Art Basel in Miami Beach 2014 was a raucous affair—it rained, it poured money, art, and celebs; art was both broken and celebrated. In other words, this year just might have been Miami's finest.
Visitors in front of Sandra Cinto’s Untitled (da série: Mar Aberto), 2014, at the Casa Triângulo booth at Art Basel in Miami Beach.
There was something in the air during 2014’s Art Basel in Miami Beach: rain. Storm clouds swelled and broke over the beach and downtown Thursday night, letting loose torrents of rain that locals know so well during the summer. The parties went on, but not without a dash of anxiety. Will my Uber get lost in the rain? Will the city fall into the ocean? Where will an S&M-leather-clad Peter Marino lumber into next?
Combined with the picket lines of NetJets pilots outside the Convention Center (the private jet company, which is a longtime sponsor of the fair, is undergoing budget cuts) and the protests for Mike Brown and Darren Wilson that shut down I-195, this year’s Art Basel felt especially real—less an escape from the world’s problems than a taste of their acceleration. But let’s talk surreal: The Opa-Locka Executive Airport filled up so quickly that private jets had to be rerouted, and did you see Leonardo DiCaprio leaving Rec Room with 20 models?
All’s Fair
Pablo Picasso’s Visage aux Mains, 1956, valued at $85,000, was stolen from the Art Miami fair.
72,999 art acolytes and I visited the main fair this year, which started Wednesday morning and became the center of the art world, with more than 250 vetted galleries. “You get to see the entire market all at once; it’s all condensed,” says Fred Snitzer, whose gallery has been included in Art Basel in Miami Beach since the fair’s inception in 2001. Snitzer’s booth was painting heavy, crowned by Hernan Bas’s The Grounds Keeper, a red and floral homage to Matisse. Unsurprisingly, the gallery did well. “It’d be great to have these things quarterly,” he says.
The other Miami gallery, Michael Jon, showed works by the Los Angelesbased artists Sayre Gomez and JPW3, two of the most sought-after up-and-comers in the game right now. The gallery claimed strong sales, with pieces placed in France, Panama, Hong Kong, London, Puerto Rico, and Saudi Arabia.
Beyond the miles of static art, there was a conversation series and performances by artists such as Marina Abramović, who presented guests with the opportunity to nap, although judging from the activities around the art fair, this year was anything but a snooze.
Murders And Acquisitions
Sean “Diddy” Combs at the First Choice VIP preview on December 3
For being the art world’s favorite time of year, this week was not without drama. Jeffrey Deitch, who last year mistook Diddy for Kanye, got Miley Cyrus (who played his annual Raleigh goat rope) to headline a pot- and booze-filled fest to a gate-crashing crowd of thousands poolside. Instagram celebrity Dan Bilzerian was kicked out of LIV for assault and later booked on alleged “bomb-making” charges upon his return to LA. And then there was performance artist Mykki Blanco, who berated MoMA PS 1 Director Klaus Biesenbach while pelting him with chunks of a Subway sandwich.
Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza’s concrete sculpture cracked beneath the drunken weight of a PAMM visitor. Consider it collateral damage on this Black Friday for the 1 percent (as collector Stefan Simchowitz hashtagged it). All this seems like silly fun and games until you consider that graffiti artist Demz was run over by a police cruiser in Wynwood and later tragically died.
Craig Robins, Jackie Soffer, and Rodman Primack hosted a lavish dinner for architect Peter Marino, the recipient of Design Miami’s Design Visionary Award, with cocktails in the new Palm Court area of the Design District, on December 4
Meanwhile, the Pablo Picasso silver plate, Visage aux Mains (Face with Hands), exhibited at the Art Miami fair by Amsterdam-based Leslie Smith Gallery and valued at $85,000, was stolen as part of an elaborate heist by a group of unknown thieves.
But the show went on, and the numbers were gaudy. There was a $35 million Alexander Calder at Helly Nahmad Gallery. You could get a $15 million portrait of Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol, courtesy of Acquavella, or a $3 million John Chamberlain from 1964, which was sold by Mnuchin Gallery. A Picasso went for $1 million over at the Swiss gallery Gmurzynska (partially curated by Baz Luhrmann). DiCaprio grabbed a 1973 Frank Stella from New York dealer Marianne Boesky for just under $1 million, because you need something to show those 20 models.
Moving On
With this year’s dramatic MOCA schism, Tuesdaynight festivities were split. Some went, as always, to North Miami for the annual MOCA party, while others opted to christen the new Institute of Contemporary Art down in the Design District at the Moore Building, its temporary space before moving into a permanent home designed by Spanish architects Aranguren & Gallegos. The ICA showcased two inaugural exhibits: Andra Ursuta’s suite of sculptures and Pedro Reyes’s “Sanatorium,” which presented art as therapy in a variety of manners. By the time that party got going, we were in Wynwood for the perpetually packed Rubell affair. This year, Don and Mera Rubell celebrated 50 years of marriage and collecting by literally spoon-feeding guests little bites of cake, while their daughter, Jennifer, showcased her foodinspired performance art.
After the Party, It’s The Hotel Lobby
Rafael de Cardenas and Emmett Moore photographing some of Moore’s furniture design at the Design Miami collectors preview and vernissage on December 2
Tuesday night continued at Casa Claridge for the TV Party presented by NeueHouse. In the early ’80s, Glenn O’Brien hosted what he calls “punk television,” a public-access show with guests like Debbie Harry and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The party was, in effect, a rerun. Film crews jostled around as the downtown-heavy guest list drank and watched performances, including a standout set by the young rapper Theophilus London. All week long, music stole the show: James Blake and FKA Twigs at YoungArts, Miguel at the Soho Beach House, Future Brown at PAMM. ASAP Ferg, Paris Hilton. Zoë Kravitz and Lolawolf. Miley, Miley, Miley.
Down at the new Miami Beach Edition, the W magazine party flooded out into the lobby, while host Bill Powers schmoozed the fire marshal to let more people into Basement, the nightclub below. A billiards game spilled out onto the marble floor, a model wearing a lampshade on her head spilled out of her thong, and we leaked into the party through an elaborate series of back doors. Down we went, past the bottle-service tables, past the bowling alley, and even further, until we basked in a blue light. There it was: an ice-skating rink, lit by candles. A bit of Switzerland in the heart of Miami Beach.
The new hotel established itself as a regular venue this Basel. On Thursday, while much of the city crowded PAMM to watch a DJ set involving jet skis and jet packs, artists Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe presented their send-up of the art-fair age, back at the Edition. Their Shadow Pool: A Natural History of San San International used a fashion show, a concert from pill rockers Black Bananas, and an extended slideshow lecture to elucidate to the audience a major cultural event that just happens to be nonexistent. It was well received, by some.
Satellite (In My Eyes)
Dog Hood, 2011, by Yoshitomo Nara from Blum & Poe, ABMB
Once again at the Deauville hotel in North Beach, NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) was as established as the antiestablishment can be. Locust Projects moved almost half its booth in the first 15 minutes, including a group of paintings by Miamibased Roberto Gomez that “went like wildfire,” according to Locust Projects development associate Amanda Sanfilippo. A few feet away, Miami’s new arrival from Kansas City, Bill Brady Gallery, sold out its booth of Zach Reini paintings in 10 minutes. Assistant Director Jacqueline Falcone had the faux humility down pat: “There’s been a lot of buying.”
Down the Beach at Untitled, a record-breaking 32,000 people visited the fair, which expanded in terms of square footage and curatorial oversight (Artistic Director Omar Lopez-Chahoud was joined by curators Christophe Boutin and Melanie Scarciglia). Eric Firestone Gallery out of East Hampton, New York, had a booth that included Sanford Biggers’s quilts (he sold two to an unnamed institution), Jen Stark, and midcareer painter Eric Freeman. All of the art worked amazingly with the sunlight, especially since Firestone gave his booth a ’70s beach-house vibe with some rough-hewn wood paneling from Home Depot.
Intelligent Design
Everyone loves Design Miami. It’s not too big, the mood lighting is easy on the eyes (as is the clientele), and you get to touch things. This year, as the fair celebrated its 10th anniversary, everyone loved Gallery Diet’s booth of Emmett Moore. From the pink AstroTurf on up, the Miami-based designer reworked banal street objects in ways that are anything but. Six-packs of aluminum cans become coffee tables; basketballs prop up bookshelves. The work was smart, funny, and a good deal cheaper than the Zaha Hadid dining room table (carved from a single chunk of black granite) on sale for 320,000 euros around the corner.
Boldfacers
Love Remembered, 2007, by Damien Hirst, at White Cube Gallery, ABMB.
There was a little something for everyone this year. From the get-go, it was Peter Marino’s show, with his personal collection, “One Way: Peter Marino,” on display at the Bass Museum of Art. But as the week went on, others such Ryan McNamara’s Meem: A Story Ballet About the Internet, Beatriz Milhazes at PAMM, and Theo Jansen’s movable “Strandbeest Exhibit” wowed. Julian Schnabel, who has become somewhat of a local, with his designs now decorating the new Flatiron Brickell building, showed off at the NSU Fort Lauderdale, while The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) presented “Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict. Abstract Art from the Ella Fontanals- Cisneros Collection.” The de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space showed “Beneath the Surface.” Of course, there were Kate Hudson, Elle Macpherson, Tommy Hilfiger, Robert Pattinson, Eva Longoria, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, Chanel Iman, Russell Simmons, and Swizz Beats.
Hometown Heroes
Although she had the booth in Design Miami, Nina Johnson-Milewski and her husband, Daniel, staged a sprawling group show, “Great Expectations,” in their Shorecrest home. Visitors could come and see work by Gina Beavers, Nicolas Lobo, and Jim Drain, among others, in a relaxed domestic setting.
Anthony Spinello split his time between the Design District, where he teamed up with Gucci to exhibit a series of paintings by Canadian Kris Knight so fay they’d make Bosie weep, and South Beach, where he organized the stunning “Auto Body”—a show of 33 female artists selected by a committee of 25 female curators—in an old car shop.
But the most colorful cultural arts mashup occurred in the Little Haiti Thrift and Gift Shop. DJs played amid racks of used clothes as part of #IHaitiBasel, organized by the New York and Miami-based collective MGKAT. With the MC chanting, “Clap, bitches, clap,” the crowd obeying, and a neighborhood man slinging $15 bottles of homemade rum and pineapple juice, it was clear: This was Miami. This was real.