Art Basel Miami Beach 2023

Noisy parade

Since it was founded in 2002, the fair showcasing current art, Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), has seen its image change considerably. Initially it suffered from a reputation mitigated by the very nature of the city hosting it, as an epicentre of excess in all its forms, with its noisy parade of huge car engines and its ever more scantily clad young women. But the glitz and glamour hides another reality.

Ken Griffin, Jeff Bezos

South Beach, Miami

Florida has become the preferred home, particularly since Covid, of some of the richest figures in the United States. The magazine Forbes locates 79 billionaires in Florida. Following the move to Miami in 2022 of the famous collector and hedge fund owner Ken Griffin (whose fortune is ranked twenty-second in the world), who until that point had been one of the cultural stalwarts of Chicago, this movement continues. And so in November 2023 the founder of Amazon and third richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, has announced that he is leaving Seattle to also join him in Miami.

Craig Robins

Craig Robins, founder of the fair Design Miami and also the flourishing Design district where numerous luxury brands are represented, confirms it: “Miami is a different city since Covid, we’re seeing a major influx of people. The tax system is one of the justifications for this movement but people also started to reflect on where they really wanted to live. It’s a very nice lifestyle in Miami.” (See here another interview of Craig Robins).

Leading fair of America

Thomas Schutte, Peter Freeman gallery. ABMB 2023

Over time the flashier side has given way at the heart of the fair to art that is substantial. This year, with 277 participants, the event consolidates its position as the leading fair in the United States. And participants have made notable efforts to showcase quality pieces. But with the upheavals in the global economy, the war in Ukraine, and since 7 October the conflict between Israel and Hamas, haven’t these events put the brakes on the purchasing of art?

Noah Horowitz

The global CEO of Art Basel, Noah Horowitz offers this analysis: “the art market is now a buyers’ market. There is less urgency to make acquisitions. However from the very first day the level of transactions publicized by galleries was significant.”

Paul Gray

Paul Gray, who is at the head of one of the  influential American galleries, the Richard Gray gallery from Chicago, remains placid and observes: “For the past 20 years the art market has been on a spectacular upwards trend. In the 1980s it was reserved for connoisseurs. Then it expanded out to people motivated by other reasons such as glamour, speculation… These people follow trends. They are also the first to withdraw when there is a feeling of insecurity. High inflation and interest rates, the pandemic, wars, these have led many people to take a step back. Our business has clearly dropped, albeit not to the extent of putting us in danger.”

Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell

At the fair he has brought, among other things, a painting by the American abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991). Radical, dating from 1969, it is marked by a sky-blue background, cut across with a grey rectangular form (on sale for 1.8 million dollars).

Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell

One of the current stars of the auctions is the American painter who lived in France for a long time, Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) (See here the report about the Monet Mitchell show at Fondation Vuitton in Paris). In November 2023 one of her spectacular paintings from 1959 sold for a new record price for the artist: 29.1 million dollars (See here the report about the November 23 auctions). Gray is exhibiting a very atypical painting from Mitchell, a snowy landscape from 1975 made in Canada (on sale for 4.4 million dollars). For a long time it belonged to her former partner, the Quebecois painter Jean-Paul Riopelle.

Polarization about the Israel Palestine conflict

Tobias Dirty@Isla Flotante ABMB 2023

Another factor seems to disturb the habitual euphoria that reigns over Miami during the fair: the polarization of certain market participants over questions to do with the Israel Palestine conflict. Antisemitic acts against officially pro-Israel dealers or refusals from collectors to buy works from artists who have not denounced the actions of Hamas while defending the Palestinians… The climate is far from serene.

Drop for Bacon

Francis Bacon

On the first day several dealers revealed they observed a market that was not lifeless, but mellow. And a clear drop in prices.

The American gallery Acquavella is exhibiting a remarkable painting by Francis Bacon depicting his last partner, John Edwards, in 1986. It is on sale for 19 million dollars. Acquavella presented the same painting at Paris+ in 2022 for 22 million dollars (See the report about the Paris+ 2022). A sign of the times…

Price are abstraction

“Prices in art are a sort of abstraction. When all the indicators are falling, it suits to lower them as a consequence,” comments a dealer.

ABMB also offers the possibility of gauging the trends surrounding art and the topicality of influential artists.

Arthur Jafa

Arthur Jafa

At the booth of the Gladstone gallery, for example, we can see the new work from the winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale 2019, American artist Arthur Jafa (See here the report about the Golden Lion of 2019), who here has made paintings for the first time. Very dark, they often use photos as a starting point and address the lives of African Americans in a stylised form. (On sale for between 150,000 and 200,000 dollars).

“I am obsessed with images. I love Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter… But I am not a real painter,” he reveals. Next September Jafa tells us he will begin filming a feature-length film, a love story that takes place in Mississippi. (See here an other interview of Arthur Jafa speaking about his retrospective at the Luma Foundation in Arles).

Ja’ Tovia Gary

Ja’Tovia Gary (born in 1984) is part of the new generation of artists who also specializes in video, and who are followed closely by institutions. She has displayed her work at Moma in New York, among other places. In France she is represented by the Franck Elbaz gallery. Her new film exhibited by the Paula Cooper gallery references, in a system of video collages, the poignant novel “The Bluest Eye” written by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison (on sale for 150,000 dollars in an edition of three).

Pierre Huyghe

Pierre Huyghe

The French often complain about the fact that their local artists are poorly represented internationally. One of the best counterexamples of this is Pierre Huyghe (born in 1962) whose works are part of collections in the major museums of the world. He is known, among other things, for playing with natural elements such as the presence of bees that gather pollen around a sculpture or a dog walking through his exhibition. One of his major pieces, conceived in 2014, has been brought out for ABMB by the Marian Goodman gallery.

Pierre Huyghe

It is the reproduction of a stone sculpture featuring a nude woman, lying down. Originally it was meant to depict a figure from a French colony. But here Huyghe has created a system for heating the statue that means that when it is placed outside it naturally gathers mossy vegetation, like a sort of microclimate by itself (on sale for around 800,000 dollars).

Women artists

Leonor Fini

One of the strong trends currently raging in institutions and also in the art market is to put the spotlight back on women artists. This is true of the very eccentric Argentine painter who lived almost her whole life in France, Leonor Fini (1908-1996) (See here a report dedicated to the market for Leonor Fini). A large booth is reserved for her in Miami, on the initiative of the Minsky gallery in Paris. The work with the highest price is a surrealist piece of furniture, an anthropomorphic wardrobe painted in 1939. Two angelic women preside over it, their legs replaced by wings, their hair in floating tendrils. The record for Leonor Fini, 2.3 million dollars, was obtained in 2021 for a painting from 1938. The surrealist wardrobe is on sale for 2.5 million dollars.

Proof that not all the prices for 20^th-century art have dropped just yet.

Art Basel Miami Beach 2023