Art Basel is held twice a year, one in Miami and the original in Basel, Switzerland. It has been called the Olympics of the Art World. Nearly 300 galleries from around the world arrange themselves into the Miami Convention center and show you their finest collections of contemporary art. There were a couple of individual artist booths at the show, but the aim of Art Basel is to showcase what galleries the have access to.
So we headed off to the big show bight and early Saturday morning. To be honest, I was expecting to have to wade through an ocean of art that was made for the sake of shock and effect and not to show off skills and techniques. (MY OPINON: if you wrap a baby doll in duct tape, glue it to a canvas and then pull out its hair. Then you have given in to Shock and chose not to use skill). To my extreme pleasure, there was very little of that here. The show was special in that as you walked around everything you saw was a new experience, a new idea and an original technique. This is why I came.
There were the recent masters like Warhol, Pollack, Lichtenstein and Picasso just to drop a few names. I was excited to see the pieces, but when you see those paintings it is like looking at a textbook and seeing history, its very hard to tell if you like it because it’s famous or because it’s good. Then you turn a corner and your eyes are delighted to see something you could have never imagined, a beautiful wood sculpture by Tony Cragg, titled, "Red Figure” or sparkling mannequins with tinsel tube heads called “Soundsuit”, by Nick Cave. The show went on like this. Booths upon booth of imaginative and thought provoking art were filling the Miami convention center. I took away many good ideas. I don’t know if we will need to take the path of showing art in Galleries, but it was good to see how other artists get their work in front of the public.
