Buyers Coming Out in Miami

Bloomberg has a very good article on the buying activity at Art Basel Miami. The article points out that both buyers looking to sell and promoting better works after the downturn of 2008 and market trepidation in 2009. The positive results of the Art Basel Miami show more buyer confidence in economy in general and continued strength in the upper end of the contemporary art sector in particular.

Bloomberg reports on the fair

Art Basel’s ninth Miami edition attracted 250 exhibitors from 29 countries displaying modern and contemporary art by more than 2,000 artists. In response to complaints last year about the fair’s circular layout, stands in the Miami Beach Convention Center have been reconfigured in an improved grid format, incorporating faux-grassy knolls sprouting palm trees. Beyond the convention center walls, 15 smaller fringe fairs are scattered around town.

‘Pumped Up’

Sales echoed what the recent New York auctions had intimated: the uppermost tier of the art industry is chugging along.

“People are pumped up. They have money they don’t know what to do with,” said Houston Pop-art collector Frank Herzog, who is leading tours coordinated by AXA Art Insurance Ltd.

During the opening hours, New York’s Acquavella Galleries sold a prime 1956 painting by the late California painter Richard Diebenkorn titled “Man Drawing.” The work was priced around $5 million, according to dealers. The same painting had sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 2005 for $2.1 million.

To read the full Bloomberg article, click HERE.