Saturday, December 04, 2010

Art Basel MB week: Day Four

Easily the busiest day of the fairs so far, with lots of crowds filling the tents at Art Miami, Red Dot, Scope and Art Asia in Wynwood and the streets around them.

At MFA, a day of highs and lows. Lows in the sense that there was a tremendous amount of interest at all levels with an inordinate number of near misses ("Wow! That's a really cool painting," she says to him. "I love it!", he adds. Looks at the price. "And it's really a good price"... they walk away).

Highs in the sense that this was the best day for sales so far. Sheila Giolitti sold two paintings, including her largest painting going to a collector in Washington state. MFA also sold a couple of paintings by Russian painter Alexey Terenin, and after an agonizing three separate holds with first right of refusal on Judith Peck's "Jus in Bello" painting (which has been selected for Virginia's CACVB "New Waves" exhibition early next year), the painting was finally sold to a Miami collector at the end of the night.

Also high in the sense that a local art advisor wants to hook up with Lou Gagnon to place some of Gagnon's gorgeous weather studies in some local collectors' homes, and also high that the curator from the Mobile Art Museum added Giolitti to his forthcoming "Southern Women" exhibition.

El GordoNext door at Scope, Civilian had sold out all six Trevor Young's brilliant paintings, so Scope has been good to all of them. I also saw some multiple red dots over at Hamiltonian's booth.

There was also some celebrity sightings: Alan Dershowitz haggling over some artwork and Raúl de Molina (El Gordo) from Univision's popular El Gordo y La Flaca TV show strolling around the fair.

That's him talking to the stunning Wonder Woman look-alike gallerina from Anderson Art Collective.

After closing, I headed out to Little Havana and with 15 relatives in tow, we invaded Versailles Restaurant for some late Cuban food. Even at midnight the place was packed and the food was (as usual) amazing. For desert: a torte made out of chocolate and mango.