One approach to writing about Art Basel Miami Beach, a tempting if scarcely vitalising tack, is to titillate prospective readers by recording sightings of celebrities and art world oligarchs staring together at a canvas a representative of the first category might purchase from the second. Money rains, perhaps; the line of value hockey-sticks the anticipated millions. Ooo, ahh. Or perhaps the two types are very drunk together, “on great form” at a dinner on a yacht, and somebody intimates in a half-guarded moment the genuine concerns of the ruling class vis-à-vis a topic du jour. Gosh. And if I had beheld such scenes, had I won access to them, and did I not suffer, like Brad Pitt, from undiagnosed (and likely nonexistent) prosopagnosia, I might now depict them in champagne detail for you, their basic indecency magnified by your knowledge that, e.g., prominent gallerists appear to condone ethnic cleansing but not open letters. Alas, I can only offer cognac, Offset and not-Sam Smith.
This is more than I could provide last year, when I attended the fair as a lowly writer-copywriter-art handler-editor. My station has since improved. I am now a writer-copywriter-art handler-tequila study participant, with the attendant gains in reach and responsibility. This is my story, hastily assembled on the night of the 10th. I have three days of crates left to pack.
I hear that a prominent gallery recently “cancelled” for being Zionist refused to hire a qualified handler after discovering through her social media that she moonlights as a lingerie model. The owners couldn’t risk another scandal.
The punishment for accepting an invitation to a VIP press dinner at Faena Hotel consists in having to walk through the lobby, where the comic stupidity of Sebastian Errazuriz’s sculpture Battle of the Corporate Nations tricks me into admiring a Beeple installation rotating behind it.
I cannot find my event. No one has heard of it. I’m beginning to think the press is not Very Important, a suspicion confirmed when I finally locate my kind. The food is served in batches, with share plates. (It is rather good.)
A WSJ Magazine writer voices his curiosity about the potential effects of censorship on the fair’s upcoming Hong Kong iteration. A Basel rep rolls her eyes. Everyone raves about Gary Simmons at Perez. I meet the novelist Marlowe Granados, on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar and, like me, also Interview. A new friend.
Eartheater, performing at MoMA PS1’s uncrowded poolside party, a collaboration with the running shoe brand On: “Come to my actual shows. I walked through [here] and the energy is weird.” She finishes her set in the pool.
Unglued i.e. hungover.
A gallery at Untitled has reportedly contracted a “really cool-looking” woman to stand near its booth. Utter hearsay suggests that sales at the satellite fair have disappointed. Could I, I would buy Sasha Yazov’s painting of a woman in a white dress crouching to stroke a cat against the backdrop of a smudgy teal plain, all done in the style of early-2000s videogame graphics. Not a portrayal of a “poor image” in Hito Steyerl’s sense, though that’s where my mind goes. Affection.
AI is less fun than crypto.
Supposed to attend a wrestling match with Marlowe but work past midnight. “I’m so busy!” No one cares.
11:30 am: A tall, thin white man, mid-twenties, looks me up and down at hotel reception. The angular face and tendril-y blonde hair of California surfer dreams but neither the tan nor the accent to match. Maybe a model?
“You from New York?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“You look like you’re from New York. I’m from Germany.”
“Are you here for Basel?”
A confiding look: “Rehabilitation.”
“Oh. Not for Basel then?”
“Rehabilitation. And the wife and kids are here, so, you know.”
Wrote copy for Zoomer body care brand, 1.5 hours on Zoom being interviewed by a market researcher for a paid study on “Mexico’s #1 tequila,” running crates at convention centre. A car to Gitano, an upscale Mexican restaurant-hotel where a PR person made me a reservation for a dinner I wishfully assumed was comp’d. Woman with Countess Luanne’s hair and voice at adjacent table: “You know when I wanna kill someone is when they try to come from the back of the plane and beat you to the exit.” The same woman, moments later: “Today I had to push an old lady out of the way who was taking too long to get off the plane.” Me, internally: “Exactlyyyy.”
Actually, I’m speechless. Have lost my voice.
At Faena’s project space to see Dirt’s Dive, a fake bar replete with scraggly mannequins created by the artist Kelly Breez. Geriatric millennial karaoke: “I Want It That Way,” etc. Joy in the crowd. On to Twist for a jockstrap brand launch party I’m covering for Interview. Zero jockstraps. Recurring thought: wear a jockstrap on my mind, become receptive to the world, bottom for Twist, for Basel, take it all in. Gays and gallerinas shrieking to “Firework.” Sam Smith is here, I tell my friends. That’s not Sam Smith, they tell me. Brazilian I’m dancing with: “I don’t speak English.” I don’t either because of the sudden-onset laryngitis, I want to say but cannot because of the sudden-onset laryngitis. A beat later: “You will be mine.” Two friends’ phones stolen, and allegedly those of another dozen-plus patrons. “You will be mine”: the refrain of the top and the thief.
Hungover, mute, spiritually and physically bedraggled, I write copy and then shamble ten minutes to the Design fair to see work by Kouros Maghsoudi, a New York friend. Crossing the street for my 5:30 am shift at Basel I spot a huge, mossy green banner and its white text: LET PALESTINE LIVE. The protestors: “While you’re shopping kids are dying.” My t-shirt: “Veni, Vidi, Visa. I came, I saw, I shopped.” Heartened nevertheless.
Through Marlowe, I’m at a D’ussé event where Offset performs. Imagining the writer who’d parlay “Bad and Boujee” into fair commentary. Thin crowd around the stage, everyone else content to carry on by the pool. Marlowe introduces me to an Interview editor, a D’ussé rep, a Times photographer. “You need to circulate more! Talk to people!” I literally cannot!
1am at the Dietl afterparty: wasted art handlers, confessions, camaraderie.
No one told me about CONTEXT Art Miami. The “heart and soul” of the fair complex? Kitsch, Kaws, the stray Alex Katz, Amy Winehouse, Robert Indiana Loves around every corner, a silkscreen Johnny Depp titled Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, Albert Einstein raising a sign that says “LOVE IS THE ANSWER,” sculptures of Iron Man, Captain America’s shield, the Mandalorian holding Baby Yoda.
A night protest, smaller. Police piled into truck beds, atop armored vehicles, riding ATVs. Two people cuffed from what I can tell. This time: “While you’re shopping bombs are dropping.”
Return to hotel and read Edward Said’s Permission to narrate.
In a phone call, my hungover and half-listening boyfriend shrinks my sojourn to the erstwhile North American capital of crypto down to its essence: “Wowwww…Art Basel.”
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The spittle rewind: what went down in the art world this month
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Be sleazy, be salacious… tacky is back!
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Paul Hameline’s October dispatch: “Who knows what’s saltier – sweat or tears?”
