Art Basel Miami Beach attracts super rich, who keep on spending
Wealthy investors are expected to continue a multimillion dollar worldwide spending spree
It is one of the world's biggest art festivals in a city renowned for sun, style and celebrity.
Yet when Art Basel Miami Beach opened to the public yesterday, the annual gathering of artists, gallery owners, collectors and dealers took on an additional role - as a barometer of the wild, nearly unfathomable boom market in contemporary art.
Three weeks ago the world's ultra-rich spent more than a billion dollars at auctions at the New York branches of Christie's and Sotheby's. Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for US$142.5 million, a world record for a painting at auction, and Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog (Orange) set a new high of US$58.4 million for a work by a living artist.
Those figures might have led open-mouthed observers to wonder whether the plutocrats would have any cash left to spend at the end of the year, yet the 12th edition of the winter spin-off of Art Basel, the prestigious Swiss art fair, is drawing the usual assortment of private jet passengers, museum bigwigs, advisers, and social butterflies.
For the five-day Art Basel Miami Beach more than 250 of the world's leading galleries have assembled paintings, sculptures and drawings by 4,000 artists - and while prices are not as stratospheric as in the New York sale rooms, the galleries are set to do serious business following Tuesday night's pre-opening event.
"Whether it's the atmosphere of Miami, the celebrity aura of the place, or the timing just before Christmas, people seem to be very loose spending money there," said Allan Schwartzman, an art adviser based in New York.