2025.351
On Miami Beach
I landed in Miami with a pep due to my tendency for rebellion. Not one dealer, artist, or collector I know talks affectionately, or even indifferently, about Art Basel Miami Beach. They say in unison, it’s tacky, exhausting, bizarre, & obtuse, but regarding this art fair, I sit comfortably wearing a contrarian’s outfit.
Miami Beach is not a place you visit to nurture your ambition, or sharpen your knife, or steady your breath. During the extensive & inorganic nice-to-meet-you’s, late dinners, & networking events, the incredible weight of self-obsession stands like a tombstone between people. Personally, I can testify to meeting a number of nice people, or people mature enough to be nice to others when there is no immediate financial or social reward. But I would be dishonest to say the constant scanning up & down, & eyes glazing over to check out the actually important person while shaking my hand didn’t stand out as a defining characteristic of this annual event.
On my way from NADA back to Miami Beach, I texted S a quite beautiful Diebenkorn drawing because it reminded me of his work. He asked if I was becoming more jaded about art from being in Miami & working at a gallery. I tell him I am rather hopeful & that is honest, but as we were texting, I was also on a water taxi passing by DJ Kahled’s $ 29M mansion, fuming in the back of my mind about that gorgeous chick who was bragging about her magic touch that got people “hooked” on buying art.
I met this gorgeous chick at M’s waterfront home. M is the daughter of the couple who own the R Collection, one of the biggest private contemporary art collections in North America. M’s home is beautiful– enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the natural light, a serious but not-so-heavy study filled with collectible art books, & boldly sized contemporary artworks in every room of the house. She was lending her home to host a brunch for women in art, which I was invited to thanks to my gender & hustle. After approaching the few familiar faces & so lamely iterating how impressed I was with the sculptures in the living room, I pivoted towards the buffet counter, & grabbed a bagel & some lox, which in hindsight was very delicious. That’s when I met F, the stunning & confident art advisor-deluxe born in England, raised in Switzerland, & based in Flatbush. I introduced myself to her when she was toasting her bagel, & we connected over our lives in New York. In the hopes of making a friend, I brought up my boyfriend & his remote tech job that allowed us to take this trip together. Her eyes lit up for a second when I mentioned his job, then seamlessly segued into her elevator pitch: the art of getting the Nouveau Riche to pay for art. She articulated nothing in particular, but highly emphasized that her “magic touch” had her clients begging to raise their annual collecting budgets. Unsurprisingly, this art of sales has almost nothing to do with art, but everything to do with a sense of exclusivity, proximity to beauty, & illusion of superiority. Whether you are the hot art advisor who makes an excellent dinner date or the wholesome art advisor who recommends the best nannies for Connecticut moms, they both follow the same blueprint, & I tend to feel irritated by the kind of people who can barely say anything meaningful about the work they’re trying to sell. As I started talking about an artist, she stopped me & gave me her number. “Text me later,” she said as she walked away, & the aroma of bullshit & apple turnover filled up the room.
So I think Miami Beach is a place where you indulge in whoever you think yourself to be. An adventurous yet sophisticated man who spends a million dollars on a Warhol rather than a McLaren, who goes on art tours in São Paulo to support local art rather than going to Ibiza, who fucks chicks with MAs from Sotheby’s rather than a Sports Illustrator model… is met with no suspicion or cringe in Miami. The high of buying a painting consists of the feeling of nobility for supporting the arts & the feeling of superiority for appreciating something that most people can’t. In my opinion, Miami is an excellent place to experience that high, with an added thrill of maybe having to compete with another person to possess what you want. I find these people immensely interesting– for all their surprising passions & shallow motivations– which perhaps speaks to the fact that I’m not quite jaded yet, or that I’m committed to my own shallow motivations.
What has been a high for me these days is seeing A up close as he identifies what he enjoys & resists in a painting. It’s rare to see someone develop curiosity from scratch. An art advisor once told me, “You can’t teach curiosity,” & I don’t have a counterargument. As much as I’d like to say that my boyfriend is proof that you can, it’s a flawed argument since I have sex with him. A spent hours each day at the fair, taking pictures of what interested him, explaining to me why something was interesting & why he would like to have them. Talking/writing about art is an unexpectedly challenging activity that requires consistent reading/conversing to be good at, but the feeling of attraction or repulsion is only a reflex until one can articulate why. & understanding his life experiences, the environment he grew up in, his travel & homemaking preferences, makes it all the more interesting for me to learn about his aesthetic gravitations, his interest & the lack of it for certain narratives, as well as his risk tolerance for purchasing. It’s like seeing a child grow up & it makes a bit more sense now why people say it’s a privilege to be a parent.