Art Basel is the Olympics for art lovers

BY JEFF CULL jcull@florida-weekly.com

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO The art crowd at last week's Art Basel in Miami Beach jockey for position at the exhibition's bar. MIAMI BEACH - If you're an art lover, Miami Beach was the place to be last week.

The organizers of Art Basel Miami Beach tout the show as "the most important art show in the United States, a cultural and social highlight for the Americas."

Thousands of works - enough to fill a 5-pound catalog (that costs $50), many with million dollar price tags - attracted the likes of Paris Hilton, Lucy Liu, Dennis Hopper, Lance Armstrong and more than 43,000 art enthusiasts to the four-day fair.

Works by local artists Bob Rauschenberg and Darryl Pottorf were scattered among the displays of 200 leading art galleries from around the globe. One woman reportedly purchased a Rauschenberg print for $330,000. That was a steal compared to the others from Captiva's most famous person that were priced at nearly $1 million.

One piece, "Detachable Figure: Dancer" by sculpture Jacques Lipchitz was going for a cool $5 million. The undistinguished, 33-inch high woodblock sculpture was one of the rarest pieces at the exhibit.

And New York's Acquavella Galleries reportedly sold a 1973 Andy Warhol "Mao" painting with a $12.5 million price tag. The actual sale price was not divulged.

Throughout the maze of German, Swiss, English, Brazilian, American and other art exhibits - more than 2,000 artists were on display - were the beautiful and not-so-beautiful people gawking at sculptures, quietly muttering prices or trying to figure out if the baby in a bassinette seemingly left near a water cooler was real. (It was not, but it looked real.)

Fair visitors paid $30 to get into the Miami Beach Convention Center, more than the price of admission to New York's Museum of Modern Art.

And millions of dollars or euros changed hands as the rich and super-rich came to buy. Nearly 30 courtesy cars (black BMW 750s with New Jersey license plates) lined up outside the Miami Beach Convention Center and ferried VIPs to satellite shows or the many parties around the Beach.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTOS Some of the artwork on display at Art Basel Miami Beach. Art Basel Miami Beach began six years ago as the sister event to Switzerland's Art Basel, the most prestigious art show worldwide for the past 38 years. The Miami Beach fair combined an international selection of top galleries with an exciting program of special exhibitions, parties and crossover events featuring music, film, architecture and design.

Next year's event will be held Dec. 4-7.