For five days, the world treated Miami like it mattered. It bought us flowers and told us it liked our new haircut. It held open doors and called us at night just to say goodnight. But the smooth-talking world is shipping out today, and the only way we know to…
Wham, bam, thank you, mam? In the morning, the crowds will be gone, the pop-up shops and nightclubs will be empty storefronts again, and our city will have to reconcile the fact that it’s no longer an uber-chic, hipster Atlantis, but a metropolitan city with tons of stinking problems. What,…
Because this is Miami, you would likely be inclined to think that any event related to Art Basel Miami Beach is one with a slew of loafer-wearing, bespectacled artsy folk trying to converse over a pounding soundtrack from a guest DJ. But this was not the case last night when…
Ready for another Basel day post-mortem? We’ll keep this quick as we have hangovers to nurse and art fairs to attend. The super secret The Island exhibit was either shut down by the city or they ran out of boats. We’re trying to find out. Artist Ryan McGinness turned Club…
In the words of Sailor Jerry, cheap work ain’t good and good work ain’t cheap. So you could be excused for feeling sheepish about the caliber of work coming out of the free Sanrio tattoo parlor, which opened at Small Art Miami yesterday. But one of our writers sent in…
The Aqua Art Fair made its way back to the ocean (actually, just a block away from the Atlantic on Collins Avenue), coming back to the Aqua Hotel where it all began in 2005. It’s a good move, because the Aqua Hotel is about as cool a place as you…
Now in its fifth incarnation and featuring 25 spaces, the Fountain Fair draws the type of unruly installations and unsettling performances that make it an unpredictable must-see attraction during this week’s chaotic art muddle.It’s perfect for jaded art lovers wondering where they can stumble across fresh, anti-corporate, stick-it-to-the-man hijinks in…
Even though artist and designer Barbara Hulanicki calls exhibiting her work in galleries “a new career for me,” she’s been bringing beauty into the world for years and years. Hulanicki began working as an illustrator for fashion magazines like Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily in the swinging 1960s. She then…
Artist Maria Builes wants to make sure you are tuned in to Twitter today. The location for her Art Basel pop-up exhibit, “Satiation,” will be announced only on the day of and only through tweets. Builes’s “Satiation” is a commentary on our obsession with food, weight loss, and appearance. She…
Art Basel, AKA “hipster spring break,” continues. Your feet probably hurt, and you’re nearing your saturation point for all this pretentiousness. We say, enjoy it while you can. Come Monday, we’ll just be Miami again instead of the capital of the contemporary art world. It’s so quick, it almost feels…
Tonight is the opening reception of Hyperbolic Aerosolic: The Roots of New York City Underground Art 1972-1975 at 2501 NW Second Ave. A couple of days ago, Miami native, gallery owner and show curator Eric Firestone gave us a brief tour and introduced us to the exhibition’s stars, P.H.A.S.E. 2…
In its sixth year, Pulse has carved a niche as one of Art Basel’s largest satellite fairs, encompassing more than 80 galleries inside Wynwood’s sprawling Ice Palace, and one of the best for sculpture, contemporary photography and performance art. But who knew it would be so damn comfortable?Fair-goers lounged on…
With all its skulls and sparkles, Art Basel is dangerously close to resembling an Ed Hardy T-shirt. Those were two big trends we saw at yesterday’s Basel Vernissage as we gawked at 2,000 artists and weaved between celebrity land mines such as Isabella Rossellini and Michael Stipe. Thankfully, the fair’s…
You came for the art. But art can’t scratch that itch. You can’t spoon with art. And you definitely can’t fuck art. But you know what you can screw around with? Hoity toity Basel, er, “beaver,” and there will be plenty of it this week.But these highly-literate, ego-driven creatures won’t…
Wasn’t it enough that video game geeks across the planet nearly jizzed their pants with the announcement that Tron: Legacy, the much anticipated and long awaited (though only to them!) sequel to the 1980s flick, would be coming out this year? Apparently not. Now there is even more nerdy news…
How is everyone holding up? Eyesight blurring from too much art-looking? Ears aching from too much rocking? Art Basel festivities go through Sunday, so save some juice. Yesterday was a big day. Design Miami/ and Scope opened to the public. The fancy folk (including us) attended the Basel Vernissage (French…
Last night, Midtown Miami morphed into an overwhelming visual arts playground. On a terrace in front of Art Miami, what looked like eight-foot-long indigo stalks of licorice swished around with visitors passing through it. Purple-caped girls handed out tiny kites, advertising the Cirque du Soleil show Kooza (in Bicentennial Park)…
The Modern Primitives installation is a collaboration between famed Italian design house Fendi and architecture and design firm ArandaLasch.This year, something about Design Miami/ seemed stuck, as in not moving forward. Appropriately it’s being held in a parking lot. Besides the move to the Miami Beach Convention Center’s asphalt (in…
A cheap lead for this story might’ve included a Beatles song reference or the name John Lennon. But that’d be unfair to Julian Lennon, the remarkable photographer behind “Timeless,” a collection of 30 hand-signed portraiture and landscape photographs edited by the artist himself. Last night, Lennon debuted his critically acclaimed…
View photos of Art Miami 2010 here.When are art-world types going to stop wearing red pants? Aren’t they basically just conforming at this point? Now an artist wearing some nice modest chinos: That would be a fashion statement. We managed to get into last night’s VIP opening of Art Miami…
“It’s Art Basel (pronounced Basle), not Art Basel (pronounced Bay-zil).” If you’ve never been to the art extravaganza that will soon take over Miami causing the entire city to collectively lift its nose at the rest of the country and world, then prepare yourself to hear some gasbag correct some…
Thirty years ago, when the NYPD declared war on graffiti via a newly-minted vandal squad, it would have been difficult to imagine odes to the spray can at a high-brow international art fair. But these are different times, when crews who did stints for vandalism can now get paid by…
