Miami: My Report, Your Musings

Chris, I look forward to your comments about the Gee's Bend Quilts, Ruth Asawa's sculpture and Joan Mitchell's painting, but given that there's been a lot of blog talk about the arts fairs in Miami last week--including your own perceptive observation on Edward Winkleman's site and an e-mail we shared last light--I wonder if you wouldn't mind detouring briefly to the fairs. Just to recap our conversation, you commented about the lack of critical coverage of the artwork in the fair, and you wondered about the long-term effect these fairs will have on artists' careers, as well as how the fairs affect an artist's day-to-day artmaking. These are interesting issues. Would you talk about them a bit for our blog?

One of the things that interested/scared/shocked me is that I heard several dealers say they were thinking about closing their galleries, or moving to much smaller quarters, and using the fairs as their primary art-selling venues. This presupposes they can get into the fairs they want to be in (there's a lot of competition for booths, and for every dealer who gets into the venue of her/his choice, there are probably two or three others who don't). Actually, a few dealers are already going this route. There's one Parisian dealer, Vanessa Suchar, who bills herself "la galleriste sans galerie"--the gallerist without a gallery--and there's a Washington dealer who works out of an office but who has strong visibility at the fairs. What does THAT mean for us as artists?

I've posted below an excerpt from the Miami coverage on my blog so that our readers can click on and get a sense of the event.

Imagine Costco on steroids and filled with art. Now throw in a carnival atmosphere, tradeshow commercialism, museum reverence, fashion attitude, and the frenzy of Filene’s Basement when the bridal gowns go on sale. Add sublimely beautiful contemporary paintings, modern masters from the secondary market (like Ad Reinhart from his pre-somber period in three booths), big-ass sculpture, inventive installations, cartoon imagery, and some rice and beans (I’m not kidding). And, hey, why not include the oversize figure of a man performing a physically impossible scatological function? Like the blind men describing an elephant, no one perception comes close to describing this event but together they create a pretty good picture of this behemoth of a show.

Lucia Madriz: Money Talks, floor installation of rice and beans, dimensions variable, at Jacob Karpio Galeria in Art Basel Miami Beach. Below: birdseye view of ABMB at the Convention Center.

And when you've had enough of this Miami talk, I'm all ears about Gee's Bend, Asawa and Mitchell. I won't bring up Miami again. Until next year.