News: Manic in Miami

By: Edward Gomez

February 2008

Miami Beach, Fla.—It was a case of Mammon by the sea, a frenzy of buying and selling some of the highest-priced art baubles on the planet. There was a giant smiley-face sculpture made of fiberglass by Richard Jackson (“Big Baby,” 2007) for $120,000, and a small, untitled sponge, painted in his signature electric blue by Yves Klein for $1.2 million. The huge event, held under a tropical sun December 6–9, was the sixth annual edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, the international art fair that is the U.S. offshoot of Switzerland’s long-running annual Art Basel fair. Both events are sponsored by UBS, the Swiss bank that is known for providing private services to the rich.

At the same time, in an effort to bask in ABMB’s glow and to grab some of the attention of its eager-to-buy audience, more than 20 satellite art fairs and countless other art presentations took place simultaneously in Miami. For many art-loving visitors to the fairs—including Red Dot Miami Beach, Scope Miami, AIPAD Miami, Pulse, Art Miami and the NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) Art Fair—so much art and art dealing at one time in one place seemed more than a little daunting. Still, against a backdrop of increasing uncertainty about the United States economy in particular and the global economy in general, not just wealthy collectors, but also legions of shoppers with shallower pockets scoured ABMB and the other fairs in search of more affordable works. At Art Miami, Brian Gillham of Chicago’s Zolla/Lieberman Gallery pointed to a unique, welded-metal horse sculpture by artist Deborah Butterfield and said, “I could easily have sold 50 of them.”

Around Miami, would-be art buyers aimed not only to enjoy the nonstop art-market party, but also to lock into the security of what they hoped would be good investments. After all, the dollar’s value has plummeted, and the real-estate sector is still reeling from the subprime-mortgage crisis. As one dealer at ABMB told a middle-aged couple from Texas who already owned a large collection of contemporary art and were considering purchasing works by some emerging artists, “They’re only going to increase in value.”

That phrase was a mantra in Miami. “Collectors are looking for quality and value, which they’ll find in the art we’re offering,” observed dealer Alexander Acquavella of New York’s blue-chip Acquavella Galleries at ABMB. As example, he pointed to “15 Dollar Bills” (1962), a one-of-a-kind silkscreen on paper by Andy Warhol, priced at $2,750,000, as an example of those sought-after characteristics.
For art lovers who found it hard to breathe—let alone shop—in the rarefied air of ABMB, what with the in-your-face coddling of wealthy VIPs, Miami’s other fairs offered more accessible prices and more laid-back vibes. For example, the Red Dot Art Fair, tucked into an Art Deco hotel in the South Beach district, found dealers from around the U.S. tossing out the beds and taking over guest rooms to set up temporary galleries. Carrie Haddad of the self-named gallery in Hudson, New York, said, “Collectors say they appreciate the intimate scale and atmosphere of this event—and they’re buying.”

As expected, Art Basel Miami Beach featured works by such international stars as Damien Hirst, whose “For the Love of God, Laugh” (2007), a silkscreen-on-paper image of a gem-encrusted human skull with real diamond dust—a riff on Hirst’s notorious $100 million cranium sold last year—was priced at $20,000. By contrast, at smaller events, like the Geisai Miami fair-within-a-fair at Pulse, artists such as Eric Doeringer minded their own booths and sold works directly to buyers, sometimes for $250 or less.

The day after Art Basel Miami Beach closed, the art world received a jolting reminder of just how unstable the broader economy is when UBS announced a $10 billion write-down for 2007 in the value of its subprime mortgage-backed assets. Nevertheless, according to a bank spokesman, UBS remains committed to its ongoing sponsorship of the annual Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach fairs.