Highbrow and Hedonistic: Art Basel 2007

Our fourth annual fix of Art and Commerce, with rather less of either this year, and a lot more exercise by day and night. Bicycles have got to be the best way to navigate for the constellation of events that is Art Basel Miami. 

With so much to see, too much to see, former years' imperative of seeing it all was happily forgotten in favor of vodka-soaked abandon among Fracophile and Francophone fellow travellers at La Boite, and happily nursing the consequences by the pool the following morning. Or defecting from the UBS Pavilion to mosh with the most eclectic crowd imaginable, gathered on the beach to see and Iggy Pop's erratic swagger.  

The fair's obsession with China extended into the virtual this year. We were particularly impressed by the $100K price tag on a piece of real estate in Second Life Beijing. Not sure whether it was paid for in real or virtual currency. But currency was everywhere in evidence. In particular renditions of the beleaguered greenback, sliced, spliced and diced into scenes from Washington's childhood ('twas I who chopped down the cherry tree) or weapons of mass destruction like a fully armed helicopter gunship. 

Germans and Italians aplenty, seemingly fewer Latin Americans and certainly less of Africa. India still very marginal, though now that Russia assumed center stage with its own pavilion at the heart of the design district its art seemed somehow emasculated, much as it does in the pavillions of the Venice Biennale, that other Art-Celebrity funfest.

Baselitz remixed, Richter on Richter... Perhaps the Western Cannon has exhausted itself, and the post-modern artist returns to his earlier work to lay the foundation for new creation. Self-sampling now seems a staple. Why not? Pop will eat itself. Perhaps Art will, too. 

We'll have a draft charter for The Miami School of Mixology in the Arts the next time we head down to Miami for this event. The most frequently-heard refrain was that Miami, that ephemeral new capital of Art and Commerce, needs a world-class art school. Noble ambitions. Remains to be seen whether they can weather this season's subprime storms and their possibly more destructive offshoots.  

War, Peace and Propaganda

From the ridiculous to the sublime. Or was it the other way around? Kim and Ilya were kind enough to secure tickets for us for an evening of Prokofiev at the Met, thanks to their acquaintance with "proslavenny rezhisser" Konchalovsky. A memorable operatic outing, not least for the chance encounter of Rory and his girlfriend Olga in the ticket line, detoured from their return trip to Moscow after a week of New Hampshire's wintry delights. 

Quite the stage. A remarkable perspectival play with its steep incline and rotating top. And quite a visual accomplishment between the ballrooms in St. Petersburg and Moscow to the battlefields of Napoleon’s campaign of 1812. It was a fittingly Franco-Russian themed evening, considering our little audience.  

Flo does Modern Opera better than Romas does, who remains stuck in the sing-song pleasantries of the more whimsical Italians or Mozart. The propagandistic bombast  of the second act was a bit of a bludgeoning (Ed: "Look at what they've done to the world with their Communism!"). But all agreed that the production was spectacular. Even Paul, who maintained decent posture throughout the production's four+ hours! I think we were both kept alert by the mounting threat (or promise) of an appearance by Napoleon and the pyrotechnic climax in the representation of the War of 1812. He even caught historical details like the mention of Vilnius in the score. 

As a parenthesis, Romas has returned to the book which he'd been reading intermittently for about as long as the campaign in question, 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow, by Adam Zamoyski. This account of the war is reconstructed almost entirely from previously unheralded primary sources like soldiers' letters home. Totally engrossing. In fact, he's tempted now to try his hand at painting some so-called "Napoleonic" miniatures to add to his Medieval and WW2 repertoire, though we're not sure that would be any more realistic than trying to get through the 1298 pages of War and Peace in the original Russian, for example. 

Interesting to learn from the playbill a little about Prokofiev's struggle to get this opera produced. That it was first staged in its entirety in 1945 gives a distinctly propagandistic flavor to the oft-repeated and deafeningly rousing choruses of unwashed peasants, vowing pitchfork in hand to defend their homeland. "Za Rodinu!" Now, wasn't that what the Soviets were writing on the turrets of T-34 tanks in WW2? 

Santa's Brand New Sleigh (has rims)

Life looks better from behind tinted glass... For our first XMas in New York City we followed Flo's French banquet with the apotheosis of Luxury, American style: we circumnavigated the entire Island of Manhattan in a Stretch Hummer. White, of course. Rocking around the Isle... With stops under the Brooklyn Bridge, Red Hook, Canal Street, China Town, Times Square and our new digs on the Upper East Side (raising a few well-tended eyebrows in the process). See the full tour at:

gallery.mac.com/florencerolando