Update

Some interesting articles in the NYT. $68 million sale price for Thomas Eakins's The Gross Clinic. Are you ready for another fair? It's called "a great amalgamation of interests." This is an artist definitely worth checking out. In case I don't post anything else (not necessarily partying, just a bunch of deadlines to meet). Merry Christmas!

More Basel!

More Basel! My introduction article for the Sunpost, plus articles from Omar Sommereyns and Michelle Weinberg.

One more Basel map

Check out this map via Sunpost!

Art Basel Miami Beach

This year's ABMB comes with a ripple effect of 12 other fairs. There’s a lot to see. Here are some of my recommendations... (wait! first, get a map: This is a good one (via Critical Miami): 1- Scope Miami is a solid fair with great galleries from all over the world. Don't miss NADA with some heavy duties. 2- Design Miami 06 (in its second installment) is already one best design fairs in the world (check out Zaha Hadid’s panel. Hadid, my favorite architect, won the Pritzker Prize in 2004). 3- In the middle of everything there’s some some goofy stuff. 4- Love photography? Go to PhotoMiami (there are some Miami galleries represented). 5- Go local, all over the Design District and Wynwood: Ingalls, Snitzer, Bruk, Dorsch, The Moore Space, etc. 6- Artnet has a good take on different events. 7- If you're interested in photo and video (particularly about architecture) CIFO is a good option (their parties are really cool). 8- Other sites with detailed suggestions and links are: The Next Few Hours and Alex in the City. Don't stay home. Go, go!

(post)Installation art

Let’s see (post)installation art as entertainment, interior design, architecture, tableau vivant, hyperreality and interactive theater all at once! Who would’ve imagined that space and observer could become part of the art experience? We crave new experiences. A painting alone is Ok, but it’s not enough for our ephemeral compressed time. Too oppressively flat. Only if one could bring art into a vortex of n dimensions. How about multiplying the observer’s viewpoint so that the observer is observed by him/her? Art for time/space and string theory. There’s always a relationship between void and mass. Art is about producing illusion, whether as a flat rectangle -as in painting- or as sculpture. Ancient pyramids are huge geometric solids (there’s no division between Amun and the Pharaoh). Athens’ Parthenon brings forth the idea of order, symmetry and scale in function of the citizen. Fast-forward 500 years to Rome’s Pantheon; we find a redefinition of the space (private/public) in the stability and permanence of the empire. In Romanesque architecture the inside means worship and domesticity, serfdom, while the outside remains dangerous (thus the fortress). Modern science redefines our relationship with space. With the invention of the elevator, buildings can go up dozens of stories. The car (a little room on wheels) takes our intimate living outside. With quantum mechanics, space becomes non-Euclidean. 20th-century art erases the boundaries between object/subject, inside/outside, private/public with Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, Duchamp’s ready-mades, the vast canvases of Pollock, Newman and Still, Frank Stella’s shaped canvases (which broke the hegemony of the rectangle), Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings, Carl Andre’s flat sculptures, Smithson’s Earth works, Kaprow’s happenings, Claes Oldenburg’s The Store, and the tableaux of Segal, Kienholz and Tom Wasselmann. Today, buildings look sculptural (Gehry's Guggenheim Museum), while interiors are designed as exteriors (Zaha Hadid)