Art Basel week Miami 2009 is all about music and street art. The “Primary Flight” exhibit is fucking it up all over Wynwood, and so is Tony Goldman’s public art project Wynwood Walls, produced in concert with Deitch Projects of New York. Galleries on the Beach and in the city…
Art Basel has a funny way of making us feel like we’re outsiders in our own town. Traffic is horrible. Parking even moreso. The line at your favorite Cuban restaurant (even if that happens to be Pollo Tropical) gets filled with hoity-toity Europeans trying to work in a little “authentic…
Most people know quixotic movie director David Lynch for his Academy Award-nominated films like Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man. But Lynch is also an accomplished visual artist who brings the same surreal, dream-like imagery and deadpan irony that are a staple of his films to his art work.Also known…
Beginning December 1, Jim Drain of Bas Fisher Invitational, British artist Graham Hudson, and I are co-curating a project inside Design Miami (where my wife works) called The Brief Happy Life of Workshop Workshop. Here’s the press release, which I wrote, so I guess it’s a press release in the…
Being one of the premiere art festivals of the year, not just any Joe Blow can show during Art Basel. You’d need connections, talent, or…a pack of markers, a glue gun, and some stray sequins. This year, the Scope Art Show has opened up their grand ol’ doors to the…
T minus one until Turkey Day, but the true date of anticipation is still a week away, Art Basel’s kickoff — December 2! There are events popping off from the Gables all the way up to Aventura, and if you think your head is spinning from all the Facebook invites…
Every now and then you just have to let the press release speak for itself, as is the case with this year’s ART BURN fair in Wynwood (123 NW 23rd Street). Setting off this Thursday, December 3, ART BURN bills itself as an “International Contemporary Art Expo and Immolation” and…
Often you have to look past the white tents and convention centers for the best work being shown during Basel week. Case in point, Invasion 68 Prague, a little show at the Miami Freedom Tower (600 Biscayne Boulevard) that’s easy to overlook.Put together by Miami-Dade College and the Aperture Foundation…
“The Black Factory,” an art instillation of wheels, will be rolling into town next week. The brainchild of William L. Pope, the Factory invited people to bring objects that represent “blackness” to the truck. Many of the projects are then broken down and resold in the truck’s gift shop. The Black…
In a move that would surely tickle its founder Andy Warhol, Interview Magazine will be curating the Mondrian South Beach’s luxury vending machine during Art Basel. Mondrian’s vending machine, which we wrote about earlier this year, usually includes such pedestrian items as a $400 marabou feather vest and the keys to a…
The work of Friends With You has already redefined “absurdly cute,” and through collaborations with Kid Robot and Memobots the duo of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III have gently expanded their burgeoning design empire into retail. Now, they’re set to open their own flagship boutique in the heart of…
It’s not often you get to see a curated show featuring the likes of Richard Prince, Jules de Balincourt, Shepard Fairey, Kenny Scharf, and KAWS, but it’s not often that Lance Armstrong comes calling on the art world. Armstrong’s Livestrong foundation and Nike asked 25 top artists to donate pieces to a…
The large orange shipping containers that find themselves filled with artwork just feet from the beach every year have become a trademark of Art Basel Miami Beach, but they won’t return this year.As part of a reorganization of the fair, the emerging galleries and artists relegated to Collins Park this…
Last year, brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana had more funky wicker pieces than a Boca yard sale and slaughtered more stuffed animal designs than Lady Gaga’s wardrobe at Design Miami for their stint as Designer of the Year. Following in their footsteps is 31-year-old Dutch designer Maarten Baas. Let’s take a…
The American designer is dead. We didn’t read the obituary, but apparently there aren’t many designers of note to be found not only in the Unites States but also across the Caribean, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America.Annual art fair Design Miami wants to change that and seemingly will…
Bridget Marquardt, who rose to fame as one of Hugh Heffner’s three girlfriends on Girls Next Door, has the best job in the world. Basically she gets to travel the world touring beaches on Travel channel’s dime for her new show Bridget’s Sexiest Beaches. It’s not going to win her…
The only film that created “around the corner” lines was Jens Hoffmann’s 9 to 5: Days in Porn, which had the unfair of advantage of cum-swapping.
Mary Kidder, a trustee of the Columbus Museum of Art, strolled through Art Basel Miami Beach this past December and out of all the work there decided she really liked this piece by William Cotton called “Ribbon Candy.” It is a portrait of a woman with ribbon candy festooned to…
Sad is the day when no one wants to pay millions and millions of dollars for dissected animals in formaldehyde cubes or diamond encrusted skulls. Portfolio is citing Art Basel Miami Beach as the proof that infamous British artists Damien Hirst’s bubble has burst. The man’s work used to go…
Riptide continues to find out about exciting events during Art Basel that no one bothered to invite him to. So we are just completely and totally devastated that we weren’t at the unveiling of the world’s self-proclaimed number one transsexual Amanda Lepore’s new signature fragrance. It’s supposed to smell like…
So the general consensus on Art Basel was that it wasn’t quite “the embodiment of failure” that the schadenfreude-loving German mag Der Spiegel predicted. As one anonymous dealer told New York: “We did better than we expected — and worse than we had hoped.”Among the artists New York singled out as recession-proof…
No more art, please! Our eyes have had enough. Really! Between the fairs, we were tempted to take naps in the car. But thankfully everything is back to normal and we can look back at the art orgy that is Art Basel Miami Beach and the satellite fairs. Yes, now…
