What's Your Fantasy?
It All Happened This Weekend at Art Basel Miami Beach
Credit Marco Brambilla for adding an extra dimension to Art Basel Miami Beach. Friday night at the Standard, the artist behind the mesmerizing video collage of heaven and hell at the hotel's New York property gave an audience including Francisco Costa, Jeffrey Deitch, and co-hosts Jefferson Hack and André Balazs a sneak preview of his latest work. Titled Evolution, it's a baroque mash-up of samples from epic movies set in periods ranging from ancient Rome to the imagined worlds of Star Wars and A Clockwork Orange. The whole thing is in 3-D, and Armani was kind enough to send along a box or two of its slick new 3-D glasses. Getting everyone to give them back on the way out was a less successful project.
There was even more of a scene in the hotel's backyard on Saturday, when Playboy and Stoli Elit sponsored a dinner with an extra-spicy ingredient: all kinds of performance art inspired by the idea of the nude. The splashiest piece, so to speak, was Vanessa Beecroft's creative arrangement of 18 naked models in the pool. "It's a vintage performance, but not a reproduction of anything in particular," the artist explained. Olympia Scarry (who showed at the NADA fair) opted for a contrarian approach, anonymously stalking through the party in a burka that Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci had designed for her. Meanwhile, at the Mondrian, the chef Sam Talbot was giving the likes of Rogan Gregory and photographer Poppy de Villeneuve a taste of the brand's upcoming New York property, and at the Delano, Susan Sarandon partnered with the L.A. MOCA for a Ping-Pong party.
In the Design District, Alber Elbaz had created an installation reminiscent of his famous window displays for Lanvin. With a pre-fall collection due in three weeks, the designer isn't exactly basking in leisure time. "Usually, this time of year I never move from my studio," he said at his dinner on Friday night at the Rubell Family Collection. To liven things up, Elbaz had scrawled notes to friends on the linen tablecloth and dangled plumed top hats from the ceiling. "Just a bit of festivity," the designer shrugged. "This is maybe what art and fashion are all about."
Later on, Elbaz joined Anouck Lepère, Nicky Hilton, and Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren at the Visionaire party at the W—as did the weekend's big guest of honor, Tilda Swinton. Pringle of Scotland had squeezed just about as many people as it could onto The Webster's second floor for a dinner in her honor a couple of hours earlier. The actress took a break from some affectionate horsing around with Ryan McGinley to mention that, like Elbaz, she'd never been to Miami before. "The thing that was a surprise was how much it was exactly as I expected," she noted. "There can't be many places that are a fantasy of what they are."
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