Thank you Miami Basel! I visited, again, this year... I’ve discover the great truth: there is much more to art-life than partying.
Partying may be fun, but LIFE is not a constant party, even in the art world, even when the art world hits Miami and the parties explode. I have invested my life in enjoying the feast of senses which the art world delivers. Art is a delicious part of being alive but there is much more to caring about it than celebrating it over drinks.
Take for example, the museum... a place I love. I love most museums, that are well-run and grand, funded and integral. Art museums have formed a large part of my life experience. I’ve visited LACMA many many times. I’ve spent many days there. I’ve spent many many more days at the Met, at MoMa, and at the Tate in London. When I lived near Princeton, I visited the art museum regularly. My recent trips to Philadelphia meant visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation. I’ve also visited encyclopedic museums in Germany and Dominican Republic (the later being feeble in comparison to the former). Yet, during this trip I attended, "Conversations," moderated by András Szántó with the directors of two museums I LOVE, Mr. Michael Govan and Mr. Thomas Campbell. I wrote about that experience in my most recent blog entry. The discovery of the museum as an institution run by actual humans is NEWS to me. I’ve enjoyed the product without thinking much about how it got to be a part of my reality, my being. I don’t think I will ever be able to wander in the garden without thinking about the story that each of these museums tells about reality.
The “Grand Narrative,” which each museum building tells is in an of itself serious import. Just as the story of art, “contemporary art,” is being told at art fairs and Art Basel Miami Beach is the MOTHER of all American art fairs. “Contemporary Art,” is defined in exhibition spaces, traditionally art galleries in which the work of living artists is shown and discussed by the interested. Who cares?
As an artist, I care. Artists care about contemporary art and even if artists are entirely invested creating work that is entirely traditional in content and method, they are still performing in the NOW within the material limitations of our shared reality. For artists invested in exploration, innovation, discovery, and expansion of artistic method, practice, and performance CONTEMPORARY art looms large as a monumental reality which is constantly in question, flux, and being defined by actions taken in the present tense by active humans, engaged in an intensely repetitive ritual of constructing meaning on a (sometimes) massive scale. Actions which are sometimes, rarely, rewarded with material success... and yet... there is clearly a very big business in art, art fairs, museums, antiques, and man-made treasures... we share this interest.
Thus, this year at Art Miami Basel I found myself looking at the show(s) and feeling wonderfully overwhelmed and completely without energy for the night life. I went out one evening, briefly for dinner with an artist from LA and his art dealer. After, an hour I realized, this is NOT why I came all the way over here. I came here to learn, to grow. I can socialize anywhere, but how often can I experience art of museum quality and the people that make it their business to define what is “museum quality,” and what matters in art today and in perpetuity.
Every year Miami explodes with ART INTENSITY. This year, my focus was visiting was the actual blue-chip, mother-of-all the art fairs, ART BASEL at the Miami Convention Center, a location that is growing in familiarity for me and that works well, in that it is spacious and can accommodate the hordes that come and see art on the weekend.
There is a great excitement among the members of the local communities and the global art communities and today, Friday 7th of December I saw not only families but school bus loads of kids, ready to take in the art. And, they DO! You see people, all kinds of people, not just art-school hipsters from all over the world, but retirees, and flashy men that look like they swallow bank-rolls for breakfast, in other words, swanky men, accompanied by with appropriately coifed female(s) . The general mood, is of profound excitement, curiosity, and amusement.
The fair caters to all kinds of people. Though, I did over hear complaints from some younger people that, "The salads are tiny and very expensive." But, I wasn't hungry for anything other than the visual feast spread before me.