The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

New York’s highest court has decided to review a recent ruling that could force the state’s auction industry to end its longstanding practice of keeping sellers’ names anonymous.

Most sellers in the New York auction market remain anonymous, and auction catalogs typically reveal little more than that a work is from a “private collection.” The court did not rule that auction houses had to publicize widely the name of a seller, only that buyers are entitled to know it. Buyers — themselves often people who anonymously sell items at auction — have seldom complained about the practice, while sellers have come to expect their identities to be shielded.

But in October, in a dispute over the sale of a 19th-century silver-and-enamel Russian box, a four-judge appellate-court panel unanimously ruled that state law has long required that buyers be given the names of sellers in postauction paperwork for the deal to become binding.

Many art-law experts say the decision, if upheld, could significantly change the way the auction business is conducted in New York State.

“As of now you can back out of any transaction where the name of the seller is not provided,” said Peter R. Stern of McLaughlin & Stern, a Manhattan lawyer who represents dealers, collectors and auction houses and was an outside counsel to Sotheby’s.

The lawyer for the auctioneer in the case said Christie’s had inquired about submitting a brief when the New York Court of Appeals, which last month announced its intention to review the case, takes it up this spring. The auction house declined to comment.

Jonathan A. Olsoff, director of worldwide litigation for Sotheby’s, said that auction house viewed the decision as “narrow and technical” and that others were overstating its impact. Although fine-arts sales are the highest-profile auctions in the state, the ruling would also affect the sale of other items, like heirlooms, vehicles and livestock, which are also typically auctioned anonymously by hundreds of companies every week.

Anonymity is often prized because it protects personal privacy and allows institutions quietly to sell items from their collections that they no longer need. In some cases it can also cloak the embarrassment of debt or help sellers avoid setting off family conflicts over the disposition of inherited assets.

“Anonymity should not be seen as an abuse of the law,” said Christine Steiner of Sheppard Mullin, a Los Angeles law firm. She is a former Maryland prosecutor who has represented sellers from all income levels.

The ruling came in a case involving an auctioneer in Chester, N.Y., William J. Jenack, who sold a Russian antique in 2008 for $460,000. The piece, a czarist box made by I. P. Khlebnikov, a Fabergé contemporary, depicted aristocrats feasting on a roasted swan. Mr. Jenack said the top bidder, Albert Rabizadeh of Long Island, refused to pay after “grumbling about the price.”

Mr. Jenack sued for payment and won, but the decision was overturned by the appellate court when Mr. Rabizadeh challenged the transaction because the seller had not been identified in the postsale documentation.

In arguments last year before the appellate court lawyers for the auctioneer said that revealing the seller would overturn centuries of commercial practice and badly burden the industry. But the appellate panel, citing New York’s anti-fraud statutes, was unmoved.

“While it may be true that auction houses commonly withhold the names of consignors,” Justice Peter B. Skelos of the appellate division said in his ruling, “this court is governed not by the practice in the trade, but by the relevant statute.” He said the law “clearly and unambiguously requires that the name of the person” selling the item be included in documents provided to the buyer.

If the ruling stands, some experts say, a buyer denied a seller’s name would have the right to walk away from any purchase, as happened in Mr. Jenack’s case.

Through his lawyer, Daniel R. Wotman of Great Neck, N.Y., Mr. Rabizadeh declined to comment, but Mr. Wotman said, “Auction houses and consignors need to comply with the law.”

Benjamin Ostrer of Chester, the lawyer for Mr. Jenack, said the ruling represented “a wholesale invitation to have people renege.”

Mr. Olsoff of Sotheby’s disagreed however. “The decision,” he said, “deals only with the evidence that is required if an auction purchaser defaults in paying and is sued by the auction house.”

Several lawyers said auctioneers could try to resolve issues by having buyers agree to anonymity in writing before bidding. But Leila A. Amineddoleh, an expert on art law at Lombard & Geliebter, said she would discourage buyers from signing such a waiver, especially because the seller’s identity can aid with provenance questions and enhance the future value of an item.

She predicted that if the ruling is upheld, some auctioneers would lobby in Albany for legislation to exempt them from disclosing the seller.

Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a lawyer with Sullivan & Worcester in Boston who writes that firm’s Art Law Report, said the ruling also allowed winning bidders to sue auction houses for sellers’ names. “Once the gavel falls there is a binding agreement that cuts both ways,” he said. “The implications are very far-reaching.”

Mr. Jenack said fellow auctioneers worry that their clients would sell in other states where privacy is protected.

Lawyers said they had not heard of court rulings in other states that appeared to restrict the granting of anonymity to sellers at auction.

One person with a strong interest in the case is the box’s seller, Jonathan A. Thompson, 70, of Greenwich, Conn. He said anonymity was the last thing he cared about when he put the family heirloom up for sale in 2008.

He ended up with $50,000, he said, when the box was resold at auction in 2010, not the money he once stood to make, but far more than the $5,000 value first put on the box when Mr. Jenack originally advertised it.

“I didn’t ask to be anonymous,” he said. “I didn’t think at all about it.”

Wendell Castle’s installation “A New Environment” is on view at Friedman Benda in Chelsea.The cantilevered staircase at right leads to a treehouse-like pod.

The American designer Wendell Castle is known for his idiosyncratic, organic and slightly surreal furniture, which he has been producing in laminated wood, plastic and other materials since the 1960s, and which is highly collectible. Castle, who turned 80 in 2012, showed his work at Design Miami last month, and today his exhibition “A New Environment” opens at Friedman Benda in Chelsea. (Another Castle show, “Volumes and Voids,” is on view just upstairs from Friedman Benda at the Barry Friedman Gallery through Jan. 26.)

The exhibition’s centerpiece is a massive, arresting environment of stack-laminated, carved wood that is rasp-finished and stained black. It comprises a modular platform, three sculptural chairs, a totemlike structure studded with LEDs and a cantilevered spiral stair that leads to a podlike chamber, lined in flokati carpet, which offers snug lounge seating for one, complete with reading light, shelf and several openings to let in light and air. It’s kind of a treehouse for grown-ups — rich ones, that is. At this writing, the price of the environment had not been set, but Castle said that it would likely be in the vicinity of a $1 million.

This is Castle’s largest work to date. It is a follow-up of sorts to his 1969 piece “Environment for Contemplation,” which also featured a pod but which was set on the floor. “I wanted to put something in the air,” he said. A steel structure reinforces the central column and stair treads; as the designer explains, this is necessary to support the pod, which weighs about 1,000 pounds.

From left: the pod, which is lined in flokati carpet, has built-in lounge seating for one; three additional pieces in the exhibition include “The Light of Darkness,” which combines a cantilevered chair, a table and a light.

On the fringes of the environment are three other pieces — a settee, a desk and a chair with its own table and light — with the same biomorphic forms or, as Castle calls them, “ellipsoids, kind of mushed together.” He cites the artists Henry Moore, Joan Miro, Jean Arp and Constantin Brancusi as early influences, but it’s clear that they’ve stayed with him. “I loved the idea of a ‘soft’ vocabulary, and still do,” he said. Castle enjoys chewing over ideas that have provoked him for years, but now he’s doing it with the aid of a robot, which he said will help to “carve some crazy-shaped voids,” since it can work in smaller spaces than traditional woodworking tools.

Next on the horizon is an exhibition in the fall at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris. There will be at least one bronze piece in the show, and Castle is experimenting with even rougher textures. For now, however, he was busy putting the finishing touches on the environment before the opening party. And when told that the piece’s outsized scale really called for its own, specially designed space, Castle replied, “I’ve thought about how to do that room.”

“A New Environment” is on view at Friedman Benda, 515 West 26th Street, through Feb. 9.

CHINA’S leaders have tried honoring Ai Weiwei and bribing him with the offer of high positions. They have tried jailing him, fining him and clubbing him so brutally that he needed emergency brain surgery. In desperation, they have even begged him to behave — and nothing works.

What is the Politburo to do with a superstar artist with a vast global audience like Ai (whose name is pronounced EYE Way-way), who makes a video of himself dancing “Gangnam style” with handcuffs — parodying the Chinese state — that quickly ends up with more than one million views on YouTube?

How should the Central Committee of the Communist Party react when Ai releases a nude self-portrait with a stuffed animal as a fig leaf? The caption was “grass-mud-horse in the center” — a homonym in Chinese for a vulgar curse against the Communist Party’s central leadership. Or, more precisely, against its mother.

One thing the party detests even more than being denounced is being mocked, and humor is the signature element of Ai’s assaults. Other dissidents, like the great writer Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize winner now in prison, write eloquently of democracy but gain little traction among ordinary Chinese: Ai’s artistic work also seems incomprehensible to many people, but obscene jokes about grass-mud-horses can get more traction — and be difficult to quash.

“I think they don’t know how to handle someone like me,” Ai said in an interview. “They kind of give up managing me.”

One challenge for the Communist Party is that Ai, 55, is one of the world’s great artists. He also comes from a family with close ties to the Communist revolution, and his mother and father were friendly with the parents of China’s new top leader, Xi Jinping.

Ai’s emergence as an icon of resistance represents progress in China, a reflection of an unofficial pluralism that is gaining ground. China increasingly reminds me of South Korea or Taiwan in the early 1980s, when an educated middle class was nibbling away at dictatorship.

There is real improvement in China, Ai acknowledges, and he says that he expects democracy to reach China by 2020 — but he laments that it is already overdue. “They have wasted a whole generation of young people,” he said.

Ai’s irreverence seems shaped by the dozen years he spent in New York City burnishing his artistic reputation. He returned to China in 1993, at the age of 36, and initially behaved himself politically and played a role in designing the magnificent Bird’s Nest stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

One factor that changed him was the terrible earthquake of 2008 in Sichuan Province in the southwest, when schools collapsed and the government clamped down on parents protesting shoddy construction. Ai backed the parents and began to demand more openness from the government.

Angered by his antagonism, the authorities had Ai beaten up and then destroyed his studio in Shanghai. Then last year the government detained him for nearly three months.

The authorities still block him from traveling abroad, so he is not able to attend a major exhibition of his work now under way at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.

The pressure left Ai feeling more strongly than ever that one of China’s biggest problems is autocratic government. He became more outspoken, not less.

“At every step, they pushed me into it,” he said. “I told them, ‘You create people like me.’ ”

After briefly lying low after his imprisonment, Ai has resumed his political pranks. Mocking the authorities for installing 15 cameras to monitor his movements, he broadcast a public “weiweicam” on the Internet with a feed from his bedroom so the government could keep an even closer eye on him.

“They almost begged me to turn it off,” he said with a grin.

At the end of a long conversation, I asked Ai if he had anything else to say.

“China still needs help from the U.S.,” he said. “To insist on certain values, that is the role of the U.S. That is the most important product of American culture. When Hillary Clinton talks about Internet freedom, I think that’s really beautiful.”

There’s a message there for Americans. We have a powerful military, yes, but the “hard power” of missiles is often exceeded by our “soft power” of ideas. Speaking up for our values around the world invariably raises questions of hypocrisy and inconsistency, but it’s better to be an inconsistent advocate of democracy and human rights than to be a consistent advocate of nothing.

I hope the White House listens to how Ai responded when I asked if President Obama was doing enough to raise human rights concerns.

“I don’t know what they’re doing under the table,” Ai said. “But on the surface, they’re not doing enough.”

The artist Chuck Close giving a private tour of his show to students from Bridgeport, Conn.

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: December 18, 2012

Stationed in front of one of his large self-portraits, the artist Chuck Close raised his customized wheelchair to balance on two wheels, seeming to defy the laws of gravity.

The chair’s unlikely gymnastics underlined the points that Mr. Close was making to his audience, 40 seventh and eighth graders from Bridgeport, Conn.: Break the rules and use limitations to your advantage.

The message had particular resonance for these students, and a few educators and parents, who had come by bus on Monday from Roosevelt School to the Pace Gallery in Chelsea for a private tour of Mr. Close’s show. Roosevelt, located in a community with high unemployment and crushing poverty, recently had one of the worst records of any school in the state, with 80 percent of its seventh graders testing below grade level in reading and math.

Saved from closure by a committed band of parents, the school was one of eight around the country chosen last year to participate in Turnaround Arts, a new federally sponsored public-and-private experiment that puts the arts at the center of the curriculum. Arranging for extra funds for supplies and instruments, teacher training, partnerships with cultural organizations and high-profile mentors like Mr. Close, Turnaround is trying to use the arts to raise academic performance across the board. “Art saved my life,” Mr. Close told the children. And he believes it can save the lives of others, too.

So now he was giving a pizza party and answering a question about why he started to paint.

“I wanted people to notice me, not that I couldn’t remember their faces or add or subtract,” he said, referring to the learning and neurological disabilities that set him apart from his classmates when he was growing up in Monroe, Wash.

A terrible writer and test-taker, Mr. Close used art to make it through school. Instead of handing in a paper, he told the children, “I made a 20-foot-long mural of the Lewis and Clark trail.”

Starting in Pace’s large central gallery, where his giant portraits of other artists like Philip Glass, Paul Simon and Laurie Anderson looked on, Mr. Close told the group that “everything about my work is driven by my learning disabilities.”

Born with prosopagnosia, a condition that prevents him from recognizing faces, Mr. Close explained that the only way he can remember a face is by breaking it down into small “bite-sized” pieces, like the tiny squares or circles of color that make up his paintings and prints.

“I figured out what I had left and I tried to make it work for me,” he said. “Limitations are important.”

With Mr. Close were a few other members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, which helped develop the Turnaround program. One of them, Damian Woetzel, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet who is a mentor to two other Turnaround schools, picked up on his theme.

“In dance we limit ourselves, as well,” he said. “There are five positions and everything comes from that,” he added, quickly demonstrating the basic ballet poses.

Filling out the cultural spectrum were the Broadway producer Margo Lion, a chairwoman of the committee, and the musicians Cristina Pato, Shane Shanahan and Kojiro Umezaki, all members of the Silk Road Ensemble, an international collaboration founded by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who is also a committee member and a mentor. One by one, they entered from different doors, startling the students with an impromptu concert featuring a tambourine, a gaita (a Spanish bagpipe) and a Chinese flute.

Clapping and stamping in time to the music, Mr. Woetzel soon turned the gallery’s open space into a dance floor. A couple of students whipped out phones to record the proceedings, while others raced across the room to avoid getting pulled in as participants. One reluctant dancer, captured by Rachel Goslins, a filmmaker and the executive director of the president’s committee, rolled his eyes and mouthed “Oh my God” as she circled him around the floor. Other students joined hands and began dancing as Ms. Lion and the school principal, Tania Kelley, her head flung back, swung each other around.

Mr. Close swerved through the crowd in his wheelchair.

“I never danced before,” Carolyn Smith, 13, said excitedly when the music stopped. “Usually I sing.” Carolyn was the lead in the school’s production of “The Wiz” last year. A brain tumor had caused her to miss so much school that her literacy teacher initially wanted her to turn down the part and focus on catching up, Ms. Goslins said. But being in the play — and reading and memorizing the script — helped her reading skills so much, Ms. Goslins said, that the literacy coach later told her, “I’m a believer.”

The afternoon offered a series of firsts for many of the students. Most had never seen such instruments, heard of Mr. Simon or Mr. Glass, or even visited Manhattan.

“It’s pretty cool to be in New York,” said David Morales, 14, who later asked Mr. Close about his technique, explaining, “I like how he makes it, how it comes all together.”

David, like the other Roosevelt students, had studied Mr. Close’s work in class and met him when he visited the school last month. So Mr. Close patiently answered questions.

“Is it easy to make these pictures?” (Well, it can take a while, Mr. Close replied.)

“How do you know what colors to use?” (Trial and error.)

“Can you draw? (Yes.)

“There is no artist who enjoys what he does every day more than I do,” Mr. Close told the group, setting off applause from the students. Repeating advice he often gives to young artists, he said: “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work.”

When the bus arrived for the return trip, Ms. Pato and Mr. Shanahan again took up their instruments, this time to lead a parade of clapping students and teachers out the door.

Carolyn Smith, a pink rose in her hair, paused at the doorway and turned to Mr. Close. “I had a blast,” she called out. “Bye, Chuck. See you later.”

Zwirner and Koons. (PMC)

Bogie knew, “you must remember this …” Here are a few art world surprises to remember, and some we’d rather forget.

The Chelsea Flood: Who could ever have imagined that a silly old hurricane would sink the entire Chelsea art district and parts of Red Hook? Sandy not only inundated basement storages; first-floor galleries had their key November exhibitions floating in six feet of dirty seawater. I walked through the tragic scene the morning after, and saw trashed galleries with dirty art dripping and salty. It’s amazing how fast many of Chelsea’s galleries reopened, some acting as if nothing had happened. What’s next, a tsunami?

A Big Top on Randall’s Island: Who needs another art fair … Rio? Istanbul? Phnom Penh? Anywhere but New York, right? How could a city that is filled with galleries and that already hosts the Armory Show (which just sold to the eccentric art magazine publisher Louise Blouin) and the ADAA Art Show possibly handle another fair? Turned out it could—and then some. In May, London’s successful Frieze franchise opened a game-changing new fair housed in a big top tent on Randall’s Island with over 170 international galleries, and thousands of shoppers flocked in. It seems like most buyers today can’t be bothered to take in a gallery show; they want their art product sliced, diced and hung side-by-side in tidy cubicles, so they got what they were looking for. It was a huge success, and confirmed that the fairs—art’s shopping malls—are where it’s at. They’re like the World Series and the Super Bowl of art combined. All that’s missing is stadium vendors selling peanuts and Cracker Jack, and one that yells: “Bee-ah Heeyah!”

Schimmel-Gate in Los Angeles: Nearly three years ago, one of New York’s most beloved impresarios, the inimitable Jeffrey Deitch, gave up his gallery when tapped by his friends on the board of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) to run their troubled museum. Mr. Deitch was known for discovering new talent and putting on art spectacles that attracted a large and youthful downtown following. When he arrived in L.A., rumors spread that veteran MoCA curator Paul Schimmel was not pleased. Under Mr. Deitch’s direction, a worthy Jack Goldstein retrospective was canceled in favor of a timely Dennis Hopper retrospective. This was only the beginning of bitter infighting between curator and director, infighting that this past summer led to Mr. Schimmel’s departure and prompted all the artists to resign from the museum board, including hometown heroes John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha. The L.A. press was all over it, as were several in the New York art community who had once lauded Mr. Deitch; in lockstep, they all turned on him. Will he remain in L.A. after the museum’s Urs Fischer retrospective this spring? In hindsight, mistakes were made all around; let’s hope the museum and everyone involved looks at the bigger picture.

Christie’s Record-Breaking Contemporary Art Sale: In November, Christie’s Contemporary Art Auction tallied a sale of historic proportions, totaling a whopping $412.2 million. This type of result creates a myopic view that, despite the bad economy, art is selling like hotcakes. Though big numbers were achieved for blue-chip names like Franz Kline and Mark Rothko, the theater of it all helps keep all the smaller boats afloat—and disguises the reality that, outside the tippy-toppy-type “trophy” auction results, the rest of the art market has slowed down.

Red Hot Richter: German artist Gerhard Richter’s greatest contributions to painting are his photography-based figurative works, especially those relating to Germany’s Nazi past. But his color abstraction paintings, of which he has made many over the years, have recently hypnotized the art market. A large one sold for $21 million a year ago, and soon after that, this past October, came an inexplicable price of $34 million for a particularly luscious picture. Only a month later, a painting of a similar size hammered for only $17.5 million. Go figure. Sure, each one is different, but the prices for pictures of equal size and comparable quality are bouncing between $15 million and $35 million like a dented Ping-Pong ball. It just goes to show how irrational today’s art market can be. As my grandfather always used to say, it’s “Easy come, easy go!”

Koons Flies the Coop: All over Miami earlier this month, rumors were flying that mega-star Jeff Koons was leaving his roost at Gagosian Gallery to have his next show hosted at the new Chelsea digs of the David Zwirner Gallery. Many felt this just couldn’t happen, and then it did. At the highest level, star artists have more power than they seem to realize—perhaps now they’ll start to use it. Fast on the heels of the Koons news came the announcement that Damien Hirst would split from Gagosian. But Mr. Hirst, who had been showing with Gagosian for 17 years, was never really “represented” by any gallery, since he’s always done as he’s seen fit, even when that meant putting his own work up for auction and thereby trashing his market and the collectors who supported it. Then the mysteriously mad Yayoi Kusama, as if she were psychically tuned in to Messrs. Koons and Hirst, announced that she too will leave the Gagosian Gallery. Through “loyalty,” lethargy, apathy or fear, the biggest-name artists have been willingly shackled to their heritage galleries—now that may be changing. I don’t believe this trend is specific to Gagosian. The very foundations of the “artist representation” model are crumbling. Maybe all the top-selling artists will fire their galleries and form one big collective, then they can just set prices and cut out the dealers. I’d prefer it if they charged one price at the door and then a bingo machine randomly chose which artwork you got; that would make it fun again.

Tate Talent to the Met: By hiring Tate Modern’s dynamic curator Sheena Wagstaff, Tom Campbell, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s youthful director, is reinvigorating the Met’s stodgy contemporary program; he’s got the space, too, having rented out the Marcel Breuer building, which the Whitney Museum will soon move out of.

Dishonorable Mention: Venus Over Manhattan, my uptown gallery, opened in May with a theme show titled “À Rebours,” inspired by the story of the Duc Jean des Esseintes, the debauched 19th-century art collector. One day, a thief walked into the gallery and plucked a fine Dalí off the wall, right under the nose of a gallery guard and smack in the crosshairs of a well-focused security camera. After the heist generated over 500 news stories around the world, the culprit shockingly mailed the piece back to the gallery in a poster tube. Was it a take from the old Thomas Crown Affair or some dangerous and delinquent art performance? No doubt it was a wacky prank—don’t get me wrong, we love when people enjoy the show, but kleptomaniacs are no longer welcome.

Barry X Ball’s Matthew Barney/BXB Dual-Dual Portrait Ensemble (2012) During this year’s Basel week, few artists made as much impact as Iván Navarro, whose fluorescent light sculptures sparked a crackling buzz in the big fair’s Art Kabinett sector and at its Art Public outdoor sculpture garden.

The Chilean-born talent’s “Impenetrables” project showcased five pieces made of neon ladders and mirrors that appeared to rise from an abyss beneath the convention center’s floor. The works, which continued Navarro’s exploration of the relationship between viewers and their architectural surroundings, were among the few must-see exhibits that cut through the white noise of Miami’s busiest cultural week.

But if you missed that show, don’t panic. You can still catch Navarro’s solo exhibit at the Frost Art Museum, where his sprawling show will remain on view long after the cacophony of Basel week has departed. His exhibit is one of several stellar museum shows, in fact, that will stay on display well into the new year.

“This exhibition offers our visitors the opportunity to fully understand the context of work that may, at first, appear as fragile constructions made of ordinary manmade objects,” says Carol Damian, the Frost’s director and chief curator.

Some might remember Navarro’s work from a group show called “Artificial Light,” organized by North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art at its Wynwood satellite space for ABMB’s 2006 edition. Back then, Navarro exhibited a pair of beautiful purple neon chairs so beguiling that a female spectator sat on them and crushed the neon-gas-and-glass creations.

This year, the electrifying talent is the subject of the Frost’s “Ivan Navarro: Fluorescent Light Sculptures,” featuring three floor sculptures, 14 wall sculptures, and three videos that illuminate his multilayered practice over the past ten years.

The exhibit includes Navarro’s The Nowhere Man series, making its debut in a U.S. museum. Inspired by the iconic pictograms created by Otl Aicher for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, its all-white, genderless stick figures appear to be running, jumping, and swimming. (Through January 27 at the Frost Art Museum at FIU, 10975 SW 17th St., Miami; 305-348-2890; thefrost.fiu.edu.)

Perhaps no other museum show drew a larger audience for its Basel opening than the Bass Museum of Art, where “The Endless Renaissance: Six Solo Artists Projects” brought together an impressive cast of talent from the United States, Finland, Germany, Thailand, and the United Kingdom to explore how historical works and concepts transform across time and morph through the eyes of diverse audiences.

“‘The Endless Renaissance’ links art from the past and the present, each artist in his or her own way, directly or indirectly,” says Silvia Karman Cubiñá, the Bass’s executive director and chief curator.

Take Barry X Ball’s sculptures, which twist classically inspired busts by using bleeding-edge computer technology to carve unusual materials. To create his whiplash-inducing Matthew Barney/BXB Dual-Dual Portrait Ensemble, Ball started with Mexican onyx, stainless steel, and various other materials. Then he employed an arsenal of equipment, including 3-D digital scanning, virtual modeling, and computer-controlled milling, to create a hyper-detailed face. Ball finishes the pieces by hand-carving and polishing the uncanny visages.

Another virtuoso work is his Sleeping Hermaphrodite, which features an eerily smooth figure lying nude on a mattress while tangled in a bed sheet. Ball’s brilliant handling of flesh and drapery boggles the mind and brings to mind the timeless symmetry and perfection of classical Greek sculpture.

Another notable artist at the Bass is Germany’s Hans-Peter Feldmann, who collects, orders, and re-presents amateur print photographic reproductions, toys, and trivial works of art. His painting of what appears to be a 19th-century aristocrat wearing a red clown nose is full of humor while smacking the starch out of tired notions of traditional portraiture.

Thailand’s Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, meanwhile, considers art through an outsider’s eye with her Two Planets series, in which she presents classic European paintings to villagers in remote Thai towns and then films them discussing the works. Her enchanting digital print Two Planets: Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass and the Thai Villagers, 2012, upends traditional Western notions of viewing and interpreting artwork and helps viewers see these famous paintings anew. (Through March 17 at the Bass Museum of Art, 2100 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; 305-673-7530; bassmuseum.org.)

At the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Bill Viola’s powerful video installations deliver a poignant commentary of how art can uplift the spirit. “Bill Viola: Liber Insularum” is the video pioneer’s first American museum survey since 2003.

“Many of these are among his most powerful works to date,” says Bonnie Clearwater, the museum’s chief curator and director. “These are emotional and spiritual works that speak to the human condition.”

Viola’s sensory-engulfing opuses typically delve into the concepts of birth and death, with a nod to both Eastern and Western art, as well as mystical, spiritual traditions.

MOCA’s exhibit was inspired by 15th-century Florentine cleric Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s tome The Book of the Islands of Archipelago, which records six years he spent wandering the Aegean Sea. Viola departs from that compass point to explore universal notions of being and nothingness, using the tale as an allegory of our lives wandering a transforming global landscape. (Through March 3 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 770 NE 125th St., North Miami; 305-893-6211; mocanomi.org.)

(John Parra/Getty Images)

As in years past, my trepidations about Art Basel Miami Beach began days before my departure. This time it started in the waiting room of my uptown doctor’s office, when one patient called out to another: “Hey Freddie, when d-y’a get ta Miami?” Freddie replied, “Can’t make it till Thursday—we’ll rock.” I knew then that the art world had changed irrevocably—there would be no turning back.

I’d never seen these people anywhere near art before. They wouldn’t dare set foot in a museum (except for the gala), nevermind a gallery. And that makes sense—if they actually entered a gallery, they might have to see the exhibition, think about the artist’s intentions, and listen to someone explain something more than the “market” value of a piece. These folks don’t want that. They go to Miami to splurge and rub elbows with everyone they know and want to know. With their requisite accessory in tow—the art advisor or auction expert—they do some damage at the fair and then move on to drinks, a bite at Mr. Chow and a little nightclubbing. Why should they care about art? Hopefully, they can afford the same type of collection their buddies have—name brand art produced in large enough quantities that everyone can enjoy a similar shiny, new collection, in decorator-friendly colors. Old style “collecting” is so over. Today’s buyers make art purchases for social cache. As far as “investment” goes, well, they’ll get what they deserve…

It was only a year ago that my satirical “Occupy Art Basel Miami Beach, Now!” article created controversy and prompted a couple of soapbox art writers to attack me and defend Miami—and art fairs in general— in order to promote themselves. Now these same pundits are equally shameless in their rush to recant. Suddenly, it’s all the rage to bash the fairs, according to last week’s story on the cover of the New York Times’ art section, and a cover story in the daily Art Newspaper that teed off with my mock manifesto.

The irony is that I was never on the wagon. I may be a cynic but I’ve been “hitting” the fairs for years, and even picked up a few choice pieces along the way.

Collectors—as that word was once understood—are a thing of the past, so people like me are totally passé, I’m a cro-magnon man. Art fairs are the new reality, and as one soi-disant “collector” said to me in Miami, ”Hey man, you know very well no one goes to galleries anymore, all the action is at the fairs or at auction.” Woe is me, the guy who opened a gallery this very year. I already feel like a dinosaur, and Art Basel Miami Beach won’t let my gallery have a booth for years, no matter how good my shows are, because their committee system protects the legacy galleries from new challengers. This all goes hand in hand with the old “artist representation model,” in which every artist is forced by the system to sign up with a single gallery which then takes commissions on sales the artist makes elsewhere. Thankfully this indentured servitude may finally loosen up now that mega art star Jeff Koons just announced he’ll be leaving his roost at Gagosian Gallery to do a show at David Zwirner’s new Chelsea space. This move at the top could be the game changer I’m waiting for, but, then again, only time will tell: old habits die hard.

In Miami, a major Los Angeles dealer leveled with me. “Like it or not,” he said, “we do most of our business at these fairs.” But the trade show turned into retail bonanza is the same phenomenon that happened with fashion shows in the 90’s as they morphed from displays for department store buyers to spectacles directed at wealthy couture clients with a sprinkling of celebrities to generate press. The same is true of the auction houses, which once catered almost exclusively to the trade. These days, the theatrics of their overblown catalogs and their lavish jet-set parties target big fish from Eastern Europe, Asia and beyond.
Why fight’ em? I want to join’ em, and so, in order to better understand the fairs, I attempted to visit every single one of them in Miami last week, why be a snob? Once again, in order to refresh my outlook, I went against the grain, and visited the many so-called “satellite fairs” first—leaving Art Basel Miami Beach for last. Here is what I found.

SCOPE Art Fair: This event bills itself as “the premier launching pad for contemporary art,” so it seemed like the right place to launch myself into the satellite art fair experience. It’s hard to get a firm grip on what ties Scope together, until you look up at the names of the galleries. They were mainly from cities outside the major art centers of NY, LA and London. Here you can find galleries from Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, or—why not?—Carmel and Cincinnati. These guys have no shot at getting into the “real” fair (Art Basel Miami Beach) and they wouldn’t fit in if they did. I found lots of “looks a lot like” paintings and plenty of sculptures with optical illusions and pop art copy catting, the aptly named “eye candy” for art buyers who know nothing and don’t feel any need to. I did make one discovery, the Red Truck gallery from New Orleans, a wonderful place that featured a tattooed and mustachioed artist who made works on paper inside of old matchbooks. Chris Roberts-Antieau, the lead artist of the gallery (and the owner’s mother) sews pieces of vintage fabric into surreal portraits and scenarios with a vintage style that merges quilting with devil worship spun into a naïve bayou fantasy. To add to the ambience the gallery had lots of funky friends just “hanging out,” like that tattooed artist with a handlebar moustache and dice for earrings and a dwarf dressed in black leather who vaguely resembled Sid Vicious and ran my credit card.

Art Asia: The Asian art at this event, housed in the same tent as Scope, was amazing, the kind of stuff you would expect to see in Luke Skywalker’s favorite Chinese restaurant. From wild Gursky-ish photos of the Forbidden City to Manga-inspired paintings of nude Japanese vampire babes in bikinis, this stuff couldn’t be beat.

Ink Miami: This one sounded exciting, since after years of lusting for big bold paintings and sculptures I’ve got a knack for works on paper, especially ones by Betty Tompkins and Salvador Dali—but this little fair was a sad one. The mostly old vendors were selling tired prints and multiples. It was a place to find an old, unloved Sol LeWitt or perhaps a sad Jim Dine.

Untitled Art Fair: This happening tent right on the beach was the first fair to open and was by far the hippest scene that night. It seemed to cater to the Miami crowd without any pretensions of being “better than”. It felt like Scope without the crafty schmaltz. It was all fun, and had about as much bite as a wine cooler.

PULSE Art Fair: This fair has long been considered better than most satellites. It humbly describes itself as “the leading US art fair dedicated solely to contemporary art,” but its pulse was a bit too intense for my eyes to bear. A group of galleries exhibited stuff that looked like it could hang in the bar of a Star Wars movie or in the captain’s quarters of a Klingon Starship: it’s the perfect fair for those who use their eyes but not their brains. The place is fun, but take my advice: don’t go with a pulsing Miami hangover.

NADA: the annual fair of the “New Art Dealers Alliance” had the best energy in all of Miami. Sadly their acronym just about sums up what 95% of this work will be worth in ten years. Still, some of the art was pretty damn good, and many of the galleries are up and comers in the “real” (NY-London-LA) art world. On a Thursday morning NADA was packed with savvy collectors and several dealers ogling many deserving galleries that can’t get into or can’t afford to be in the “real” fair. I did see a lot of derivative art but the buzz was fantastic, and the energy was palpable, so I’m 100% certain that in all that throng of merchandise for sale there were indeed some gems to be discovered, and I spied a few art advisors and big fish dealers snooping for them.

What I loved most about my visit to Miami’s art fair outer space was watching the concept of “art as investment” go straight out the window. The patrons of these events were having fun, and really buying what they like. Case in point: you’ll find almost no art advisors at any of these places except for NADA. The need for “advisors” happens at Art Basel Miami Beach where the stakes are much higher, and there they are ubiquitous. Sure much of the work at the satellites was derivative and bastardized, or in shockingly horrific taste, but frankly Art Basel Miami Beach wasn’t a bed of roses either. The good people shopping in these “other”fairs have no pretense of “collecting” great works; they are mostly into eye candy and a fun time, and these events ensure that they are well served. A more sophisticated would-be speculator/investor scours NADA to find the next hot artist before he or she makes it into the main fair and sees a hefty increase in price. In Latin it is written: “De gustibus et coloris non est disputandem”—dy’a get my point? For the Miami satellite fair go-ers, art’s still about fun and not just for show or to count paper profits. And that’s the good part—there’s no pretense of any other motivation. Pity so much of it is an affront to the eyes.

Arriving on private jets and armed with personal art advisers, the global culture crowd will soon descend upon Miami Beach for the annual Art Basel show (miamibeach.artbasel.com), which takes place from Dec. 6 to 9 in the heart of South Beach. Now in its 11th year, Art Basel is the most influential art event in all of the Americas, luring a global audience of art lovers, along with models, moguls and celebrities. While many of Art Basel’s choicest events are invite-only affairs, most of Miami Beach’s most desirable destinations, from temples of haute cuisine to temples of high culture, are open to all. We asked four Miami-mad regulars for their own personal black books.

Michael Tilson Thomas, artistic director, New World Symphony
I rise just before dawn for a walk around the Sunset Islands or to a local park like South Pointe overlooking the Atlantic. Back home, I read the newspapers and eat breakfast sitting on my dock looking over musical scores. I then head for the New World Center, the recently completed, Frank Gehry–designed home of the New World Symphony (nws.edu). So much is happening there that once I get in the building it’s hard to get out. But I take my breaks out on our roof garden or head out to the many little restaurants in the surrounding Lincoln Road district. I especially like the modern Cuban cuisine at Yuca (yuca.com), the unique Latin-Asian fusion dishes at Sushi Samba (sushisamba.com) and our ever reliable Italian family restaurant, Rosinella (rosinella.net).

On days I go home early, I try and stop at some of the small markets where sport fishermen sell their fresh catches. If I have the chance, I’ll also pop into the rapidly growing Wynwood area, or the Design District, where Miami’s gallery scene is thriving. I particularly like the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse (margulieswarehouse.com). Finally, if I’m not cooking fish for dinner, I’ll eat at Michael’s Genuine (michaelsgenuine.com), where the indoor-outdoor setup is also great for weekend brunch.

(LIST: 10 Things to Do in Miami)

Nadja Swarovski, board member, Swarovski Crystal
Whenever I’m in town, I stay at the Soho Beach House (sohobeachhouse.com). I start every day with a speed walk on the hotel’s private beach—a rarity in Miami—and then get my hair done at the Cowshed Spa. Before I head out, I have breakfast at Cecconi’s, imported from Venice, by way of London.

I usually head straight to the De la Cruz Collection (delacruzcollection.org) in the Design District, which houses an impeccable collection of contemporary art. From there I’ll swing over to the Bass Museum of Art (bassmuseum.org), which presents historical works and makes for a great counterpoint to the more ultra­modern pieces on display in the Design District.

Next, it’s a dose of retail therapy and a much needed coffee at the Webster (thewebstermiami.com), which has three floors of fashion and accessories from well-known luxury brands and edgy, up-and-coming designers. The rooftop restaurant has fabulous views of the ocean and is a perfect spot for a late afternoon rest.

Then it’s back to Soho House for another walk along the beach before heading out for the evening. My favorite place for dinner is the garden at Casa Tua (casatualifestyle.com) in South Beach, which is tucked away in an early 1920s Mediterranean villa. The restaurant is run by a stylish husband-and-wife team from Italy and the interiors are filled with charming familial touches. The northern Italian cuisine is exquisite, especially the truffle risotto.

Marianne Goebl, director, Design Miami
I like to start my day with breakfast at the French bakery Buena Vista Deli (buenavistadeli.com), which offers what I consider to be Miami’s best selection of pastries. From there I’ll take a stroll through the Design District, popping into some of the great high-end-fashion boutiques before heading for lunch at Mandolin (mandolinmiami.com). It’s a low-key, neighborhood restaurant serving great Turkish and Greek food and very popular with families on weekends.

To see one of the best examples of contemporary architecture in Miami, I’d drive over to the 1111 Lincoln Road complex (1111lincolnroad.com), which has a stunning car park­—yes, car park—designed by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron. The structure stands as a true homage to the car and offers a beautiful view over Miami Beach.

(MORE: Art Basel Miami: How the City on the Beach Became an International Cultural Hotspot)

Next, I’ll pay a visit to the Wolfsonian (wolfsonian.org), which is an extraordinary design museum right in the heart of South Beach. I love its eclectic collection of decorative artifacts and propaganda materials from 1885 to 1945.

I end the day at the W South Beach hotel (starwoodhotels.com), which has managed to retain its great buzz three years after its debut. I’ll do dinner at the Dutch, which offers a truly American remix of Caribbean, Latin and Asian flavors, and I’ll end the evening with drinks amid the lavish landscaping of Grove, the W’s indoor-outdoor lounge.

Lenny Kravitz, musician and president, Kravitz Design
Miami is a place I return to often and love to call home. When I’m in town I try to take advantage of the beautiful weather and begin my day with a seafront run on South Beach. If I go early enough, the beaches are nearly empty and really peaceful. After my run I hit JugoFresh (jugofresh.com) for one of their organic, cold-pressed juice blends.

In the early part of the day, I like to check out the Wynwood district. Many of the buildings have been painted by graffiti artists, and there’s always something new to see. If I have time, I’ll check out the Rubell Family Collection (rfc.museum), which is one of the world’s premier modern-art collections. I also go to Clive’s (clivescafe.com), a local Caribbean restaurant I’ve been visiting for years. They have great curries, stews and jerk dishes.

In the evening, I’ll go to the New World Symphony. During concerts, they project the performance on an exterior wall of the building, so you can sit on the lawn and enjoy. It’s a great opportunity for the community to experience classical music, and this season they’ll present works by everyone from Mahler to Rachmaninoff. Before the concert I’ll stop at the SLS South Beach hotel (slshotels.com) for a preshow cocktail at the Bazaar. They have this nitrogen caipirinha that is delicious—and since Kravitz Design created the hotel’s bungalow and presidential suite, I always feel at home.

Dinner is at my favorite restaurant, Zuma (zumarestaurant.com), where I can easily eat three times a week. Or, if I’m craving something more casual, I’ll head over to Pubbelly (pubbelly.com) on South Beach’s cooler, quieter western side. The young owners have also opened the hip tapas joint Barceloneta (barcelonetarestaurant.com) nearby.

Miami is a late-night city, so after dinner I’ll hit a club or two. I like to go upstairs at Casa Tua, which most folks think of as a dining spot, but they have a lot of percussion instruments, and you can play along with the DJ. It’s always packed.