Miami from Afar

Figure Painting, as you may have figured out by now, is not in Miami for the tropical, boozier edition of Art Basel. (As the temperature dipped to toe-numbing digits this week and a fierce wind started ripping through the city, this seemed more and more like a poor decision.) Thankfully, cyberspace has collapsed the 1,000-and-some-odd miles that separate the warmer climes of southern Florida from the Big Apple. ¿Que pasa en Miami?

As usual, the best things were already sold by the time the doors opened on Wednesday, according to Marion Maneker, who wrote about the fair for Portfolio.com. Go forth to learn, not buy, he says. Those that are shopping are hot for big — literally, BIG — works, say Alexandra Peers (writing for New York Magazine) and the Art Newspaper. A 17-foot Andreas Gursky photograph, a wall of Roni Horn C-prints, and, interestingly enough, a model of Cristoph Büchel's Training Ground for Democracy (the thorn in the side of Mass MoCA) were all snapped up.

Meet indigenous collectors Craig Robins and Marty Margulies:

Lance Armstrong is on the scene, and everyone seems to have taken note. Condé Nast Portfolio's own Deborah Schoeneman placed him at the opening of Lenny Kravitz's new lounge at the Delano. So did Peers and Kelly Crow and Lauren A.E. Schuker (writing for the Wall Street Journal's On the Block blog). Bloomberg's Lindsay Pollock spotted him at the actual fair (ABMB, as distinguished from the fairs orbiting the main event) wearing "a blue baseball cap and accompanied by a posse of tattooed friends." Is Armstrong just another of the social set that hit up Miami for the art parties? Or is he buying anything?

At Frieze in London just two months ago, Gavin Brown stole the show with his menagerie of cheap (well, relatively speaking, that is) wares curated and peddled by artists and even art-fair progeny. Xu Zhen's ShanghART Supermarket seems to have adopted the concept in Miami — the New York Times' culture vulture blog, The Moment, tells us it's "been busier than a Chinatown fishmonger's." Meanwhile Brown has forgone the flea-market experience for a replica of a luxury goods store. Walter Robinson (writing for Artnet.com) has a look.

The Moment has also overheard that "birds are the new skulls." Could it be true? If objects of flight are of the moment, Krug qualifies as an early adopter. The champagne maker is in Miami offering rides on its Krug Balloon, a luxuriously-appointed basket hitched to a "giant white orb" that offers passengers a three-course lunch whipped up by Marc Brétillot and, of course, Krug champagne — "a manifest expression of near-unattainable luxury," Krug says.