Art Basel's got a lot to offer, but so do local collectors
Posted on Sun, Dec. 09, 2007
BY BRETT SOKOL
Special to The Miami Herald
Forget about applying to business school. This may be the first time in history when local parents can encourage their kids to pick up a paintbrush as a savvy career move. Indeed, New Yorkers and Los Angelinos may look askance as ambitious gallery owners prowl the halls of M.F.A. programs in search of next year's lucrative art stars. But that hunt looks like a model of restraint compared to what goes on in Miami. Here, dealers scope out classrooms of the art-focused magnet high schools for barely legal talent.
And who can blame them in the current post-Art Basel atmosphere, with so many freshly minted art aficionados acting like yesterday's condo flippers?
''It's creating a perception of untold opportunities for a lot of young artists,'' sighs collector Peter Menéndez, a Miami Art Museum founding trustee, ``and that's creating a lot of angst on the part of established artists who were never part of a booming market like this one. They see these young upstarts who have one show, and suddenly everybody has to have their work.''
So how does a new collector -- someone genuinely interested in pursuing truly transcendent art -- navigate a milieu with no fixed rules or regulations? As gallerist-turned-critic Dave Hickey puts it, ''Anybody who can't sell a handful of air with a dream in it doesn't deserve to call himself an American, much less an art dealer.'' Andy Warhol and P.T. Barnum would surely agree. Menéndez, fellow collectors Alberto Chehebar and Jocelyn Katz and Debi and Jeffrey Wechsler, have strategies for seeing past the hype, bypassing speculators and still maintaining their passion for meaningful art.
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