As economy weighs on European collectors, confident Americans are big buyers
"Confident American bidders lifted the sales to a combined $713 million, with Christie's $457 million total topping Sotheby's roughly $256 million. Overall, the results easily topped the houses' low estimates of $413 million."
Long after the Art Basel Miami Beach crowds have left South Florida, the art fairs continue.
A Colossus in Clay Speaks a Generation’s Message -- By RANDY KENNEDY (February 14, 2012)
The fourth floor of the New Museum was in ruins. It was almost impossible to walk without stepping on a piece of wood or a pile of rubble, and a fog of dust hung so thickly in the air that it had begun seeping into other parts of the building through the vents.
"The Faith Ringgold Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling was to be part of a new development on 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue and include affordable housing. The building was to be designed by the British architect David Adjaye — who was commissioned for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington — and include a performance space, a library, a store and a cafe."
The current art market can be summed up in a single word: volatile.
"The upshot: Dealers say that while the art market has bounced back from the days of recession, collectors are still unpredictable and can be easily spooked, particularly if they think a top-billed work doesn't merit its blockbuster asking price."
Always difficult when a longstanding leader retires....
"Some board members, major donors and dancers are questioning the earlier-than-expected retirement of Edward Villella, artistic director of the Miami City Ballet." (The Miami Herald)
"As you plunge into Alarma! BOYFRIENDS, the Norwegian artist/author/polemicist Bjarne Melgaard’s fantasy novella of gore, sex, death and dismemberment, you will likely purse your lips in disgust, but, at the same time, catch yourself laughing inside: laughing at the insanity and the perverse pleasure of it all. When finished with the book, you’ll finally be able to put it down, at which point you’ll glance around to make sure no one’s looking, then shove the dirty little volume under a pile of legitimate literature. Or perhaps you’ll dump it where it belongs, in the trash. It’s worse than porn; it’s the kind of thing no one should catch you thoroughly enjoying."
(The concept for the memorial, which would include images of Eisenhower's adult achievements.)
"Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to himself as “a barefoot boy” in 1945 when he returned home victorious to Abilene, Kan., after World War II. And it was in that image that the architect Frank Gehry found inspiration for the design of the official memorial to Eisenhower for which groundbreaking is expected this year on the Washington Mall."
"With plans for a proposed mega Walmart store in Midtown moving forward, reality sets in for many art fair organizers who will have to start looking for new venues once the project breaks ground.
Scope Art Fair, Red Dot, and Art Asia, three Art Basel Miami Beach satellite fairs that last year took place on land where Walmart is planing to build its new store, are confident they’ll be able to set up camp on the lot this year too. After that, they’ll have to start searching for a space somewhere else."
Karim Masri, Meir Teper, Tony Shafrazi, and Gianni Nunnari check out Keith Haring’s Untitled (1988) at the VIP Preview at the Miami Beach Convention Center for Art Basel Miami Beach 2011Just how overheated was the atmosphere at this past December’s edition of Art Basel Miami Beach? Start with the record-size crowd of 50,000, including an opening-night vernissage crush that had the Beach’s fire marshal in a panic, hollering, “Nice and easy! Nice and easy!” as he forced hordes of VIPs to march single-file into the Miami Beach Convention Center, like so many kindergartners in high heels. Gaze over the swarm of Hollywood A-listers who winged into town, from Michael Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones to Sean Penn and Will Smith, turning Basel’s week of velvet-roped parties into a tropical take on the Sundance Film Festival.
Then add the sudden transformation of louche celebs into discerning cultural mavens: If the sight of Sean “Diddy” Combs dropping $70,000 at the fair on one of British neo-feminist Tracey Emin’s sculptures wasn’t jarring enough for you (Emin’s solo exhibition at North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art is already scheduled for 2013), there was New York Yankee A-Rod trading in his baseball bat for curatorial duties, having a set of It boy Nate Lowman’s “bullet-hole” paintings installed in his waterfront Miami Beach home (including inside his indoor batting cage, naturally), while a who’s who of visiting Basel-ites ooh-ed and ah-ed over his burgeoning art collection.
Not least, there was a dizzying array of, ahem, art-themed corporate product launches: a pop-up shop hawking a new line of Dior handbags customized by German abstract painter Anselm Reyle? Why not! Perrier copresenting a night with drag queen-cum-videographer Kalup Linzy and post-punkers TV on the Radio? Sure! A poolside fête with alt-rockers Soulwax, courtesy of LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Maybach autos, and… the Kingdom of Morocco? “The same publicist who brought us Maybach was working with Morocco,” LA MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch helpfully explained to The Wall Street Journal. “Everybody wants to connect with contemporary art.” Well, pass the lamb tagine.
Maybe it’s best not to overthink this blurring of art and commerce, as evidenced by the spirit inside the Basel booth of Leipzig, Germany’s Eigen + Art. There, a woman stood transfixed before Neo Rauch’s Die Jägerin, a fiercely imposing, nearly eight-foot-tall, bronze statue of a female falconer readying for battle. “Where will this go?” she asked earnestly. It seemed like a fair question—sporting a fearsome necklace of four disembodied heads, the statue seemed best suited for display inside Qaddafi’s revolutionary palace. “Where will it go?” thundered back gallery head Gerd Harry Lybke. “To whoever gives me $850,000!”
