MIAMI BEACH—It was not long before midnight when the fire maidens wearing crowns of burning torches danced out over the pool at the National Hotel to lightly feign fellatio. And, suddenly, you knew everything was going to be alright again.
At Art Basel Miami Beach, the Black-Friday-meets-spring-break of the art industry, COVID initially chilled the mood but not the sales, the crowds, and certainly not the weeklong event’s silly and sybaritic traditions. Now, in its 18th year, Art Basel (a catchall name for the scores of art and fashion events that surround the huge Swiss art fair and its museum-quality works every December) was, unbelievably, bigger and more upbeat than ever.
At the InList party Thursday, for the private global event and concierge service, a heavily tech crowd chatted about the last few months seeking sanctuary in the open air of Mykonos while the fire dancer’s thigh-high silver boots kicked spray into the air and Whitney Houston dance remixes blared. (You may find all this shallow, but don’t dial anyone in the 305 area code this week, because you will find no sympathy here. From super-rich collectors to hard-partying fledgling NFT artists to exhausted event planners, people were visibly relieved.)
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It’s been a “breathless” week of buying at three different art fairs, says art collector Libbie Mugrabi, reached at her Miami home as she was frantically overseeing hanging of a Tracey Emin work in advance of a small dinner party Friday evening. This week, she purchased a Kenny Scharf piece for $95,000, the Emin from White Cube Gallery of London for “150k-ish—I love her!” And she says she has holds on two more Emin works). She also bought three works for her daughter at Scope Art Fair and two spiritual “Yin Yang” works by Chinese contemporary artist Linjie Deng.
Others were not so lucky. Michael “Always” Turner, a Boca Raton, Fla., sportswear store owner, says “I said I was shopping with $25,000 but would really have gone to $125,000. But what I wanted was gone. Didn’t see that coming.”
Over breakfast in South Beach, artist Laura Kimpton, who is known for her installations at Burning Man and has works on view at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, among other venues, happily bragged she sold one piece in a charity auction for $81,600. “I sold it to (Bitcoin pioneer) Brock Pierce, I guess I can say... He told me he bought it, in the back of an Uber... he won’t mind.” (The Daily Beast reached out to Pierce for comment.)
A lot of the “old guard” came to buy—including Barry Diller (Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC, parent company of The Daily Beast), Steve Wynn, mainstay Leonardo DiCaprio. Swizz Beatz and Pharrell Williams are in town, and are major art collectors, and Adam Levine snapped up a James Turrell in the Pace Gallery Booth, which was a total sellout at Art Basel.
At the rival Art Miami fair, actress Sofia Vergara bought a work by 10-year-old painter Andres Valencia, who fair director Nick Korniloff said was a breakout star at the event (with prices circling $10,000).
While this week was widely advertised as an NFT takeover of Art Basel by a whole new generation of artists creating pieces on the blockchain, the reality was a little less clear-cut.
Yes, two-hit-NFT wonder Beeple is down here talking at top museums, and the Gene Roddenberry estate is selling Star Trek NFTs injected into live-replicating bacteria, among other unlikely developments. There is a super hype-y Wild West energy that is fun to watch.
But Mugrabi notes that her first foray into buying NFT art resulted in money getting stolen out of her wallet. Artist Kimpton says, “NFTs have tremendous promise for artists. I sold 1000 pieces.” She has already had some of her her works minted and sold—but not by her. She’s had to contact an IP lawyer.
One partygoer, who attended Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel events here, and is an employee of one of those companies, noted, “My circle of, say, close 50 friends, nobody has an NFT yet. But they are buying (traditional) art.”
NFT collector and cryptocurrency trader Nick Dailey, of Brooklyn, N.Y., dubs himself “a happy speculator on the future.” He has spent the last few days being courted at lush NFT parties, launches and auctions all over Miami and has spent nearly $14,000 in cyber currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum on NFT artworks. He’s been buying them through a variety of different newish companies or platforms that want his business.
Dailey, like many other players in the new field, are betting that either the bitcoin prices will rise, boosting he value of his “metaverse” artwork purchases, or the artists will catch on, and their prices will rise much like in the gallery world — or both.
