Interview

Tico Mugrabi, Tony Shafrazi, Cher Grumney, Glenn O'Brien, Peter Brant

Art Basel gives you something to do in Miami besides going to the beach and Miami gives you something to do besides looking at art, which is good for both parties.

This art fair, a spin-off of Europe's biggest art convention, has been going since 2002-I have made the scene for five out of six. In some ways it's more popular than its Swiss parent. I love Basel but it doesn't offer the climate, distractions, or the luxuries that Miami does.

No, I'm not a big collector. (I'm an installment plan buyer of recent grads.) I'm not a dealer or a critic. I guess I can admit to being an aficionado and I like going to Miami in that role. In a few days I can do a year's worth of gallery hopping. And now it's not just Art Basel Miami-there are lots of fairs going on simultaneously all over Miami—Art Miami, Art Now Miami, NADA, Pulse, Aqua, Scope, Photo Miami, Art Asia, Bridge, Design Miami, Red Dot Miami Beach, Ink Miami, and Sculpt Miami ... did I leave anything out? I'm sure I did. The quest for the red dots on white walls that mean "sold" is spreading like measles.  It is now quite impossible to see everything. This year I spent four full days and still didn't manage to see everything. I missed seeing The Station, a 40 artist show curated by Shamim Momin and Nate Lowman that included a full-scale replica of a meth lab. I blame this entirely on the Garmin GPS system supplied by Avis on the Cadillac CTS that I rented to help Detroit out. The Garmin is an entirely insidious piece of technology that capriciously sent me through a traffic jam in the slums from the airport to Miami Beach, and then sent me on a two-hour, extra-scenic route when I drove from Miami to the West Coast. It's not comparison to the sexy-voiced GPS in my Mercedes and it's a liar. From now on I'm taking a map or getting an iPhone.

Anyway I did my duty and saw more art than ever this December. It was interesting from the get go in the face of much dread and speculation. Would the buyers come? Would they buy? I arrived early on Wednesday, the VIP preview day that is usually where the action is. I think it would be safe to say that in past years most of the sales have happened in the very first hours of the fair-before the throngs of tourists in their Hawiian shirts and the would-be conceptual art drag queens show up, making you wonder what the connection is between fine art and circus. (If you wonder, as I do periodically, the answer eventually reveals itself. Read on.) Anyway, at the usual hour when the trading frenzy would begin, you could have heard a pin drop. Well, maybe a bowling pin-the Miami Beach Convention Center is a big place and it's carpeted-but I must say it did look ominous, especially since there had been a lot of gloom and doom talk for the past month. Apparently recent auctions had been considered weak. Prices hadn't doubled or tripled in months.  I think people couldn't help but remember what happened in the dot-com crash when suddenly the frenzy stopped at the day traders were paralyzed as their theoretical fortunes quickly evaporated.

Miami Beach. Ryan McGinley, Chris Bollen, Francesco Vezzoli

But by lunchtime I realized this wasn't that. I think the heavies were showing up late, partly out of enforced discretion, partly out of being hung over from the many amusing parties the night before. I myself had forgotten to drink a glass of water per glass of wine at the Art in America dinner at Joe's Stone Crab where we feasted with art dealer and collector friends and passed out "Art in America: we're not square" T-shirts.  I had seated myself between the lovely Barbara Gladstone and the lovely Ada Katz and then Ada and hubby Alex hadn't showed up. First thing Wednesday morning I ran into the duo at Raphael Jablonka's booth where there was a one man show of particularly beautiful Islamic-looking Philip Taaffe paintings and Philip himself looking slightly sheepish, like any artist at an art fair.

What happened to you last night? I said to Alex.  "I had Ada sitting next to me."

"Oh she got drunk and fell down," said Alex, not missing a beat.