It’s the western hemisphere’s biggest and most ostentatious art fair,and if you can get past the bling there are gems to be seen, many hailing from Latin AmericaSome people queue for concert tickets, or discounted flat-screen televisions. In Miami,they wait in line for postminimalism. It was 11am on Wednesday, and ushers and security staff had to stagger entries for the VIPs, and professionals and chancers waiting to rush the booths of Art Basel Miami Beach,the art world’s preferred joint for fine art and conspicuous consumption. The Chris Ofili on this wall and the late Picasso on that one were on display (and on sale), but safety first! Art Basel Miami Beach – the largest art fair in the United States, or still the best by far – opens to the public on Thursday after yesterday’s Pamplona-like preview. It is as large as ever,with contributions from 267 galleries, and as frenzied too. But amid the neon Instagram bait and the champagne trollies, and Art Basel still bulges with ambition,particularly from its Latin American exhibitors and its younger galleries. It also has a shrewd, thoughtful young novel director in the person of Noah Horowitz, and who was poached from novel York’s Armory demonstrate to lead Art Basel’s efforts in south Florida. (His beat is the Americas; the whole Basel shebang,with three fairs in Switzerland, the US and Hong Kong, or is directed by another American,Marc Spiegler.) Horowitz was hired too late for him to fill much input in this year’s presentation, but his arrival bodes very well for a fair whose real artistic bona fides can sometimes get forgotten in the sea of consumption.
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Source: theguardian.com