists have exhibited in the Art Unlimited sector, which is generously supported by UBS. The number of projects proposed by gallerists for this edition increased significantly, signaling the importance of these works and the sector and only a third of those proposals were accepted by the show's committee.

This year, works by artists including Jeremy Deller, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera, Douglas Gordon, Roni Horn, Anthony McCall, Ryan McGinley, Bruce Nauman, Mike Nelson, Olaf Nicolai, Walid Raad, Ugo Rondinone, Sterling Ruby and Franz West will be on show.

Projects by the following artists have been chosen by the Art Basel Selection Committee:

Ricci Albenda | Andrew Kreps Gallery | New York
Art & Language | Lisson Gallery | London
Phyllida Barlow | Hauser & Wirth | Zurich
Nina Beier | Laura Bartlett Gallery | London; Proyectos Monclova | Mexico City.; Standard (OSLO) | Oslo
Walead Beshty | Thomas Dane Gallery | London; Regen Projects | Los Angeles Chris Burden | Galerie Krinzinger | Vienna
Tom Burr | Bortolami | New York; Stuart Shave / Modern Art | London; Galerie Neu | Berlin; Galleria Franco Noero | Torino; Almine Rech Gallery | Paris
Pier Paolo Calzolari | Bernier/Eliades | Athens; Marianne Boesky Gallery | New York; Tucci Russo Studio per l'Arte Contemporanea | Torre Pellice (Torino)
Valentin Carron | 303 Gallery | New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zurich
David Claerbout | Hauser & Wirth | Zurich; Yvon Lambert | Paris; Galerie Micheline Szwajcer | Antwerp
Hanne Darboven | Kewenig Galerie | Cologne
Verne Dawson | Gavin Brown's enterprise | New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zurich
Jeremy Deller | Art : Concept | Paris; The Modern Institute | Glasgow
Brice Dellsperger | Air de Paris | Paris; Team Gallery | New York
Philip-Lorca diCorcia | David Zwirner | New York
Jimmie Durham | kurimanzutto | Mexico City
Melvin Edwards | Alexander Gray Associates | New York
Hamish Fulton | Galleri Riis | Oslo; Galerie Tschudi | Zuoz
Nikolas Gambaroff | Balice Hertling | Paris
Gilbert & George | Lehmann Maupin | New York; White Cube | London
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera | 303 Gallery | New York; Gallery Koyanagi | Tokyo; Jan Mot | Bruxelles; Esther Schipper | Berlin
Douglas Gordon | Gagosian Gallery | New York; Yvon Lambert | Paris; Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zurich
Roni Horn | Hauser & Wirth | Zurich
Robert Irwin | The Pace Gallery | New York
Runa Islam | White Cube | London
Richard Jackson | Hauser & Wirth | Zurich; Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois | Paris
Jitish Kallat | Chemould Prescott Road | Mumbai
Kimsooja | Kukje Gallery | Seoul
Ragnar Kjartansson | i8 Gallery | Reykjavik; Luhring Augustine | New York Germaine Kruip | The Approach | London
Alicja Kwade | Johann König | Berlin
Anthony McCall | Sean Kelly Gallery | New York
Ryan McGinley | Team Gallery | New York
Tony Morgan | Thomas Dane Gallery | London
Robert Morris | Sprüth Magers | Berlin
Olivier Mosset | Galerie Andrea Caratsch | Zurich
Bruce Nauman | Donald Young Gallery | Chicago
Mike Nelson | 303 Gallery | New York; Galleria Franco Noero | Torino
Olaf Nicolai | Galerie Eigen + Art | Berlin
Damián Ortega | Gladstone Gallery | New York
Laura Owens | Gavin Brown's enterprise | New York; Galerie Gisela Capitain GmbH | Cologne; Sadie Coles HQ | London
Richard Phillips | Gagosian Gallery | New York
Walid Raad | Anthony Reynolds Gallery | London
Raqs Media Collective | Frith Street Gallery | London
Ugo Rondinone | Galerie Eva Presenhuber | Zurich
Sterling Ruby | Xavier Hufkens | Bruxelles; Sprüth Magers | Berlin
Thomas Ruff | Mai 36 Galerie | Zurich
Michael Sailstorfer | Johann König | Berlin
Ariel Schlesinger | Yvon Lambert | Paris
Andreas Schulze | Sprüth Magers | Berlin; Team Gallery | New York
Shirana Shahbazi | Galerie Bob van Orsouw | Zurich
Shimabuku | Air de Paris | Paris; ZERO... | Milan
Rudolf Stingel | Paula Cooper Gallery | New York
Joëlle Tuerlinckx | Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder | Vienna; Galerie Christian Nagel | Berlin
Günter Umberg | Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder | Vienna; Galerie Nordenhake | Berlin; Galleri Riis | Oslo
Danh Vo | Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi | Berlin
Cosima von Bonin | Friedrich Petzel Gallery | New York
Clemens von Wedemeyer | Galerie Jocelyn Wolff | Paris
Wang Jianwei | Long March Space | Beijing
Richard Wentworth | Peter Freeman, Inc. | New York; Galerie Nelson-Freeman | Paris
Franz West | Gagosian Gallery | New York
Thomas Zipp | Baronian_Francey | Bruxelles; Galerie Guido W. Baudach | Berlin; Harris Lieberman | New York; Galerie Krinzinger | Vienna

For further information, please see artbasel.com/unlimited.

A limited-edition catalog accompanies the exhibition and includes descriptive texts about each artwork presented in Hall 1.

New Opening Hours of Art Basel:
Please note the new public opening times for Art 43 Basel:
Thursday, June 14, 2012 to Sunday, June 17, 2012, from 11am to 7pm.

New opening times of Art 43 Basel for accredited media representatives:
Tuesday, June 12, 11am – 8pm (Art Unlimited and Art Statements in Hall 1)
Tuesday, June 12, 3 – 8pm (Art Galleries, Art Feature, Art Editions, Art Magazines in Hall 2)
Wednesday, June 13, 11am – 8pm (Halls 1 and 2)
Public Show Days: Thursday, June 14, 2012 to Sunday, June 17, 2012, 11am to 7pm.

Media Reception: Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 2pm, Auditorium, Hall 1.

A woman posing with a sculpture by Jennifer Rubell at Stephen Friedman Gallery's booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2011. (Andrew Russeth)

With Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 now closed, Gallerist offers this look back at our reports from before, during and after the fair. Thank you for following along.

FAIRS

A Tour of Art Basel Miami Beach 2011
Photographs from the main fairs' booths.

Kris Martin’s Sculpture at Art Basel Miami Beach Could Kill You
Sies+Höke's booth threatened serious bodily injury.

Sales, Speculation and a Ghost at Art Basel Miami Beach
Business was strong; Adam Lindemann showed up.

Morley Safer Roams Art Basel Miami Beach With Jeffrey Deitch
The art-loving 60 Minutes reporter was on the prowl.

At Art Basel, Carl Andres Galore
The Minimalist is having a moment.

The Tables and Chairs of Art Basel Miami Beach 2011
Analyzing the furniture that galleries used in their booths.

NADA Miami Beach Outperforms
Young galleries brought impressive work, a positive atmosphere to the Deauville.

Seven, Miami’s Scrappy, Sporting Alternative Fair, Turns Two
Six New York galleries and one from London offered another model.

PARTIES

A Week at Art Basel Miami Beach: Parties Rivaled Art
Visiting A-Rod's house, MOCA North Miami, hedgie Adam Sender's former home.

Is It Hot in Here, or Is It Hell? Beaching and Moaning at Art Basel Miami Beach
Partying with Larry Gagosian, Diddy, photographs of bottoms.

Brandishing Brush for Basel, Nas Paints $14,000 Painting On Stage
The Queens rapper made art; Rashid Johnson bought it.

Hole Gallery Serves Salem, Strippers, Smoke Machine at Basel Bash (NSFW)
The Bowery gallery triumphed at the Delano.

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

The Rubell Collection’s Half-Hearted “American Exuberance”
Sixty-four artists--all citizens or residents of the U.S.--in one rather loosely curated exhibition.

Groupthink in Miami: Visiting the de la Cruz Collection
Big art, name brands and cookies at the de la Cruzes

MISCELLANEA

Blake Rayne at Miami Beach’s Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club
"This is New York City," the artist declared.

Bicycling Art Basel Miami Beach? A Brief Guide
Why not navigate the fairs on two wheels?

PREVIEW
Introduction
Part 1: 1-25
Part 2: 26-50
Part 3: 51-75
Part 4: 76-100

Seven eschews booths, instead placing work by artists represented by different dealers throughout the space: wall labels identify the gallery to speak with about buying a work. “There is a wonderful breadth of possibilities” Pierogi’s Joe Amrhein told Gallerist by phone yesterday, two days after the closing of the fair. (He was still in Miami, finishing up business.) “Each gallery gets more or less 145 linear feet on the walls”—more space than even the roomiest fair booths typically provide.

Numerous signs by British artist Bob and Roberta Smith—also known as Patrick Brill (who shows with Hales and Pierogi)—held one wall in the front room, and on view in the next were large-scale paintings by David Diao of Postmasters and a sprawling canvas of a garbage-blanketed corner of Clinton and Delancey Streets, from 1983, by Martin Wong, courtesy of P.P.O.W., which represents the artist’s estate.

One section was devoted to an installation by Jonathan Schipper: a room of objects that were being slowly pulled into a wall by strings, its contents being destroyed at a glacial pace. Any one of those pieces would have taken up a good hunk of any typical art fair booth. And the two walls devoted to scores of small paintings and drawings, hung salon-style by Mr. Amrhein, would be unthinkable in that context.

Seven started last year, after Pierogi, which had previously participated in Art Basel, was denied entry, and spoke to other dealers that were frustrated with the state of contemporary fairs. “We drove around Wynwood, and we realized there was so much cheap real estate available,” Mr. Amrhein told us.

Setting up shop apart from the main fairs, the galleries trade spillover foot traffic for space and flexibility, Mr. Amrhein said. “We wanted to get rid of that booth context,” the dealer said. “But the word of mouth ended up spreading, and we had a lot of people who we didn’t know come to the fair.” Work sold, mostly in the under-$10,000 range, with some works going for well above that. The galleries hope to return to the same building next year.

“It costs half of what we would pay to do another fair,” Mr. Amrhein said. “Of course, we are very savvy about how this all works and we end up working a little harder. I was here two weeks. We do everything from renting refrigerators to building the walls to making the food every day. It’s like one big family, which makes it nice. By keeping it smaller, we can do this.” ("I've never met a harder working human in my life," Mr. Winkleman wrote on his blog yesterday, referring to Mr. Amrhein.)

Gallerist asked Mr. Amrhein if Seven could work in New York, a city that is now glutted with two sets of fairs, in March and May. “The real estate is so much more expensive there,” the dealer said, though he acknowledged it might be possible in Brooklyn. There is also talk of staging a version in London in October during Frieze. For now, though, he is headed back to the gallery. “I really want to focus on the shows there, and focus on the artists,” he said.

The Miami Beach Convention Center. (Andrew Russeth)

Fairgoers and dealers alike seemed largely in good spirits by the end of the day at Art Basel yesterday, as the tenth edition of the fair kicked off, and informal, off-the-record polling of gallerists suggested that business was clipping along comfortably.

"People here have been very positive," a smiling Marianne Boesky told us, as she took a momentary break from talking to visitors and fielding client inquires on her phone. "The farther we get from 2008, the better it gets."

Ms. Boesky's booth was swarming with people right before the vernissage yesterday, and she said people were snapping up ceramics by William J. O'Brien, most priced between $6,000 and $12,000.

"The ghost of Adam Lindemann" even came by, she quipped, referring to the collector and Observer columnist who called for a boycott of the fair and then decided to attend after all.

After a few hours, galleries began firing off news of sales. David Zwirner reported selling five pieces by Carol Bove—the gallery's latest addition to its roster (she is jointly represented by Maccarone)—at prices ranging from $60,000 to $150,000.

The "major centerpiece" of the booth, a multipart Bove comprised of concrete, feathers, driftwood and other found objects, went to La Colección Jumex, the private collection of leading Mexican collector Eugenio Lopez, Mr. Zwirner said. Mr. Lopez is currently building a new home for his art in Mexico City.

James Cohan Gallery reported selling a $500,000 Fred Tomaselli "within the first hour of the fair." The five-foot-by-five-foot psychedelic image of an owl—made of photo collage, acrylic and resin on wood panel—now belongs to an American collector. (Marion Maneker is keeping score of sales over on his Art Market Monitor blog.)

At Michael Werner Gallery's booth, positioned in a choice location right near the entrance of a the fair, a circa 1940 Picabia had sold. A Werner representative declined to disclose a price, though judging by past auction results, it should have easily been in the high-six or low-seven figures.

Swiss powerhouse Galerie Gmurzynska had red dots next to a circa 1970 Chagall oil and a choice black Lucio Fontana "cut" painting from 1960. We asked Gmurzynska co-owner Mathias Rastorfer about his sense of the market.

"We have had some important sales, so I am happy," Mr. Rastorfer offered, though he emphasized that many collectors take their time. "Last year was very strong," he said. He is waiting for the end of the fair to pass judgment. Here, here.

"At the highest end, it is a seller's market," Mr. Rastorfer said, noting that quality work by major names often garner high prices in even the toughest times. (On that note: a Yves Klein diptych, made with a flamethrower, is on offer in his booth for $4 million.) He added, "In the middle range, though, it is a buyer's market."

Those lines kept tumbling around in our heads last night as we saw Salem play outside at the Delano hotel's pool in Miami Beach, a party organized by Kathy Grayson's Bowery gallery, the Hole. White smoke billowed across the stage as the band entered. Then two women in bikinis and heels arrived, and positioned themselves precariously close to the edge of the pool.

As a breeze picked up, the smell of marijuana passed through the crowd. And then the music started—crisp drum-machine clicks caterwauling one over another, piercing through thick waves of distorted, fuzzy drones. The women grabbed the pool's poles and swung in place, shaking to the beat. The crowd, sitting on large white beds along the pools, reached for their cameras.

A while back, The New York Times declared one Salem show "the kind of performance that you have seen only in your worst dreams." Last night was also nightmarish, but sublimely so, the band's woozy, drug-addled electronic-cut hip-hop befitting the middle of a week of frenetic Basel excess. The spectacle slowed things down, and made the crowd somehow uncannily present. Whatever live-performance problems they once had are now gone.

On record, the rapping of Jack Donoghue—which skews toward the chopped and screwed brand of Southern hip-hop—sound as if it is digitally slowed. His lines stumble forward only through inertia, through their sheer mass. It was surreal, then, to see him, microphone in hand, channeling that same horror-film drone live.

"First I tie your hands and feet," Mr. Donoghue rapped on "Sick," sounding like a drug-addled Rick Ross trying to tread through a swirling Cocteau Twins-style synth. "Shhh… / Don't make a peep." The women had by now shed their tops and fully entered the pool in the water. Across the pool, one gentleman waded in, beckoning for a lap dance. He got it.

Over on our side of the pool, a handful of guests—mostly women—slipped bills under the straps of one dancer's bikini, as she slowly slinked down half the length of the pool, posing for photos, caressing herself. She moved toward the center, joining the other dancer and they writhed together in the water.

On "Frost," singer Heather Marlatt sang her ghostly, high-pitched passages flawlessly, held up by layers and layers of distorted guitars, and though she could barely be heard over the music, no one seemed to mind just watching her.

arusseth@observer.com

As we type this, the crowds at the vernissage are ramping up, though the atmosphere for most of the day was relatively calm, almost serene. Collectors were buying, though it was no feeding frenzy. Many dealers claimed to be relatively pleased. It is early, though, and we are going to hold off on making any proclamations about the state of the market for the moment.

For now, we offer a brief tour of the fair in the slide show above.

Are there identifiable trends? Gallerist spotted quite a few Gerhard Richters and Sigmar Polkes, as well as a bevy of Kusamas and Calders. Which is to say that this year's fair features the type of art that usually pops up at blue-chip art fairs.

That said, there are some nice surprises, like L&M's booth, which is lined with Warhol wallpaper and drawings, and the shock-and-awe Kruger installation that is wrapped around Mary Boone's redoubt.

arusseth@observer.com

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.