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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.
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