Elsewhere in the fair, David Zwirner sold Ad Reinhardt’s Abstract Painting, Blue (1953) for over $7 million, and Hauser & Wirth sold straight-from-the-studio paintings by George Condo and Rashid Johnson for $1.4 million and around $1 million respectively. The asking price was $950,000, and the deal was brokered by L.A.’s adviser to the stars, Meredith Darrow. Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and his wife, supermodel Behati Prinsloo, snapped up the gigantic James Turrell that served as the centerpiece of the Pace Gallery booth. In order to encourage social distancing, the fair allowed access to opening hours to only the V-est of VIPs, but by noon the crowds started to fill into the booths. Champagne breakfast at the Miami Beach convention center officially christened another edition of the Floridian Art Basel. “Isn’t it just great to have this party back again?” Jopling yelled over Sister Sledge playing a surprise live set behind.Īnd this was all before Tuesday, when the 9:30 a.m. Attendees had to tiptoe past Solange Knowles and Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti in order to not fall into the pool, and then it was off to a slew of dinners-for Louis Vuitton at Carbone, for Saint Laurent in a gallery built on the beach, for the ICA Miami at Red Rooster-before the entire art world beelined to Soho Beach House, where London’s White Cube had set up on the sands with gallery founder Jay Jopling standing in the center linking and building with Diplo. A number of cocktail parties and gallery openings were popping off throughout the design district, but missing was the neighborhood’s mastermind, Craig Robins, who was hosting a bash at his Sunset Island mega-mansion with his wife, Jackie Soffer, whom Robins met when she sued him over a shared private jet-marriage, Miami-style. Across the causeway in the design district, the Vuitton madness had already begun at its new men’s flagship, where LV superfans in head-to-toe Virgil were snapping up $3,500 leather jackets. Monday began with dealers and advisers taking their perches around the indoor pool at the Setai to finalize purchases, deals that would be sealed once the buyers completed the technicality of laying actual eyes on the work in the booth at the fair. The seemingly overnight creation of a $10 billion NFT market is already rivaling the art market as a whole. There’s been two years of wealth creation at the tippy top of the economic mountain, and at the same time the remote-working finance bros and metaverse-inhabiting tech tycoons have stampeded to tax-break-happy Florida, making this year’s Miami edition of Basel the Super Bowl of branding and the Oscars of luxury sales. The city is right now experiencing a perfect storm of profligate check-signing.
It was, in other words, a quintessential Miami 2021 moment. In doing so, with a 30-foot statue of Abloh at its entrance and a synchronized-drone tribute, it ramped up the energy and delivered the brand’s most devoted customers ready to spend even more than before. Abloh’s wife and family reportedly asked that the show go on as tribute. The tragedy didn’t put a damper on the proceedings. It was the Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2022 men’s show, which served as the final artistic statement of late Louis Vuitton men’s creative director Virgil Abloh, an influential cross-cultural force whose death at age 41 on Sunday shocked many a jet-setter on their way down to Magic City. And making their first public appearance since leaving the White House were deposed princelings Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who wore pink.Īnd yes, the first edition of Art Basel Miami Beach held since 2019 had gotten underway that day, but this event was not the opening of Art Basel Miami Beach. Kanye West posed for pictures alongside his daughter North and estranged wife, Kim Kardashian West, as Bernard Arnault, third richest person in the world, caught up with fellow billionaire and recently named Barbadian national hero Rihanna and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist chatted with Snap founder Evan Spiegel, who is 31 years old and worth more than $9 billion. James Murdoch chatted with Moda Operandi founder Lauren Santo Domingo as Serena Williams and her husband, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, walked by. On Tuesday in Miami, a single event turned into a collision of influence,celebrity, and money not seen in Florida since before the pandemic-or maybe ever.