Art Basel
Welcome!
It was just eight years ago that Art Basel, the visual arts' most important European tradeshow, changed the U.S. arts landscape by opening its first satellite fair in Miami. Drawn by Miami's emerging role as a contemporary arts center, collectors, dealers, curators, artists and art enthusiasts gather here to enjoy Art Basel and the numerous fairs that have developed around it. It is a time to also enjoy some of the museums and private art collections that grace our city.
"Camouflage " featured at W South Beach Welcome Desk
ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol is considered one of the founders of Pop Art and gained fame in the 1960s with paintings of subjects that he borrowed from consumer and popular culture, such as Campbell Soup cans, Marilyn
Monroe, and newspaper headlines. In 1986, he did a series of paintings that borrowed imagery from the military, titled Camouflage, that gave him the opportunity to work in both an abstract pattern and an immediately recognizable image. During the 1980s, Warhol also collaborated with the much younger artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The two artists would work on the same canvas together or separately, and as seen in Drumstick,Reagan/Outlays (1984-85), Warhol painted the profile of Ronald Reagan and included some financial references found in the newspaper. Basquiat then included a rough and simple painting of a chicken drumstick over the Warhol imagery that seems to have no obvious connection to the subject matter.
"Untitled" (Sir Alfred Chipmunk) featured in W South Beach Living Room
GEORGE CONDO
George Condo's paintings explore the genre of portraiture and he takes inspiration from American caricature and cartoons, European history portraits, and Greek mythological figures,frequently in a dark yet humorous style. Untitled (Sir Alfred Chipmunk), 1996, is one of Condo's "imaginary portraits" and features a long necked figure with a goofy head adorned with big ears, bulging cheeks, a blue nose, and cartoonish eyes on a yellow forehead. Floating around in the atmospheric blue background are playful bubbles, including one balanced on the top of the sitter's head.
"Hoax" featured in W South Beach Living Room
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged in the early 1980s as a graffiti artist in New York City and quickly began
creating paintings of great visual impact. He is the first African-American artist to become an international art star. The painting Hoax (1983) features a number of Basquiat's typical features: bright colors in bold brushstrokes, collage of paper on the surface,overlapping imagery, written words and a reference to a fake petrified man "discovered" in the 1860s.
"Untitled" (Run Dog Eat Dog) featured in W South Beach Living Room Bar
CHRISTOPHER WOOL
Christopher Wool's paintings are characterized by the use of bold,uppercase lettering,stenciled in glossy black paint on a sheet of aluminum. Untitled (Run Dog Eat Dog), 1990,displays how Wool uses letters as a pattern of black on white rather than a written message. Although the painting contains a phrase, it is almost illegible because of the lack of spaces and irregular positions of the letters.
"Zinc Sulfinate" featured in W South Beach Living Room
DAMIEN HIRST
Damien Hirst is one of the best-known members of the group called the "Young British Artists" that first gained attention in London in the early 1990s. He first drew attention for the controversial sculptures that featured animal bodies and body parts in tanks of formaldehyde, but is equally renowned for his paintings. Three of his paintings are shown in the W South Beach, including his "butterfly" painting, Harvest for the World (2005), that displays actual butterflies suspended in high-gloss yellow paint; his "spin" painting, Beautiful Queen Mother's Knickers (1996), which is made with a machine that centrifugally disperses the paint steadily poured onto a shaped canvas surface; and his "spot" painting, Zinc Sulfinate (2002) that contains a rigorous grid of uniform sized dots on a circular canvas, in varying colors that are derived from pharmaceutical chemicals.