Miami’s Newest Sensual Offering: Art

December 8, 2008 | Uncategorized

Long known as the East Coast hot-spot of sex and sensuality, Miami is playing down its tropical South Beach sin-theme image and has hooked its wagon to an artistic star.

The lynch pin of this new tourism focus is Art Basel, a major, four-day event that just ended yesterday. The sister event of Switzerland’s Art Basel, Miami’s show is now considered the most important art show in the U.S. — and Miami one of the most important art cities in the world — even though the U.S. show is only six years old.

Miami hedging its tourism bets with art is a good idea. After all, while young travelers (Miami’s prime beach-side audience) grow out of the South Beach market as they age, age has no impact on art collectors. And it is the latter who travel a lot more, eat at good restaurants a lot more, shop a lot more, entertain a lot more…I guess you get the economic drift.

Obviously this international jet-set crowd does much to bolster the local economy. I don’t yet know the statistics for 2008, but last year during the week of Art Basil there were more private jets at Miami International Airport than any other place in the world. Speak about economic impact — it’s like having the Super Bowl played in your city every year.

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We wandered about Art Basel’s main exhibition at the Miami Beach Convention Center yesterday — parts of the show are spread all over the city — and it was quite entertaining, as it has been in other years.

But to tell you the truth, at these shows I never understand half the stuff I see. Today I’m still wondering about the artistic merit of the head-on video close-up of the cat lapping milk. And the video of the nude Caribbean woman singing whatever that was. I hope both artists have day jobs.

The other half of the show, though, is creative and intriguing, with numerous works ranging through a world of painting, photography, sculpture and a thousand other things. Always a hit are the TOTALLY life-like depictions of modern man and woman — this year they are tourists — which you’ll see in the video above.

Jim Ferri