Art Basel Takes Miami Beach by Storm

Lucy Tiven

Miami’s most recent Art Basel highlights span history and genre from Basquiat to contemporary painting and performance. With a plethora of exhibition offerings, museum goers are invited to revisit the neoclassical era, wrestle with disasters of technology and trace the birth of portraiture from the 18th century up to the inundation of the selfie.

Joining together over a hundred female artists of past and present, The Rubell Family Collection presents a group show aptly titled “NO MAN’s LAND.” Comprised of paintings, sculptures, photographs and video installations as well as six large site-specific pieces, the show kicks off with Jennifer Rubell’s “Devotion,” a large scale installation exploring the expressive and gestural power of food.

Next, delve into the evolution of the portrait as aesthetic and psychological study at Lowe Art Museum-University of Miami. “The Portrait Transformed: Drawings & Oil Sketches From Jacques Louis David to Lucien Freud” traces the portraiture tradition from its 18th century roots to modern and contemporary eras, including Freud’s iconic study of Alfred Hitchcock.

If you’re feeling rebellious, hit the design district as the De La Cruz Collection presents “You’ve Got To Know the Rules . . . To Break Them,” a group show of groundbreaking contemporary artists pushing the boundaries between abstraction, minimalism and conceptual art.

While you’re in the area, make sure to stop by “The Van,” a new-media installation from Alex Bag, installed in the artist’s vehicle and presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. In a similarly nomadic spirit, ArtCenter will be setting up camp by the Little River with an installation from Israeli artist Dina Shenhav. Composed entirely out of mattress foam, the piece recreates a hunting lodge out of the material of a bed.

If you’re in the mood for performance, The Bass Museum of Art will be showing a piece from Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury, while Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design’s “Mary Queen of the Universe” tours through memory and craftsmanship as brothers Steven and William Ladd present and dissemble hand crafted boxes created over the last 13 years.

Keep the entropy going at the Wolfsonian-FIU’s catastrophe-themed show, “Margin of Error,” featuring major artists including Man Ray, Lewis Hine, Margaret Bourke-White, Herbert Bayer, Julius Klinger and Louis Lozowick. Exploring mechanical failure and disasters of technology through the ages, works reflect the idealization of progress as well as its casualties and interruptions. Set as a topical counterpoint, the museum’s other show, “Philodendron: From Pan-Latin Exotic to Modern America” renders a survey of art and the natural world from plant migration to gardening.

If you’re feeling the urge to snap a selfie, make your way to Broward County’s Girls’ Club for “Self Proliferation,” a multimedia exploration of female identity politics and image. Before you head back downtown, make sure to get your TV fix at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale’s “Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television” an exhibition delving into intersections between television and the art world, from Warhol to “The Twilight Zone.”

Art Basel will be in Miami Beach from December 3 – 6, with shows in museums, galleries and pop-ups throughout the city and its surrounding counties.