Art comes ashore in Miami Beach

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- It's the quintessential South Beach scene: Beautiful people lounging alongside shimmering water. Art imitates social life here next month with a fashion photography exhibit around a swanky hotel pool.

It's one of the many ways Miami transforms into a contemporary art hub in early December. About 20 art fairs and other exhibits and performances lure collectors to mingle for a week with the locals in parks, trendy hotels, air-conditioned tents and private galleries. Paintings hang from the walls, sculptures and videos enliven gardens, performers entertain bus riders, and shipping containers become gallery and concert spaces.

The centerpiece of the annual visual overload is Art Basel Miami Beach, the four-day international contemporary art fair at the Miami Beach Convention Center showcasing work by more than 2,000 artists. First opened in 2002, it is the sister fair of the annual art event held in June in Switzerland.

From Dec. 6 to 9, Art Basel's "Art Supernova" will link exhibit, performance and storage spaces in one hall. A more compartmentalized approach to exhibitions, "Art Kabinett," focuses on small, curated shows of photography produced without cameras, along with electric signs, architectural sketches from Latin America and an installation of fur, lamps, drapery and other found objects assembled by Robert Mapplethorpe.

The fair extends to a beachfront village of repurposed shipping containers titled "Art Positions," and injects glitz into Miami's natural landscapes. The Miami Beach Botanical Garden hosts the Cartier Dome, a dramatic jewelry display that accompanies video artwork and an "Art Sound Lounge" with a soundtrack provided over wireless headphones. Monumental sculpture by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein will loom over the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, starting Dec. 8.

There's artwork to be made at Art Basel, too -- at least for the crayon-and-finger-paint set, in a day care center run by the Miami Children's Museum.

Other independent art fairs, exhibits and events are scheduled in Miami and Miami Beach to coincide with Art Basel, and some incorporate the local penchant for socializing.

Art Miami, a contemporary art fair staged Dec. 5-9, built a restaurant and lounges into its tented pavilion in Miami's Wynwood Art District.

"We weren't as interested in taking one space and making a VIP lounge," said Ilana Vardy, director of Art Miami. "We wanted to make sure the public has the same comfort and added beauty to the experience of walking through the fair."

The models captured by fashion photographers Thierry Mugler, Jean-Baptiste Mondino and 18 others replace the usual sunbathers around the palm-lined pool at the oceanfront Doubletree Surfcomber Hotel in Miami Beach Art Photo Expo's "In Fashion '07" exhibit, Dec. 2-9.

The Sagamore Hotel, also oceanfront in South Beach, could be described as a "hotel installation" with its tradition of being featured in work created for Art Basel.

Photographer Massimo Vitali memorialized the first Art Basel in 2002 with a live photo shoot at the Sagamore's end-of-fair brunch, now an annual event. This year's Art Basel Brunch on Dec. 8 will feature the unveiling of the large-scale mass-nudity photographs Spencer Tunick shot at the hotel last month.

Robert Chambers' "Rotorelief," a functioning helicopter with its propeller blades replaced by hypnotically swirled discs, has been permanently installed on one of the hotel's low roofs in advance of Art Basel.

"People ask me, 'Are you running a hotel in a museum or a museum in a hotel?' " said hotel owner Marty Taplin. His response: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."