Art Basel Miami Beach

Art Basel Miami Beach is an international fair of contemporary art taking place in early December in various Miami neighborhoods

. Analogous to a similar event in Switzerland which it has now eclipsed in size and importance, Art Basel Miami Beach attracts over 40,000 attendees each year, many from outside the Miami area.

Not all who come are interested in the art so much as the partying that accompanies it. Dinner parties, movie screenings, beach get-togethers are de rigueur here. Vanity Fair sponsored a party for Bruce Weber's Haiti pictures, Maybach (the uber car maker) underwrote a dinner in the Frank Gehry Performing Arts Center on behalf of Haitian relief (Sean Penn was the guest of honor), and others could be found sponsored by assorted banks, jewelry and fashion companies. Partying into the wee hours was the rule, and celebrities of all sorts were much in evidence.

This is not to say that the art didn't sell. One painting by Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam went for a record (for him) of $3,000,000. Tim Hawkinson's Bike went for $180,000, and 11 bread sculptures by the breakout artist Lisa Cooley went for $5000-$7000 each. Pawel Althamer , a Polish sculptor who explores the fragility of the human body and has used hair, straw, intestine, and cloth-visceral materials in his works, sold out 10 new corpse sculptures early in the event. A rhinocerous head made out of beetle parts sold for $100,000.

It seems like the rich and the famous are still willing to part with their money for the right kinds of works. It doesn't hurt that the cachet of being seen at this event seems to be growing, and the whole event is being taken as a barometer of the financial health of monetary elite. Many well known celebrities are showing up here, including Steve Martin, Jonathan Tisch (Loew's Hotel Chef), the painter Julian Schnabel who donated a number of his works at Penn's Haitian relief event, Ben Stiller, Calvin Klein, Jay-Z, George Hamilton, Serena Williams and many more.

Nor was it just art and sculpture on display. There were videos, experimental films, photographs and performance art. One video showed a vulture stumbling about in a room knocking over assorted items and chewing on post-it paper. Another had Russian girls singing folk songs climbing up a five-story high metal sculpture and pouring liquid down chutes, then repeating the process. Still, with over 5,000 works by 1000 artists from all over the world, priced from just a few hundred all the way up to millions of dollars, it seemed that there was something for everyone's taste and budget.

by: .Larry Isaacson

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