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Reflect back upon that childhood fantasy of being locked overnight
in a grocery store. There you were, free to roam and eat at your
leisure, to stuff yourself, to gorge—all night long. Now, think of
those aisles as being overloaded with contemporary art. For four
days, Art Basel/Miami Beach at the Miami Beach Convention Center
hosted a labyrinth of galleries from New York and San Francisco,
London and Prague—filled with some of the most fascinating
contemporary art imaginable. Shocked by so much beauty, you could
be excused for feeling giddy, your knees wobbly, your head light.
Stendhal syndrome threatened to become an epidemic. The air
crackled with energy and the buzzy murmur of nearly consummated
deals. You wandered where the eye led, following a trail of
charcoal carpet into white plush carpeted galleries furnished with
Tony Duquette bronze tables, and chairs by Charles Eames and Eero
Saarinen—all the better to showcase the work on the walls and
plinths.
So much art, so much life—it was not unlike being under the
protective canopy formed by a rainforest: art birthing from the
ground up. Throbbing, breathing, living art. Art in a myriad
media, such as Damien Hirst’s Typhoid: flies and resin.
There was photography by Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar, and an entire
wall of Jack Pierson’s stimulating homoeroticism, and Robert
Indiana’s slick sleek sculptures. There were watercolors by Puerto
Rican Enoc Perez, as well as Henry Moore’s bronze rabbits and neon
signage by Tracy Emin, and Richard Serra’s metal cubes.
And all that was but a smidgen of Art Basel at the Miami Beach
Convention Center—which spilled its bounty out onto Collins Park and
21st Street Beach where an homage to skate culture
enlivened Miami nights, making everyone young again—proving Ponce de
Leon right: the fountain of youth was here all along: to be found in
art.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
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