Hot In Miami
Seemingly all of the fashion world — as well as celebrities and, oh yeah, art people — decamped for Miami this past week, for the annual Art Basel parade of parties, shows and more. BY LEIGH NORDSTROM AND KRISTEN TAUER PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEXIE MORELAND AND ST
The party whirl at Art Basel Miami gathered even more pace over the weekend — and some of it was even about art.
MIAMI — By all accounts Art Basel Miami Beach has turned into a full-fledged fashion week away from home. This year’s offering drew a lighter celebrity focus on the party scene than in recent years — excluding Tuesday night’s Dior men’s show, which had just about every celebrity you’ve heard of in attendance.
“I was just with Kim Jones two hours ago, and he said that he doesn’t draw this kind of crowd in Paris,” Tommy Hilfiger attested midweek, from Lenny Kravitz’s party at Alan Faena’s home. “There’s a vibe here that you don’t have in London, Milan, Paris, New York. There’s something else here.”
Brands from Louis Vuitton and Dior to Gucci, Versace, Miu Miu, Fendi, Bottega Veneta and more all partook in Basel — but as the week wore down and the official fair opened to the public, the attention turned more artsy (there are pre-fall shows in New York for the fashion crowd to catch, after all).
Thursday, Jerry Saltz polled the intimate art crowd sitting on the floor on the eighth floor of SoHo Beach House: Who had been called a bad name on social media?
Hands shot up all around. Next question: Who had an image taken down on Instagram?
A photo of a Pistoletto sculpture had been censored. A piece from the Spring/Break art fair had gotten taken down. One person had their entire account taken down because of a video of a girl holding a conch shell and pouring a glass of milk.
“Everytime I post my nipples they get taken down, which I try to do a lot just to make a point,” said musician Tove Lo, whose arm tattoo has also been banned from Instagram.
“Tattoos are going down.
Anyone want to say one more?
It’s like asking people their cat’s name,” said Saltz.
The art critic and Marilyn Minter had congregated with an intimate art crowd — gallerist Jack Shainman, artists Shepard Fairey and Shantell Martin, Tali Lennox, collector Carole Server — at the hotel for a conversation and dinner in collaboration with Playboy during Art Basel. “We’re in the right place. But are we actually? You don’t know in Miami, it’s like, uh-oh, there’s a better party — I can hear it,” said Saltz at the start of the talk, which was centered around the idea of a creeping puritanism within the art world and wider culture.
Minter, a feminist advocate and activist, got herself temporarily shunned by the art community in the late Eighties for her series of paintings around ideas of pornography.
“I saw Mike Kelley’s stuffed animal paintings, and I thought if a woman artist made those, no one would give them the time of day,” she said. “And so I was walking away from Metro Pictures thinking, what subject matter if a woman would do would it change the meaning? And I thought oh, it would be porn.
“What I found out was, it was like women were terrified of sexual imagery, and if you were working with it you were a traitor to feminism.”
Saltz and Minter left the crowd with a few foods for thought before sitting for dinner: everything’s an illusion; that Bernie, Warren and Biden should get off the political stage, and to support gun control activists. (Not to mention rising waters all over the world, and especially in Miami.)
The crowd swarming on the sidewalk outside the Billionaire
Boys Club ‘Icecream Miami Pop-up’ store across the river that night gave indication that Pharrell Williams, BBC’s cofounder, must be in sight.
Inside the store, Williams was indeed on hand, giving his signature prayer hands pose for photographers and posing with the artist Hebru Brantley, in celebration of the Hebru Brantley x Billionaire Boys Club x Adidas Originals collection.
“With everything I do, it’s just an extension of what I do in the studio,” he said, tucked in a corner during a brief moment away from fans. “Typically when I collab, for me the collab is less being told, but me bringing my strengths and whoever I’m collab-ing with them bringing their strengths and just going back and forth throwing ideas.”
Later in the night, the annual Pérez Art Museum Miami party, known as PAMM Presents, once again rounded out the Basel week, with a performance by the Chicago- based singer Jamila Woods.
If the celebrity flood during the week left the true art crowd feeling squeamish — but still wanting to party — the PAMM bash was the place to be, drawing a much more artist- and collectorheavy crowd than VIP.
The art of the fashion illustration was celebrated over at a private home near Miami Beach, where Peter Dundas corralled his usual model-heavy crowd to showcase the Dream Makers exhibition he put together of fashion illustrations, curated with Artemis Baltoyanni.
The likes of Caroline Vreeland, Jessica Hart, Alana Hadid and more rolled up to the private home, where drinks were served by the pool and framed pieces hung on the walls throughout the main floor.
“I think it’s been a passion of mine for my whole career — it’s one of the reasons why I’m a designer today,” Dundas said of the illustrations. “I think it’s an art form that really deserves more focus.”
Swizz Beatz had an important message for the crowd at the Surf Lodge’s pop-up at the W South Beach.
The musician and producer was tapped by ArtNews to guestedit its “Deciders” issue, which got an Art Basel welcome during a poolside dinner and after party.
“What we did in this issue was we opened it all the way up to decision makers and deciders and everybody in this room,” said a purple-suited Swizz during dinner. The “room” in this case was proverbial, with guests including Olivia Culpo, Rosario Dawson, and art adviser Lisa Schiff.
“It’s about to be 2020. Sky’s not the limit, it’s just the view. Everyone in this room can change anything that we don’t like by understanding the power we have as an entire community.
And I’m just happy to be a small piece of it.”
On Friday night, Violet Chachki gathered a lively group at the newly opened Gitano at Casa Faena for a dinner celebrating her newly released fragrance, Dirty Violet.
As for whether she’d been wowed by any art during the fair (a $120 million banana, perhaps?) Chachki pointed to the totality of the Basel experience.
“I just like seeing all the pieces — I walk around, there’s so much art everywhere you go,” she said. “And when you least expect it, you’ll turn a corner and there will be something epic.”