“I can only advise you to enjoy Miami Beach as long as you can!” It sounds like a warning that Dan Gelber, Mayor of the Atlantic Beach Community, gives visitors to Art Basel.

After the art fair last year was canceled due to corona, it is now back with admission restrictions: only vaccinated or negatively tested people have access.

And despite the news about the Omikron variant, many people also want to have parties.

There is plenty of reason to do so in the palm-fringed convention center. The show, which is considered the link between the art scenes in North and South America, is as international as ever with 53 participating galleries. Only a few had to cancel. A number of large art dealers report sales of millions. The Helly Nahmad Gallery (New York), whose black-walled stand almost looks like a museum space, sold a Picasso on the first day for around $ 20 million, "Mousquetaire et Femme de la Fleur" from 1967. Maddox (London) achieved four million Dollars for a Banksy work showing Charlie Brown. The Thaddaeus Ropac gallery (London, Paris, Salzburg, Seoul) sold the 1978 collage "Sky Marshal (Spread)" by Robert Rauschenberg for $ 1.5 million.

In the section of the fair called “Meridians” there is space for large-format works, selected by a board of trustees led by Magalí Arriola, the director of the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. “Between Veils of Blue and Gray, a Forest” by Janaina Tschäpe, represented by the New York gallery Sean Kelly, can be seen there. The German-Brazilian painter approaches the power of nature in monumental, abstract gestures. One effect of the Corona crisis: The forced withdrawal has led the artist to work in the Hudson Valley north of New York, among other things.

In the past few months, art has also been bought - but more from established artists who were already known to collectors.

Marc Spiegler, the director of the fair, now sees a need to catch up, which is reflected in the enthusiasm for young artists.

“During the pandemic, a pipeline was, so to speak, filled with digital discoveries by new artists: People looked at fresh works online, but they didn't necessarily buy them.” That will change now that such works can be physically experienced again.

Becoming less white

In this year's edition, Art Basel Miami is focusing more on diversity: it wants to be less white. When it comes to selecting artists, that is not as big a challenge as it is for gallery owners, says Spiegler. Even in South America, most traders are white. In order to give less established gallery owners a chance, the tender criteria were changed: gallery owners who do not have a permanent room could also apply. Among the newcomers in the “Nova” section are the gallery owners Kendra Jayne Patrick and Nicola Vassell.

The American artist Jeffrey Gibson will be at the stand of Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (New York) and will talk about his work “People Like Us”, which was shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennale and takes up the traditions of indigenous peoples. Hanging from a horizontal tent pole, textiles, strands of paper and glass beads are connected to form a large robe that bears the title: People like us. Gibson, who is descended from the Choctaw and Cherokee Indian tribes, learned techniques from indigenous artists and studied the history of the American continent intensively. One young woman says she read the name of the work of art rather than “People like us” - that's not wrong either, says Gibson.

A few booths down, the Paula Cooper Gallery (New York) is presenting a work that has attracted a lot of attention, but at $ 150,000 in terms of blue chips, it is more in the low to mid-range price segment. A motel sign in the style of the fifties announces as neon advertisement: "There is no bad luck in the world but white folks", there is no misfortune in the world except white people. The quote comes from the novel "Beloved" by Toni Morrison. The motel sign, which the artist Ja'Tovia Gary created as part of her “Citational Ethics” series, is reminiscent of road trips in the southern United States - and the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was shot in 1968.

As in previous years, there is no shortage of political art. Another trend at the fair is digital art and NFT. The non-fungible tokens in the blockchain work like virtual certificates and can guarantee the uniqueness of a work of art to the buyer. The Dutch artist Lonneke Gordijn demonstrates the NFT "Block Universe" created with the DRIFT collective at the Pace Gallery in New York. Yellow lamps hang on one wall, but only the tablet brings them to life with an NFT - the earth and the other planets of the solar system are visible from all directions, albeit as cuboids. Gordijn says a portion of the proceeds will go to an organization that plants trees in Kenya. The work is later brokered for $ 550,000.

Art Basel Miami Beach, Convention Center, through December 4th, admission $ 65