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The Art of the SchmoozeAt Miami’s international art fair, the real masterpiece is the party.
ILLUSTRATION: HELLOVON The season of art is upon Miami, and I’m standing at the Sagamore Hotel with the ocean in full view, sparkling in that boastful way the ocean has a habit of doing on a perfect day in South Beach. Against a backdrop that, like many hotels here, is as blindingly white as Steve Martin’s hair, all the many players from the gallery galaxy mill around. Beside me, an Ali Baba type and a second-string Bo Derek discuss the price of Jeff Koons these days. Here for a formal brunch at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair are porky investors, spaghetti-strapped socialites, hopped-up curators, pickled publicists and even an ironclad critic or two. Along with doing Expressionist things on bagels, many of them smear each other with smiles that distinctly read, It’s December, early-ish, so it must be Miami, no? In the same way that if it’s October, mid, it must be the Frieze Art Fair in London, and if it’s February, later, it must be the Armory Show in New York, and if it’s June, every second year, it must be the Biennale in Venice. For a funny thing happened on the way to the contemporary art fair. In a few short years – back when Bill Clinton had already left the presidency! – Art Basel Miami Beach created a whole different economy and scene in a town once known primarily for its body-building designs. Riding on, or more likely unleashing, the current craze for all things art and social, it began attracting Mikli-eyed collectors and, for better or sometimes for worse, all kinds of people who, yes, just like to pah-tay. I have learned first-hand, having done the fair here in Ocean Drive-land several times – passing everyone from Yoko Ono to Nicky Hilton to Jerry Bruckheimer – that these new tribes have yielded some unique considerations of their own. When flitting between parties for a designer chandelier competition featuring more socialites than you’d find in the Hamptons or, say, attending parties for starchitect Zaha Hadid in Miami’s burgeoning Design District or even digging into the late-night, cabaret-style bash that Jeffrey Deitch (the famous New York gallery owner) likes to throw, it’s hard work, really hard, to both stay up and keep up. That’s because (listen up, kids) all parties are essentially verbal, even when they’re attached to the visual. And it’s harder to fake it, and easier to flag the who’s who, when you’re dealing with the art scene. You have to, in other words, know your Bauhaus from your Koolhaas. Danger lurks at every party, ready to expose the hanger-on. One night some years ago during the fair, when I was at a party that Visionaire magazine was throwing, I heard one of those Europeans in the crispest of suits (how do they get them that way?) ask a certain bronzed beauty what she thought of the work being shown at the booth belonging to London’s White Cube gallery. Going by the state of her tan, I prepared to watch Barbie fall flat on her face. She went on to give a perfectly informed, cogent and amusing response, causing me to reconsider this female specimen or, at the very least, to consider that she had the skill W. Somerset Maugham once attributed to one of his characters: “She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.” Art parties present particular challenges vis-à-vis, say, a party at the Sundance Film Festival or a bash during the Grammys. The art scene? Murkier, more esoteric. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the international language of skinny dip. During a particularly posh bash organized by the particularly posh publisher Taschen over at the Setai hotel, a fine transsexual was stationed in a literal glass house in the middle of the pool. She sat there, lazily flipping through a giant coffee-table book. Then, at some point, a lot more people – including the night’s host, celebrity photog David LaChapelle – ended up in the pool. It was all very Warhol meets Esther Williams. And proof too that sometimes in the world of haute art, language is no barrier. Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net Shinan Govani is the Scene columnist for the National Post and frequently appears on television commenting on celebrities and the social whirl. |
