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 Read More
“Have you been to Frieze?” a colleague asked us last week in the aisles of the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair.
Gallerist paused, confused. We knew about Art Basel Miami Beach, NADA, Seven, Art Miami, Pulse, Scope and about a dozen other art fairs. But we had no idea that London’s Frieze Art Fair, Read More
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” — René Magritte
“This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.” — Robert Rauschenberg
“This is New York City.” — Blake Rayne Read More
Last year, Jeffrey Kastner wrote in Artforum that Miami is “a city rife with available real estate, wealthy full- and part-time residents, and traditionally under-performing public institutions.” It is an urban area, Mr. Kastner noted, that is uniquely designed to foster the development of the private collector museums that have popped up across the contemporary art landscape in recent years. Read More
It is hard to imagine a vaguer curatorial conceit than the one that apparently guides “American Exuberance,” the Rubell Family Collection’s current show at its warehouse in Miami. The exhibition, an introductory statement tells us, “creates a portrait of the American condition,” and notes—a bit defensively—that all 64 of its artists are “citizens or residents of this country.” Read More
Happy 10th, ABMB
Art Basel Miami Beach turned 10 this year. There is a lot of getting swept up in things at the fair and its ancillary activities—its many, many, many ancillary activities, like so many barnacles on a whale that the whale lists to the side, from satellite fairs to parties sponsored by Champagne companies and fashion companies and car companies.
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Last week, just a few blocks south of the Art Miami fair, in the Wynwood section of Miami, seven galleries—New York’s P.P.O.W., BravinLee, Pierogi, Winkleman, Postmasters and Ronald Feldman, and London’s Hales Gallery—converted a 15,000-square-foot warehouse into the second edition of a fair that is called, appropriately, Seven. Read More
As The Art Newspaper noted last week, painting dominated Art Basel Miami Beach 2011.
Reporters Georgina Adam, Charlotte Burns and Riah Pryor argued that was because dealers were playing it safe: compared with sculpture (to say nothing of video or installation art), paintings are relatively easy to ship–and sell. Not every collector has room for another large Thomas Houseago piece, though most can find room for a new painting. Read More
At home, galleries have a multitude of ways to define their identities, to signal their agendas. They pick their neighborhood and design the layout of their space. Tall front desk or short front desk? Opaque or clear windows? Guestbook or no guestbook? A front buzzer? (Peter Schjeldahl once devoted a large section of an Read More
Near the end of his set last night at midtown Miami’s Ricochet Bar & Lounge, Nas acknowledged that he was in town during Art Basel, and announced that he was going to make an artwork on stage.
A white board was delivered, along with washable markers and a small set of paints. “Is this real paint?” the Queens-born rapper asked. “Water paints? I can do that shit too.” He picked up a paintbrush and made a red mark on the board. Then a gunshot tore through the speakers, and he launched into his 2002 hit “Made You Look.” Read More
