Wind, rain and even snow left some collectors making the pilgrimage to Art Basel Miami Beach stranded for hours at airports in New York and Europe.
Most overseas members of the ARTKABINETT social network of fine art collectors managed to get to Art Basel Miami before the European blizzards and Madrid air traffic controller strikes.
But here, except for a few showers on Wednesday afternoon, the sun shone brightly, as if to demonstrate how much the little strip of South Beach, which each December becomes the setting for an art-world bacchanalia of buying, selling and socializing, is a place apart from the rest of the country, where unemployment and financial anxiety linger.
“The art market is back!” was the chorus this week among most of the major dealers at the fair, even though some combination of canceled flights and the new economic reality kept the number of attendees down from prefinancial crisis years.
Many dealers had come feeling cautiously optimistic after November’s successful auctions, but they were thrilled to see the new buoyancy playing out in the fair, and, in many cases, were eager to boast about it.
“I could have sold almost everything twice,” said an elated if slightly exhausted-looking Marc Glimcher, of Pace Gallery, on Wednesday, a few hours into the fair, which runs through Sunday.
“Everyone’s fighting over the de Kooning,” he added with a grin, referring to a bronze sculpture, identical to one owned by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, on display at the Pace booth at the convention center here, where the fair is taking place.
He predicted that several prospective buyers would be disappointed and that he would have to take the blame, a possibility he seemed to relish more than dread. After all, a tug-of-war could not be more gratifying to the gallery, which just signed de Kooning’s estate in September.
Mr. Glimcher chatted on about the gallery’s bright prospects, volunteering, without being asked, that he couldn’t “confirm or deny” rumors that Pace would open a space in London soon, in addition to another possible one in Shanghai. (Pace currently has galleries in New York and Beijing.)
Other galleries, including David Zwirner, Gagosian, Andrea Rosen, and Gladstone, also reported strong sales, and works were swapped out of booths with regularity.
The general sense seemed to be that while many people in the United States and Europe were struggling financially, some were doing very well, and a good number of them went to the fair with their wallets open. As one dealer put it, “Money is being made, and it wants to be spent.”
Several collectors voiced the same view. “The traffic is not overwhelming, but I think the quality of the people is good,” said William L. Mack, the chairman of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, before turning away to greet the former Guggenheim trustee Peter M. Brant.
In some areas of the fair, other perspectives could be heard. Martin Klosterfelde, of Klosterfelde Gallery in Berlin, sat in a quiet booth on Thursday afternoon. He said that he had sold some pieces, but that the weather and flight cancellations had made for a slow first day. In any case, he added, “It’s a buyer’s market now, so people have time to think,” meaning that business is spread out over the four days of the fair rather than just the first two hours, which used to be a mad rush of speculation.
Vladimir Ovcharenko, of Regina Gallery in Moscow, in his third year at the fair, said that while business had improved each year, the Miami fair was still a challenge for a Russian gallery.
“For us, it’s tough,” he said. He mimed a fairgoer glancing up at the sign on his booth. “People see Moscow gallery, they think, ‘Eh, it’s a bad country,’ ” he said.
“It’s not so big business,” he continued, explaining that for him Art Basel was more about meeting collectors and introducing the Russian art scene.
For that same purpose, Mr. Ovcharenko is among the dealers behind a new art fair that will open in Moscow on Dec. 17, called Cosmoscow.
Latin American galleries, on the other hand, seemed to be thriving. That’s not unusual, given Miami’s geographical proximity and the fact that many Latin American collectors have homes here, but what was new this year was the level of interest in Latin American art from museums.
courtesy: Kate Talyor/New York Times
