Art Basel Day 4: The Thursday report

In a typical Miami sort of way, today was essentially characterized by a lots of young women as slim as rifles (and just as dangerous), and men of all ages in impossibly tight high-water pants with no socks taking a lot of selfies in front of artwork.

In a previous review of ABMB a decade or so ago, I wrote the below... and little has changed:

Once the VIP pre-opening parties were finished and the elegant crowds, booze and small food ceased to circulate, and tightly-dressed women in lethal-looking six inch heels finished their improbable art fair strolls with plastic wine glasses in their manicured hands, and handsome young men in slim suits and nerdy black glasses used their cell-phones to photograph the artwork, while third generation blue-eyed Cuban-American girls, four or five inches taller and 25 pounds lighter than their political refugee grandmothers, and slim as rifles, finished shooting selfies in front of the artwork...

Working the art fair is brutal work for the galleries and dealers - on your feet all day and floating in that rarified world where you never know if the person that you're talking to is just another nice guy or the planet's third largest art collector.

It is also great fun for people watching, where often the person becomes the artwork itself...

The day went fairly fast, with visits from a DMV museum director (who purchased one of my Bisque drawings!), the very talented Sondra Arkin, gallerist Corey Hampsom from Habatat Galleries, and the very talented Zanni.

Zanni looking at a Tim Tate piece

At art fairs you meat all kinds of gifted people from all sorts of mankind's talent pools - one such super talented human being is a young rapper named F.O.E. YoungHustla who just released a record which I suspect will be noticed and should be noticed - part of that is the spectacular and gritty design of the release.

Talent rises to the top in spite of all obstacles -- Expect big things from this young and rising star - he needs a good promoter...

After the fair closed at 8PM, we hustled (pun intended) to dinner, as tonight there are extended hours till 11PM, and ran once again into Akemi Maegawa at the nice Thai restaurant on Washington Street where we all met by chance.

Tony Porto, Lenny Campello, Akemi Maegawa, and Michael Janis

Mike Janis and I then hobbled back to the SCOPE Art Fair to see what the extended hours were all about... once we got there, we discovered that it was essentially a party, and since both Mike and I are past our sell-by date for that, we strolled in and strolled right back out to our beds... but not before Mike snatched two pink flamingo inflatable drink holders... cough... cough...