Posted on Wed, Dec. 05, 2007

Art collectors and enthusiasts have strapped on their running shoes and started chugging Red Bull as the non-stop Art Basel festivities kicked into high gear Tuesday. Though the namesake fair -- Art Basel Miami Beach -- doesn't officially open until Wednesday, private celebrity dinners, news conferences and VIP openings crammed the schedule.

A few snapshots:

LICHTENSTEIN

AT FAIRCHILD

What do you serve at a luncheon marking the exhibition opening of the late Roy Lichtenstein's sculptures at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden? An iconic American food straight out of one of the pop artist's paintings: Hot Dog with Mustard 1963 -- along with veal mini-cheeseburgers, mini-BLTs and potato ''chips'' topped with salmon roe and creme fraiche.

The idea was sparked by the collection of Lin Lougheed -- a Fairchild trustee -- and Aaron Fleischman, hosts for the luncheon for 160, and owners of the Lichtenstein hotdog-with-mustard painting.

The pair's connections with the Lichtenstein Foundation helped cement Fairchild's exhibition, Roy Lichtenstein at Fairchild, featuring 10 monumental sculptures on display through May 31. His widow, Dorothy, a palm collector, says she didn't need much convincing: she has visited Fairchild for years, since her husband created his Mermaid sculpture in Miami Beach in 1979.

''They asked us,'' said Dorothy Lichtenstein. Said Jack Cowart, president of the Lichtenstein Foundation, ``It was their initiative. We thought it was an audacious, if not a wild-and-crazy idea. So we decided to do it.''

The Fairchild exhibition marks the first time more than two of the sculptures -- some owned by the Lichtenstein Foundation, others loaned by private collectors -- have been shown together. The tallest rises 31 feet and weighs more than 3 tons.

About 400,000 visitors are expected to see the exhibition, said Bruce Greer, president of Fairchild's trustees. That's 25,000 to 50,000 more than the number of visitors to an exhibition of glassworks by Dale Chihuly displayed the past two winters. But Chihuly fans need not despair: a selection of his works are being shown in the garden's conservatory and rain forest.

-- JANE WOOLDRIDGE

MONKEY BUSINESS

The Wolfsonian-Florida International University Museum wasn't monkeying around Tuesday afternoon as it unveiled two huge inflatable white monkeys looking over Washington Avenue in Miami Beach from its seventh-floor and second-floor roofs.

The ''museum of thinkism'' provoked a few chuckles and confused looks from passersby below as the larger-than-life animals, which measured 30-by-12 feet and 50-by-30 feet, were inflated over their heads.

Designed by Austrian-born graphic artist Stefan Sagmeister, who has created album covers for Lou Reed (the draw at Saturday's Art Loves Film VIP event with artist Julian Schnabel) and the Rolling Stones, the monkeys, which wield banners that together say ''Everybody Thinks They Are Right'' -- the piece's title -- will be up through Sunday, although they will be deflated each midnight and reinflated each morning.

Sagmeister ''has a wonderful sense of humor,'' said museum director Cathy Leff. ``They're two oversized King Kongs on our building.''

-- JAWEED KALEEM

A VIP AFFAIR

Forget the old Art Miami. The fair's opening day for VIPs on Tuesday under a 100,000 square foot tent in Wynwood was the makeover edition -- and it's a deluxe job.

Chauffeured Bentleys and Mercedes parked outside. Collectors slipped into the spacious booths before the doors officially opened at 3 p.m. (Miami collector Martin Z. Margulies looked like a man on a mission as he made his way through the fair, accompanied by his curator Katherine Hinds).

-- FABIOLA SANTIAGO

IN A MUSEUM HOUSE

Cuban-born artist Jorge Pardo showed the Art Basel Miami Beach crowd what it's like to live in a work of art with his first mid-career retrospective exhibition, Jorge Pardo: House, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami Tuesday night.

MOCA, hosting the annual Art in America magazine party simultaneously with the opening of House, filled up with busloads of patrons in town for Art Basel Miami Beach and the two dozen parallel fairs taking place through Sunday.

Curated by MOCA Director Bonnie Clearwater, the exhibition of photographic murals, paintings and furniture inside a gallery with few walls -- to mimic the layout of a house -- blurred the line between art, design and architecture.

''Instead of being a museum,'' Clearwater said, ``it's a house. And each gallery is a room in the house.''

Pardo, busy shaking hands and greeting visitors by the gallery entrance, said he was delighted to have his first comprehensive survey in an American museum during the biggest art fair of the year.

''Even if Miami isn't the center of the world,'' said Pardo, who lives in Los Angeles, ``this week it is.''

The exhibition is on view through March 2 at MOCA.

-- DANIEL CHANG

PULSE ART FAIR

The out-of-towners seem to have finally figured put that Miami has sketchy taxi service. Last year during Art Basel, many took cabs from the Beach to alternative fairs and galleries in Wynwood and then started flailing on sidewalks when they could not find enough cabs to get them back over the causeway.

Tuesday night, there was a parade of chauffeured limos and Town Cars outside Pulse art fair, in its third year in Miami and this time at SoHo Studios, 2136 NW First Ave. in Wynwood. The main Pulse fair features 80 galleries, but the top attraction Tuesday night seemed to be GEISAI Miami. GEISAI, founded six years ago by Japanese star artist Takashi Murakami, is traveling for the first time and spotlights 20 young artists from around the world. Murakami walked around Tuesday night, shaking hands with fairgoers and chatting with artists.

''This is a place to get away from dealers and collectors,'' Murakami said.

GEISAI probably features the most affordable art of the week. For a dollar, you can buy a 41 cent postage stamp featuring the faces of Basel's outgoing director Sam Keller, Miami collectors Mera and Donald Rubell and several other art world figures.

Stick the stamp on a free postcard that says ''Greetings from Miami'' on the front and on the back check off which alt fairs you visited and send the card to your friends.

''Major dealers and collectors are what Basel is about. It's all commerce,'' said the artist behind the stamps and postcards, Eric Doeringer of New York. He is also selling knockoffs of works by Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, Andy Warhol and other big name artists for about two hundred bucks.

-- LYDIA MARTIN

NEW ART -- FOR A PRICE

Collectors got the first view of NADA -- New Art Dealers Alliance -- when the fair opened its doors Tuesday afternoon at the Ice Palace near Overtown. In its fifth year in Miami during Art Basel and this time competing with 20-something other fairs, NADA dealers seemed to talk about little else beyond the multiplying sideshows.

'I hope so many fairs don't tire out the collectors", said Bryan Kepple, director of Roebling Hall Gallery in New York. ``It has pushed everything into preview mode with everybody calling before the fairs open to ask, 'What do you have, what do you have?' because it's impossible to go to so many fairs.''

But Kepple can't complain. Twenty minutes into NADA, he had sold a piece by New York artists David Ellis and Roberto Lang, originally from Miami. The piece, which went for $22,000, consists of an old typewriter on a school desk banging out the words to Grand Master Flash's The Message.

Elizabeth Raizes of New York's Eleven Rivington Gallery was beaming an hour into the fair. By then, somebody had expressed ''serious interest'' in a piece by Brazilian artist Valeska Soares that uses 1,000 little white paper bags that hotel glasses are wrapped in.

At NADA, the bags are piled into a mountain against a corner. But since the bags are not attached to one another, the bags can be arranged any way, says Raizes.

Meaning you basically get 1,000 little white paper bags to do what you want with. For $20,000. And don't worry that the piece is spoken for -- it's an edition of three.

-- LYDIA MARTIN

A WALKING MESSAGE

From the clothes to the chatter to the art itself, it was everything en Francais at the opening of French Kissin' in the U.S.A., an exhibition of 18 emerging French artists that opened at The Moore Space om Tuesday night.

''This is the next generation,'' said Silvia K. Cubiñá, curator of the nonprofit gallery. ''They've hit it big in France, but it's time that they get shown in the U.S.''

Asmund Kverneland might have hit a few big nerves, too. The 30-year-old artist from Copenhagen got some looks as he walked around the gallery wearing a bandanna that spelled ''art=retard,'' holding a video camera to tape himself. On a large red and black sign on his back: ''retard dealer.'' What? ''It's about the delay between art's creation and the time it takes for it to get to the public,'' he said, adding that he'll be touring dozens of Art Basel events through Sunday while wearing similar messages. Here's to hoping nobody punches him.

-- JAWEED KALEEM

CORAL GABLES PARTY:

WHO'S WHO OF U.S. ART DEALERS

''I invited 50, and I had 90 responses,'' said Marvin Ross Friedman, Miami collector, lawyer and art dealer, who hosted a party Tuesday night at his Coral Gables home for Dorothy Lichtenstein. She and her late husband, artist Roy Lichtenstein, were longtime friends; Friedman also has represented his work.

The crowd was a who's who of U.S. art dealers, including Larry Gagosian of New York, James Corcoran of Los Angeles, John and Gretchen Berggruen of San Francisco and Diana Lowenstein of Miami, with husband, developer Alfredo.

Though Art Basel Miami Beach had yet to open, Gagosian said he had already sold several works, and expected he would sell about half his inventory -- including works by Jeff Koons and Richard Prince -- by the end of the fair's first day.

Among the crowd: the fabulously dressed Iris Apfel, whose personal fashion sense is so distinctive that the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has organized an exhibition of outfits she put together. (The book Rare Bird of Fashion, by Eric Boman, chronicles her vibrant personality and eclectic style.) This evening she was draped in necklaces -- hefty chunks of Bakelite, a strand of feathers -- and signature oversized black glasses. She happily admits to her age: 86 -- and obviously going strong.

-- JANE WOOLDRIDGE

This year, Aqua Art Miami is split in two, located at the Aqua Hotel in Miami Beach -- its home for the past two years -- and at Aqua Wynwood, at 42 NE 25th St. The Wynwood location opened its doors for a preview Tuesday night with 49 galleries, many from the west coast, exhibiting portions of their collections.

''We wanted to create a space of our own,'' said Joshua Weinberg, assistant director of the fair, who began the Aqua Art Miami exhibition on South Beach two years ago with partners Dirk Park and Jaq Chartier.

Many of the galleries exhibiting in the Wynwood space were relatively new, including San Francisco's Lisa Dent Gallery, which moved its socially conscious works that comment on colonialism, racism and environmental causes to the Wynwood warehouse space this year.

Aqua Wynwood is open noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday. Admission is $10 and also covers entrance to the Aqua Hotel, which opens Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

-- JAWEED KALEEM