I dare you to lay your fingers on a city that’s sexier than Miami. The whole urban area is one big infinity pool — Cuban dancing, too-much-is-not-enough cleavage, shiny shirts, flirting in traffic jams. Add Art Basel weekend, when the population of nubile arty types skyrockets and you have yourself an I-saved-my-money-up-to-blow-it-here powder keg. Small wonder that the Miami Convention Center was packed with nudes and nakeds last weekend. Art’s a great excuse to be pervy.
The Convention Center was sexy on Saturday, Dec. 3. There was this vibrating hush in the cavernous building, the result of a massive group of people (the show attracted 50,000 people over the course of four days, according to official festival numbers) trying to be quiet. But it was hard to be quiet when you wanted to yelp in pleasure every 15 minutes. A voluptuous python curling sleepily around a brother from another mother (the latter attached to another man’s crotch). A classic Helmut Newton starlet, leaning coquettishly on a hot rod, Hollywood sign evident in the background.
From a pure beauty standpoint, what can beat a nude? Like food porn, images of the tropics, and cuddly kitty portraiture, the art of the nude necessitates no graduate level art history seminar to appreciate. It’s flesh. You want to be on it. But you’re in one of the largest makeshift gallery spaces in the world, so try to hid your aesthetic exuberance until the after-party. Lucky for you, there’s quite a few at Art Basel.
There was clothed art there too. I’ve already posted an exploration of Wynwood, Basel’s street art district. And you’ll definitely want to check out my trip to the SCOPE Festival for urban art and rhinestone hamburgers. Shh, there’s a naked in that one too.
Unless otherwise noted, all images were on display at Art Basel Miami Beach