Every Body Loves Art Basel

I just got back from my second trip down south to check out Art Basel Miami, and I can say, without a doubt, it is worth the trip.

This year's fair seemed even more buoyant and expansive than last year's. As a the overwhelming backdrop to everything, there was Phu Hoang's and Rachely Rotem's surprisingly poetic rope sculpture/arial installation that anyone with any friends in Miami has surely already seen photos of.

This year, instead of mapping out marching orders, I took a more organic approach, letting one event lead to another, with a few pointed stops along the way. Of course, it's really worth noting that I stayed with some friends who were wonderful, accommodating, fun hosts who really love their city. They took us on a kind of mini-tour of Miami, and I've come away with a deeper, semi-profound love of the city, which so sharply contrasts with our own.

It's not just that Miami is beautiful, and populated with a diverse, beautiful population, but rather that Miami has practice saying "yes." Whether it is to an all night party on the beach, or, to an art fair that transforms the city for a week in December. Recently I was asked to participate in a video project of Dolf James's; he wants to get people talking about why Jacksonville is great, or at least good. And for as long as I've lived here, the one thing I've said is that here, you can kind of decide you're going to do something, and just do the damn thing. It's kind of like the wild west in that manner, but also like the west, there isn't a whole lot of support structure in place (also like those olden days, often, if you've got a big enough "gun" one can convince people of an otherwise unwarrented, er, grandeur).

So this city often finds itself at odds with its own self. Of course, it doesn't seem to help that Jacksonville (from my perspective) has a habit of pouring funds into absurd, useless projects, and then, when there are no more funds left, crying to the creative community to help create something else, but now I digress.

This year in Miami, I visited the Rubell again, and wasn't as bowled over as last year, this year, I thought the break away show was Scope, specifically the artist Enrique Gomez de Molina. His attention to detail, scale, and willingness to work with what otherwise might be considered repulsive materials piques the curiosity, touches on ideas trophy and destruction, and is often seductively beautiful. In the rhino bust (pictured), the artist covered a rhino mould with thousands of iridescent beatle wings. It was exquisite. I wanted to sell my house, purchase the piece, and move in with it under a bridge.

Then there was Mr. Anthony Lister. I've been a huge fan (no other word for it) of his work since I first started seeing it on Wooster Collective years and years ago. His sure but hurried application and use of multiples within one image struck me as a really modern solution to figuration and narrative painting. This year he was all over Miami. With three murals and two shows, he was clearly working hard, and from the extraordinarily brief conversation I had with him, I'd say he was enjoying himself quite a bit (and was probably a little exhausted).

The same day I saw Lister (at a little LISTER pop-up gallery, and again at the Hello Kitty show), I got to see the Margulies Collection where in addition to seeing L'Hospice (Superhero Nursing Home), I was captivated by Pieter Hugo's photographs of Nigerian Gadawan Kura (Hyena Men). Incredibly formidable, the images immediately strike the speculation of the viewer: what kind of people tame hyenas (and baboons)?

As a little research shows, a family of performers who've been passing down the hyena secrets for generations.

Taking Art Basel as a whole is near impossible. Rather, I say make it to a few of the things your friends tell you not to miss, wander into a few unexpected spaces, and snack your way through the city (there was the taco truck outside of Rubell, Sugarcane near Scope, Prima Pasta in Miami Beach, Caminito Way in North Miami, the Chow Down Grill in Seaside, or any of a host of little pop-up snack places near the fairs).

This year, Art Basel was food, laughter and beauty. I can't wait to return.

Now, I'm gonna go eat the bagel I hauled back.

In Closing...

Looking back over 2009, I am amazed at how much I got done, and how much more I feel like I have to do. I’ve been telling friends and acquaintances that 2009 was one of the most amazing years of my life…in the same way that in 1939, Hitler was Time’s man-of-the-year.

2009 was both incredibly challenging, and rewarding. I traveled more than I ever have, to places I am intimately familiar with, as well as the brand new. I discovered a love of, and affinity for, the open road. Though I liked driving for hours alone in the Texas Panhandle, and even more through Northeastern New Mexico…I also discovered that I am the kind of traveler badly in need of a control room: on the way out to Santa Fe, I managed to lose my glasses (still had my prescription sunglasses), and on the way back (in Amarillo), I managed to leave my purse—full of everything I needed to live--on a hotel counter top because I left in a panic to outrun a snowstorm. By the time I outran the storm, 100 miles later, I realized I’d left my purse behind...a calling card of absent-mindedness. Luckily, the motel where I stopped trusted me to get the cash and pay them the next day, and my (now) husband wired $$$ to the local Wal-Mart.

Since the snowstorm was so bad, all the roads heading back to Amarillo were closed, but the people at the La Quinta were kind enough to mail my purse back to me. Everything intact.

2009 also brought with it several devastating events that I’ve mentioned here and it took me until October to realize that I am still kind of processing them. Not just the events, but the change they wrought.

Perhaps most auspiciously, I got married to Nick Wagner this May, and that feels like the right thing to have done, though now when he’s being absurd and I am haughtily looking down my nose at his antics, he just reminds me that I married him…and therefore am partially culpable. Nice.

I also finally made it to Miami during Art Basel, and though it’s an overwhelming event, I was pleased that I left it feeling more energized about the future than weighted down with that insidious thought, “everyone is an artist.” It was also at Art Basel that I hit my first-ever Bullseye playing darts. Perhaps that contributed to my buoyancy…

More recently, I tried my first recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And though I can honestly say I did not see Julie and Julia until after I’d read Julia Child’s My Life in France, the pervasiveness of the movie did excite my curiosity, and therefore inspire the gift (Mastering was a part of Christmas). Thus I am a part of the cadre of home-cooks inspired by the movie and rushing out to by their own Le Creuset pots and attempt French cooking…we’ll see how it goes.

But back to the recipe: Quiche aux Oignons (onion quiche). Made with 2 pounds of sweet Vidalia onions, cream, and eggs, the result was more like a desert tart than a main course. So rich, we could only eat a tiny slice at a time, it exemplified the notion of technique vs. ingredients. How such simple--humble really--ingredients can transform into something so incredibly decadent was an object lesson in patience (the 2 lbs took an hour to cook down) and simplicity. Hopefully one I can bring into the New Year.

Plus it’s nice that 2010 (the numeric arrangement) has such an appealing, visually balanced quality…it can’t help but be a good year right?

Donut Holes and Art Basel

This December I finally made it to Art Basel, Miami. For the past five or so years I have been traveling when Basel comes to town, so I missed it. Heading down south this first time, I must confess to a kind of country-mouse-going-to-the-big-city-nervousness. I must also confess that I fully expected I95 southbound to be clogged with travelers headed south to Miami. But then, a friend reminded me that as important as Basel is, it is still “just art…” Suffice to say my assumptions were incorrect on both parts.

The main reason I wanted to head south was to goggle at Jenny Rubell’s donut installation. I’d read about her food/opening/installation for the Performa 09 Biennial: an “interactive culinary experience,” based on the book of Genesis. The goal was: Five hundred guests moving through three floors, eating a course on each. Honey will drip from the ceiling onto 2,000 pounds of barbecued ribs (think: God creating woman) and guests were asked to destroy and consume chocolate facsimiles of Jeff Koons's bunny sculpture (made by Jacques Torres).” Interspersed in the exhibit were 1,000 lbs of peanuts in the shell, drinks served in assorted Mason jars, and full-sized apple trees felled for the exhibit.

When I first read about this great festival of consumption and destruction, several thoughts occurred rather simultaneously:

1. She’s using food that though uniquely American, is regionally Southern. Ribs, peanuts, Mason jars, even honey evoke a specific image of a non-specific place.

2. It’s the time of year when people turn towards large, communal feasts…the desire to dress in spangles and glitz at odds with the primary activity of the season: eating and drinking.

3. The communal, almost primitive nature of gnawing flesh of ribs, of licking honey of fingers, melting chocolate in hands and bits of peanut clinging everywhere as in direct opposition to the “white walled” gallery.

When considering these elements, I really like (there’s no other word for it) the concept. My only objection (and this probably reveals more about myself than the artist or the work), is the point of departure. That is, I feel as if the use of Genesis as explanation is a little on the nose. The use of food often associated with the Bible Belt, to evoke a deeper sense of Americana seems like it might not need the added presence of Genesis. But, I wasn’t there. And Rubell’s own statement, “the idea of being human is more important than the idea of being perfect,” is elegant and inherently forgiving…perhaps seasonally appropriate?

So it was with great excitement that I scurried into the Rubell collection, and upon spotting the donut installation, “Old Fashioned,” at the back of the space, headed in that direction, in the process almost bowling over Val Kilmer, to snatch my piece of interactive installation glory. The donut was kind of stale. And I liked the back of the exhibit better than the front.

Though “Old Fashioned” had a kind of digital gridlike appeal, balanced against the myriad imperfections of the donuts themselves…it lacked the oomph I was hoping for. However, I can’t be too dismissive, Rubell had fresh donuts brought in every day before the collection opened to the public, and had to find an edible solution to a problem that included Miami heat, the hoi polloi, and blue-chip art. So though it may have lacked the pomp and circumstance I was looking for, as a kind of gentle, sideways nudge in her NYC direction, it was successful.