| Unexpected Art Openings, Boring Nudes, and Rockin' Celebrity DJs |
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| Tomoo Gotika's painting "A Couple," part of the Stages art show at 888 Biscayne Boulevard, proceeds to benefit Lance Armstrong's cancer charity |
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Hearing someone say "What night is it" is a sign that partying has not slacked off at Art Basel this year. People hit the new de la Cruz Art Collection building in the Design District, and went to the opening of NADA at the Deauville Resort, at 61st and Collins. And they hit the party circuit. People going to the opening of the Chimerica exhibit at the Apogee were really going to see the $18.5 million, six-bedroom penthouse with 20-foot ceilings. (If you missed seeing it, and still want to sneak a peek, the exhibit and the penthouse are open through Sunday from noon to 5 -- just say you want to see Penthouse A.)
Since this was super-luxe real estate, the crowd had very few poseurs. The opposite was the case on Sunset II, at an Ocean Drive party at the home of the photo collector Gert Elfering. Don't know the name? Let us remind you. The nude photo of Carla Bruni in his collection sold for $91,000 at Christie's in April 2008, just two months after Bruni married the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. The art at the Elfering home was hot, but the temperature inside was even hotter and the crowd turned out to be fairly boring. Surprising.
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| In terms of art, this nude photo of Kate Moss by Irving Penn, also in the Elfering Collection, beat out the rather stark nude of Carla Bruni |
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| Boring? Not the party Thursday in Wynwood, at Wynwood Walls, the street art extravaganza hosted by Tony and Joey Goldman of Miami and the New York dealer Jeffrey Deitch. The artists who graffitoed the walls included the Brazilian twins Os Gemenos and Brandon Opalka, who did the side of the Dorsch Gallery. (The Margulies Collection also got a new mural, something we're going to be would not happen at the Rubell Family Collection.) You might expect right about now to hear another familiar name. Yes, here it comes: Shepard Fairey. He has pieces in the Deitch booth inside the Convention Center and participated in Wynwood Walls. And then Fairey headed off to the Stages party in Downtown Miami.
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A significant number of Baselers went to the Miami Art Museum event on the plaza in Downtown Miami, either because they were interested in the work of the Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca, or because they wanted some face time with people who are going to pick the new director of MAM. Heading back uptown, people stopped by 888 Biscayne Boulevard for Lance Armstrong's Stages party, which was lavishly equipped with food and drink. This was another real-estate-related event, since the building, called Marina Blue, has plenty of empty apartments to hand over to Basel art exhibits. (A one bedroom with terrace on a high floor available as a short sale for $250,000.) The Stages event benefited Armstrong's cancer charity LiveStrong. Proceeds from the sale of works by Catherine Opie, Tomoo Gotika and Andreas Gursky (a spectacular C-print offering a manipulated omniscient view of the Tour de France) going to the charity. The show will run through Sunday.
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| Shepard Fairey showing he can do everything, including DJ at the Stages party |
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| Catherine Opie's "Untitled (Road)" C print, at Stages |
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| The "best pool in Miami" at Aqua, where there are lots of townhouses and apartments for sale |
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| It wasn't exactly the end of the road. A number of design world figures, after events like the Design Miami Nocturne, and the Design Plus event at Luminaire Lab, both in Craig Robin's Design District, then made the trek to Craig Robin's architectural project, Aqua, at 62nd on Miami Beach. This was for a private dinner party at the apartment of the architect Alex Gorlin, in a high-rise building called the Gorlin. His pick-of-the-litter apartment faces down the river, and the Aqua pool, which Fred Bernstein declared at the party "the best pool in Miami." Fred, who writes for The New York Times, has visited Miami many times, anonymously, to write about places like the Setai. So he knows his pools. Others among the guests were Beth Dunlop, the Miami writer and editor of Home Miami, Craig Kellogg, a contributing editor at Interior Design, the design world guru Amy Lau (one of the co-founders of Design Miami) and Alastair Gordon, who is writing about Art Basel for The Wall Street Journal.
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