Even in this tough economic climate, it seems art fair organizers are forging ahead. The latest bold move on the art fair front happened this week, when David and LeeAnn Lester, who currently run the art fair on a boat, Seafair, reacquired the palmbeach3 contemporary fair, which they founded 12 years ago, from dmg world media, the company to whom the couple sold it in 2001. The Lesters take ownership of the fair immediately, and will take control of its management after the 2009 edition, which runs January 14-18. Read more...

Crisis, turmoil, correction, downturn. Recession. The recent events in the global markets have gone by many names. But what about what’s happening in the art market? In late November, Alexandra Peers authored an article in the Wall Street Journal that, well, called it: Read more...

My coverage of Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellites (and one noncommercial show and one Miami gallery show) for Artinfo.com is here, here, here, here, and here. Read more...

New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz’s talk for Art Basel Miami Beach’s Art Salon yesterday, entitled “This is the End: The Rising Tide of Money Goes Out of the Art World and All Boats are Sinking,” took a literal turn when he compared the present moment in the art world to the scene in the movie Titanic where the ship tips vertiginously, and Leonardo diCaprio’s character says, “This is it.” Read more...

This blog has languished a bit as I’ve been busy penning market reports from Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellites for Artinfo.com. Now, a brief word about parties. The art market may be cooling off a bit, but events in Miami have, with a few exceptions, been as packed as ever, and just as absurd. More to come on this, but for the moment, here is one snippet. Last night two parties — you could say they represented, respectively, Japan and Russia — were held simultaneously at two different locations within the Gansevoort Hotel. Downstairs, Rolling Stone magazine put on a soiree for Takashi Murakami and the artists in the Pulse and Geisai art fairs. The party’s gushing press release gushed in terms baroque but confusing: “Guests will take a romp with pomp at Louis Bar-Lounge, where new school elector-glam takes a crash collision course with the regal elegance of the belle epoque.” Um, ok? What was the second part? Anyhow, guests, who were greeted by a cluster of  women outfitted as glammed-out Kabuki strippers complete with sequined pasties – Read more...

[sigh] Bad timing for the art market. This can’t be good news on the eve of one of the world’s biggest art fairs. From the New York Times about two minutes ago: BREAKING NEWS 12:32 PM ET: It’s Official: U.S. Economy in Recession

The Independent ran an article yesterday bearing bad news for the Turner Prize, the winner of which is to be announced today. According to the paper’s report it might, well, just not matter very much anymore. Read more...

Warming up for Miami next week? Before you go, read Dave Hickey’s mindblowing article on art fairs in the December issue of Vanity Fair. Here’s a taste: Read more...

A show of new work by California conceptualist John Baldessari opened last night at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, and it’s curiously zeitgeisty. The show is called “Raised Eyebrows / Furrowed Foreheads,” and it consists of, well, precisely those. That is to say, Baldessari has created a series of three dimensional prints mounted on shaped foam — they look like paintings that have thickened into sculptures — that depict vignettes of faces frozen in expressions of concern, anxiety, befuddlement, bafflement, the sundry moods signaled by raised eyebrows and furrowed foreheads. In the gallery’s press release, Baldessari is quoted calling his pieces “timely, saying ‘Aren’t we all worried?’” And in fact they are perfect emblems for this troubled and uncertain moment. One can imagine any of them as a reaction to the roller-coaster ride that is each morning’s news. This may be a stretch, but the brows and creases, all stark directionals painted in primary colors, recall nothing so much as the Dow’s recent ups and (mostly) downs, as depicted in those alarming line graphs we’ve all become far too adept at parsing. It’s a brilliant if entirely unintentional touch.

Last night I had the great pleasure of attending a compelling and edifying lecture by the historian and writer Simon Schama in which, among other poignant comparisons, he displayed a slide of Damien Hirst’s famous sheep-floating-in-formaldehyde sculpture Away from the Flock, made in 1994, next to Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat of 1854; he juxtaposed these images in order to illustrate what he sees as a penchant among British artists for looking at history through a wistful lens. Hirst certainly wasn’t the focus of Schama’s lecture, which had mainly to do with how artists have depicted the city of London, and cities in general, over the years, but it has to be said that it was shockingly refreshing to hear Hirst’s work discussed outside the context of his recent market machinations. We need more of this. It seems every day there is new news to do with Hirst’s business plan; today brought an article about layoffs in his company, Science Ltd. Read more...